Being Asian: Bad for College Admission?

Applying to College
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<p>You can’t change your racial classification, nor should anyone want to. Depending on your state, however, you can try to abolish racial preference programmes. Civil rights initiatives that banned the use of racial classification in the public sector, including higher education, have successfully passed in California, Washington, Michigan, and Nebraska. Florida does not practice racial preference in its public universities by state executive order, and none of Georgia’s flagship state universities claims to consider racial classification in their admissions according to their Common Data Sets.</p>

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<p>What he said.</p>

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<p>My words, your posts! </p>

<p>You do not like the word martyr? Tough! Aren’t all your posts on this issue about reporting discrimination against a particular group and the victimization of the same? The word martyr only adds a pinch of hyperbole to your “facts.”</p>

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<p>Of course, you do not believe in the merit of policies that NO longer help your favorite sub-group. Hence, the pulling the ladder image! </p>

<p>As far as your creative use of statistics, how do you come up with 300%? Do you use the demographics and racial distribution of the US population, or something more self-serving such as standardized test scores. </p>

<p>As far as AA in college admissions, I also would love it to disappear … and that would be the day that admissions in every college in the country follows the racial and and SES distributions. Now, please tell me if YOU are prepared to live in a world that offers equal opportunities to all citizens, regardless of their race, and is prepared to ensure equal representation along racial divides. </p>

<p>300 percent over-representation! Pfft! Care to compare the Ivy League race distributions over the national demographics for Asians, Whites, and URM?</p>

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<p>Race shouldn’t matter when it comes to admission, period.</p>

<p>I worked my ass off for the grades I got, I pushed myself to the limit. I slept at 3 in the morning every day in Junior year, working at leadership positions and doing extracurricular work.
Do you think I enjoy doing this? Who likes studying all day, going to all your classes, working hard and rarely wasting time?
I’d love to just relax all day, go to a mediocre uncompetitive school and party my way through senior year. </p>

<p>Why should I be rejected by a university when I worked my ass off to get where I am today just because I’m Chinese or Korean?
The color of your skin doesn’t define who you’ll turn out to be. Plenty of my Asian friends do well in school, and another half don’t do so well, but excel in other things.</p>

<p>The overachieving Asians get their credentials by working hard, not just because their family pushes them to do so. We do it because we want to do well, we want to achieve and excel, we want to push our limits and follow our dreams, to live a good life. Every A we get, every club we’ve participated in, every community hour we earn is by working hard.</p>

<p>So why should a 1/16 Native American student (just one example) get in over a white or Asian student because his great great great great grandmother was a Navajo tribe member when his grades are only half as good as mine?</p>

<p>Why should a black student get in over a white student when they have the exact same qualifications?</p>

<p>It’s not fair. And sure, you can say that life’s not fair, but America’s education system being as excellent as it is, should most definitely consider it’s weaknesses and improve.</p>

<p>AA, just the concept makes me angry. To think that after all I’ve done and all the sweat, blood, and tears I’ve put into my education, I got the short end of the stick because my mom is Chinese and my dad is Korean. </p>

<p>Just a student’s point of view.</p>

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<p>Symmetricalshine, don’t you think that all what you did will not result in an admission to a number of very competitive schools? </p>

<p>Do you really think that YOU will be denied solely because a Navajo or an Aztec got YOUR spot?</p>

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<p>xiggi, let me remind you that I would support race-blind admissions even if it reduced Asian enrollment. You can’t say that for “your favorite sub-group,” can you? Nope, didn’t think so. </p>

<p>Where does my 300% figure come from? [url=<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/02/01/black]Here[/url”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/02/01/black]Here[/url</a>]. “Of all black people aged 18 or 19 in the United States, about 13 percent are first- or second-generation immigrants.” Read the table below, and you see that 40.6 percent of all blacks at the Ivy Leagues are “first- or second-generation immigrants.” 40.6/13 ~ 3.12, therefore “over 300% ‘overrepresented’”. Where’s your ‘pfft’ now, xiggi?</p>

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<p>Now it’s my turn to ‘pfft.’ If you require that to be true before you would “love [for racial preferences] to disappear,” then you’re just being deceitful; racial preferences will NEVER disappear if that has to happen.</p>

<p>Unlike you, xiggi, I recognize that “equality of opportunity” and “equality of result” are NOT compatible. It peeves me when pro-racial preference people conflate the two. If you’re truly for “equality of opportunity,” then you do not care about the results; you only care about whether people have an EQUAL OPPORTUNITY to compete. Likewise, if you’re truly for “equality of result,” then you cannot have “equality of opportunity”; to satisfy the “equal representation along racial divides” requirement, you have to violate some people’s “equality of opportunity.”</p>

