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<p>Why is it insufficient? I guess you’re talking about the possibility that applicants openly disclose their racial classification in the essay?</p>
<p>If you look at the profiles of applicants to the most selective schools here on CC, you will see that for many of them you can easily see what ethnicity they almost certainly are from their ECs and other information. This is true, I think, even if they are “well-rounded.”</p>
<p>Agreed that it would be difficult to be truly race-blind but taking names and race out of applications is a huge step in the right direction in my opinion.
You shoud not be punished for things you cannot change such as your race.</p>
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<p>I don’t think you’ll be very successful at this if you attempt to infer racial classification based on extracurriculars across thousands of applications. I think you’ll get a lot of false positives if you do this.</p>
<p>^ Also, in most of those instances the applicant divulges his/her race.</p>
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<p>This is a great post. It really has me thinking about the issue in a different way. The differences between treatment of Jews and Asians by the elite schools is indeed very different, at least in intent.</p>
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<p>I think you misinterpreted Hunt’s post. While stating that anti-Asian biases may be different from the anti-Semitic biases of decades past, either way he says both involve “deliberately trying to limit the numbers of disfavored groups…” as opposed to “giving an advantage to disadvantaged underrepresented groups.”</p>
<p>Indeed, one of the conclusions of The Chosen was that Asians are the new Jews. Like the Jews, under certain definitions of merit, Asians have performed well, perhaps even “too well,” if that’s possible. As the coy version of the golden rule goes, he who has the gold makes the rules. Thus, if Asians do too well under definition 1 of merit, and you don’t want too many Asians because it might destroy the institution’s brand image, just switch to definition 2. Problem solved.</p>
<p>At least for me, Fabrizio, it helps to acknowledge that the motivation behind the bias is to help a specific group, not harm a specific group. A subtle point but important, imo.</p>
<p>Well, I do think that even if there is an effort to limit the number of Asians, it isn’t because of animus against them as it was against the Jews.</p>
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<p>As an apparently East Asian parent of college applicants, maybe you can tell us: how do all those parents “know” that Asians (in 2009, not 1989) are compared to other Asians? It is public information that, like all applicants, they are compared to people in the same high school, geographic area, intended college major, and to people with similar profile of activities. For Asians, all of those categories are disproportionately Asian, because Asians are far more clustered by all such measures. How do you “know” it goes beyond that?</p>
<p>As a reference point, statistical signatures of economic discrimination against Asians (differences in salary, controlling for education and experience) disappeared by around 1990. By now Asian men, and especially Asian women out-earn their white counterparts, controlling for those other factors. Social discrimination against Asians is minimal or negative, certainly for Asian women given the out-marriage rates, and is particularly minimal among the demographic that populate admissions offices these days (i.e., politically correct white females plus some minorities, including Asians). Turnover in admissions offices is very high and there are strong incentives to reveal discrimination if it exists, but no disgruntled admissions worker in the past 20 years has produced the smoking gun.</p>
<p>Statistical studies done at individual elite institutions have either found no disadvantage for Asians (U Michigan), advantage for Asians (TJHS, UVA), or are not set up properly as a discrimination test per se (Espenshade and Chung). The Duke study appears to be evidence **against<a href=“sic”>/b</a> the idea that Asians are disadvantaged, contrary to the drumbeat it is getting in dozens of postings here. Suffice it to say that the posters touting these studies here (and almost all of those posters have parents or children of East Asian descent) are not exactly masters of statistics, and have made some pretty “amazing” assertions as to what these studies do and don’t imply.</p>
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<p>Based on my experience here at CC, “politically correct white females” are part of the problem! For protected minorities, very little evidence is required to convince them that discrimination might be happening. For “overrepresented” minorities, however, almost incontrovertible evidence is needed before they even begin to acknowledge the possibility.</p>
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<p>Whoa, whoa, whoa, I am not being sarcastic when I say that this could seriously advance the discussion! What are the names of the authors of these studies you have mentioned?</p>
<p>By the way, I personally would not characterize an individual who treated a beyond oversimplified model of aggregated data as firm evidence against discrimination as a “master of statistics,” but that’s just me!</p>
<p>On a lighter note, we joke in our family about how our older child - a boy - was “advantaged” in his applications compared to what his sister will soon face. </p>
<p>Hunt’s point gives me pause and makes my blood pressure go down a little over the unfairness of it all (and of course it is unfair!). That said, I still like Chief Justice Roberts on the issue: The way to stip discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.</p>
<p>There is a whole big ugly line of argument that could very easily be lodged against the current practices that would hold that they, in fact, hold down rather than lift up their intended beneficiary population. That is what “lowered expectations” do ultimately. There is just no getting around that.</p>
<p>Post 531:
Rather than the preferred method of selective “evidence” by posters on this thread, I am going to do the academically correct thing and quote siserune in context. This is the portion that deals with “politically correct white females.” It is dishonest to distort his meaning:</p>
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<p>The poster was not referring to white female CC posters such as the many who post on CC – not only on this thread. The poster was referring to admissions officers, who, by their political leanings, have incentives to report discrimination, and who have not. You also conveniently eliminated siserune’s accurate observation that Asians are among admissions officers.</p>
<p>Further, no white females on CC are admissions officers unless their usernames are italicized, which is specified in the Terms of Service and Rules. Thus, they do not represent the policies of admissions offices nor can be held responsible for them. Hurling vitriol at those who describe admissions procedures is not only disingenuous, it’s a waste of time. Before you matriculated to Georgia Tech I urged you several times to contact admissions offices directly to express your complaints. You indicated that eventually you would do so. Have you done so? I’m on record as repeatedly saying on CC that admissions policies/procedures are far from perfect, but I do understand how they work, and I do understand the reasoning behind them on the part of the colleges.</p>