<p>I am for “equality of opportunity”; I have never been for “equality of result.” So to answer your question, no, I am not prepared to live in an “equality of result” world, but I am prepared to live in an “equality of opportunity” world where racial classification is irrelevant and where people don’t have to blindly follow an axiom that holds “proportional representation” to be what’s “supposed” to happen.</p>

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<p>symmetricalshine, I am from Africa but am engaged to an Asian woman. I’ve spent many years in Asia and I spent my teenage years in a poor borough of NYC, so I have personally witnessed both sides of the issue.</p>

<p>Please do not minimize the role of cultural expectations in the Asian race. Yes, you did the work, but you likely did the work because of your family’s expectations of you. </p>

<p>Asian people are no smarter than African American people. The primary reason why Asian people succeed in high school and African Americans do not is very simple: By and large, African American families have very low (if any) academic expectations of the children. This has led to an African American culture where teenagers frown upon academic success and see it as “being white.” This culture engulfs the vast majority of African American teenagers. This is the root cause of our academic failures. Asians’ high expectations are the root cause of their collective success. </p>

<p>I was lucky. Most Africans (and many of those blacks from the Caribbean) view educational success as do most Asian families. I grew up with the same pressures that you saw as a young student. Hence, we “did the work” and succeeded. Had either of us grown up in a broken family where education was not considered important, which is the norm for most African Americans, it is highly unlikly that either of us would have “done the work.”</p>

<p>Affirmative action is intended to rescue a handful of African Americans from the grips of our culture. It’s a noble goal that cannot be executed perfectly. But for the effort, very few African Americans would be given the chance to change their view of academic success and, hopefully, make a difference in our cultural failings.</p>

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<p>I oppose both racism and racialism, so I absolutely agree with this statement. But jamma, are you not talking about a socioeconomic phenomenon? For instance, you wrote, “Had either of us grown up in a broken family where education was not considered important, which is the norm for most African Americans, it is highly unlikly that either of us would have ‘done the work.’”</p>

<p>You’re talking about “broken famil[ies]” and how parents value education. Those are socioeconomic issues; no race holds a monopoly on broken / intact families and no race inherently values education more than any other race. Hence, they would be much better addressed with socioeconomic preferences rather than racial preferences, which serve only to “overrepresent” students who come from intact families that place a high value on education.</p>

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<p>The great thing is that there are tons of colleges that accept just based on GPA / SAT scores / class rank and the like, without regard for race. If the policies of the elite schools rankle you so very much, then why apply there?</p>

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<p>Oh gee, I guess the Jewish students who applied to Harvard in the 1920s wanted to be discriminated against, am I right?</p>

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<p>Again, Fabrizio, you are not fooling anyone. </p>

<p>You have posted the same arguments over and over on College Confidential and continue to seize every possible opportunity to rehash the same trite claims of discrimination. </p>

<p>Slice and dice as you want, but it remains that as a percentage of its overall population, the asian racial group is doing extremely well in admissions at all levels of education. While the overall group is well represented, there are more than subtle distinctions that could be made. I would be more impressed by an attempt to add SES elements in the analysis of the underrepresentation in colleges, or analyze the unequal distributions of ethnic groups among the overall asian group. </p>

<p>However, I have zero interest to read more of your drivel. Feel free to continue this discussion without me. And have fun!</p>

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<p>Of course I’m not “fooling” anyone. I would support race-blind admissions even if it resulted in fewer Asians being admitted. You are free to think that I’m lying; it makes no difference to me since I know what I believe in.</p>

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<p>Unsurprising. You can’t handle the truth; all you can do is ‘pfft’ it and preach the gospel of ‘proportional representation,’ as if that’s just somehow the way things “should” be in a perfect world.</p>

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<p>Mr. Fabrizio, I do not believe it is socioeconomic. When we arrived in America, we were very poor, but our poverty didn’t alter my parents’ expectations of academic success for their children. My future wife was also first generation American and was raised in government-subsidized housing. Her parents also expected academic excellence notwithstanding their socioeconomic conditions. Conversely, many African American students raised in upper middle class and wealthy households do relatively poorly on the SAT and in school.</p>

<p>I think the problem is largely cultural. I have no data to back up my personal feelings on this matter, but I think the current African American culture is the result of slavery, coupled with the post-Civil Rights era belief that achievement is not possible for blacks in white America. Asians were also victims of racial inequalities but they were never actually enslaved and were never taught by a generation of community leaders that they couldn’t succeed in America. Indeed, Asians (and first generation Africans) know that they can succeed if they work hard. It may be difficult for non-African Americans to grasp this concept, but most African American young people truly do not think that hard work in school will help them escape their current situation. </p>

<p>Cultural beliefs don’t evaporate when one succeeds financially. I think this explains why so many African Americans from wealthier families still seem to struggle with the concept of achieving academically in high school.</p>

<p>Although there are many well intentioned white people who see this problem and come up with ways to address it, such as affirmative action, the truth is that this is our problem and only we can solve it. Unfortunately, our current community leadership refuses to accept the idea that African Americans have any control over their futures and must be coddled and taken care of by them and the Democratic Party. When leaders such as Bill Cosby speak the truth, they are silenced by a majority who benefit from the status quo. Affirmative action is not a panacea, but it is something. Hopefully, this program will open doors for some brave leader who will speak the truth and not be silenced. Only then will we see the equality that everyone seems to want.</p>

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<p>It is often said that Clarence Thomas benefited from racial preferences, though his friend and mentor Thomas Sowell disputes that. In either case, Thomas is an outspoken critic of racial preferences; he “speak[s] the truth,” if you will, and while he is not silenced, he is often ignored by people of all racial classifications who support racial preferences.</p>

<p>Sowell is likewise an outspoken and passionate critic of the racial preference programme. On Youtube, you can find interviews where he recounts anecdotes of how, in his opinion, affirmative action degraded his achievements. For example, he mentioned that once in the 1970s, a student came to his office hours asking for clarification on what a passage in the textbook meant. Sowell explained the passage, but the student asked, “Are you sure?” Sowell replied, “Yes, I wrote the textbook.” The student then did a double take and became visibly embarrassed.</p>

<p>Some may argue that the incident is the very reason why affirmative action must continue to exist. As [two</a> Stanford alumni](<a href=“http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/1996/sepoct/articles/against.html]two”>http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/1996/sepoct/articles/against.html) so eloquently put it, such an argument implies that affirmative action is a “cure that generates its own disease.” In the same interview, Sowell recounts pre-affirmative-action-era stories. In particular, he told an anecdote of his first experience as a college instructor. He was afraid that his students would not respect him because of his youth, but when he stepped foot into the classroom, he had instant respect. Why? He was the first black instructor in that college. The students basically felt that if he was there, then he had to be good. Without any affirmative action, Sowell shattered a stereotype simply by being there.</p>

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<p>jamma…</p>

<p>“The primary reason why Asian people succeed in high school and African Americans do not is very simple:”</p>

<p>okay… I guess I could take your word for it, but it sure doesn’t FEEL simple…guess that is why I do what I do (Child Psychiatry) and you do what YOU do. What do you do?</p>

<p>BTW; I did a month in Maiduguri when I was at Howard University Medical School in 80-84. Grew up in Brooklyn and Queens. Mom is from Nevis, dad is Native and African American from Alabamacirca 1918. Husband born in Jamaica.Where are you?</p>

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<p>@freakout529, I’m almost positive that your situation is unique to you. The fact that you know “whites” who perform better than you doesn’t mean that as a general rule this is true </p>

<p>and @ryanxing, I absolutely agree with you. While most colleges don’t employ a racial quota system, the sad fact is that they are always looking to increase campus diversity (colorfulness, as you put it :P)</p>

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<p>So true…</p>

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<p>Wow. lots of comments.</p>

<p>Well all this doesn’t change the fact that with the exact same credentials (at least academic stats) Asians would have the hardest time getting into the top colleges.</p>

<p>And I do think that there is a gap between whites and Asians in terms of admission. They are not considered on the same level in the admissions. No way.</p>

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<p>Certainly you see a difference between a school saying “We favor increasing diversity” and a school saying “We want to explicitly keep out (insert ethnic group here).”</p>

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<p>If Jewish students make up 25% of the student body in Harvard does not hurt diversity, then how can Asians, who are twice as numerous and make up less than 25% of the students in Harvard, be hurting diversity?</p>

<p>A theory that can explain this would get awfully close to the true purpose of AA.</p>

<p>BTW, I appreciate the perspectives of ryanxing and jamma; at least they are not more of the same old same old.</p>