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<p>I’m with you all the way on this one. Ultimately, I see the issue of racial preferences as being divided on a simple question of which Justice’s argument you subscribe to. If you agree with Justice Blackmun that “…in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently” and believe in equality of result, you’re probably going to support racial preferences. But, if you agree with Chief Justice Roberts that “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is stop discriminating on the basis of race” and believe in equality of opportunity, then you’re probably not going to support racial preferences.</p>
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<p>I agree on this one, too. To me, I don’t know why some supporters of affirmative action think that what failed elsewhere will succeed here. Take Malaysia for example. As Tun Mahathir bin Mohamad, the godfather of Malaysian affirmative action, acknowledges, all the affirmative action regime did for Malays was make them dependent on it, seeing it as “symbols of their superior status” and not “even using [it] properly” ([Source](<a href=“http://dinmerican.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2008/01/24/tun-dr-mahathir-mohamad-the-new-malay-dilemma/]Source[/url]”>Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad: The New Malay Dilemma | Din Merican: the Malaysian DJ Blogger)</a>).</p>
<p>By contrast, neighboring Singapore has never practiced affirmative action. You can invoke correlation not causation all you like, but I think its lack of institutionalized affirmative action partially explains why its GDP is almost as large as Malaysia’s despite being much, much smaller in both size and population.</p>
<p>Re 533</p>
<p>How does any of that refute what I wrote? My whole point was that by their political leanings, “politically correct white females” only have incentives to report discrimination against protected minorities, not “overrepresented” minorities! You are more than welcome to disagree with my opinion, but please do not mischaracterize it.</p>
<p>As far as “Asians’ [being] among admissions officers,” I’ll take a page from Dr. Shelby Steele, who draws a distinction between “challenger” blacks and “bargainer” blacks. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the Asian admissions officers out there are “bargainer” Asians. I submit as admittedly indirect evidence the Asian students who felt that Jian Li should never have issued a complaint with the OCR. These people were against an individual’s attempt to determine whether Asians are, in fact, discriminated against. They didn’t even want to know the truth, they just assumed that everything was hunky dory! That’s textbook “bargainer.” Li, on the other hand, is definitely a “challenger,” which explains why “politically correct white females” hated him for daring to question the status quo.</p>
<p>I’m not holding passionate observers responsible for admissions policies that they don’t enforce; I’m holding them responsible for their own positions on the issues. I make no bones about my disdain for these “politically correct white females” who have separate standards for separate racial classifications on what constitutes discrimination. The standard should be equally low or equally high, not low for one class and high for another.</p>
<p>As for your possibly rhetorical question, my answer is yes. Three years ago, at the suggestion of a friend, I e-mailed Cass Cliatt of Princeton University, asking her to make good on her statement that given sufficient interest, she would release detailed admissions statistics broken down by racial classification. She refused to give me anything other than a reply along the lines of, “I think you guys are part of some e-mail campaign; I’ve gotten a lot of these lately. I’m not going to give you anything because I don’t want to. We don’t discriminate on the basis of race. Have a nice day.”</p>
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<p>fab,
Are you referring to anyone in particular here? Or just making a generalization (with racist undertones)?</p>
<p>I am all for Jian Li’s complaint - I actually hope he prevails using the E&C SAT test argument. I do have an agenda though - I despise the SAT and would like to see it eliminated as an admissions tool. This is what I predict will happen if Jian Li prevails.</p>
<p>Bay,</p>
<p>No, I am not referring to anyone in particular. I’m making a generalization based on my experience here at CC. Back when Li filed his complaint, I read post after post from “politically correct white females” who asserted that Li’s career prospects were over. One of these individuals even suggested that Li was an agent of the evil Chinese Communist Party, a mere pawn doing the bidding of his overlords. Though ridiculous, the latter accusation is ultimately very hard to prove. The first statement, however, has so far been shown to be wrong. When Li applied as a high school senior to Harvard, he was rejected. When he applied as a transfer two years later, he was accepted. Why? Only Harvard knows, but if it had anything to do with Li’s demonstrating “leadership” by being brave enough to file a complaint with the OCR, more power to him!</p>
<p>I fail to see how my generalization has any racist undertones whatsoever, as I have not suggested that whites are inferior or superior compared to other racial classifications. I am merely criticizing what I perceive as “politically correct white females’” biases against Asians. Of course, I would not be surprised in the slightest if said individuals didn’t like my assessment and think I’m wrong. That’s their right.</p>
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<p>The only way I can see my generalization has having racist undertones is if believing that some other people are prejudiced makes me racist.</p>
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<p>If you’re referring to me, perhaps you mistake or misread my “position on the issues,” which as you see is in the plural, not the singular. I already said long ago that I feel divided on the issue of AA as it is sometimes carried out. Often it results in good academic outcomes for the student admitted, but sometimes the social transition is not achieved in the college environment, depending on many factors of social dynamics on campus. I’ve seen this up close and personal, so I know whereof I speak. So do not read me as “passionately for AA.” I am passionate about accurate information. Social engineering can be a risky endeavor, with mixed results. Note, though, that the primary purpose of AA is not social engineering but academic (and through academics, economic) opportunity. A secondary purpose of AA is a more diversified college experience for the incoming freshmen, plural. Despite what tends to be the majority opinion among students who post on these “Race” threads, most of the applicants to Elite U’s in this country are heavily invested in moving into a diverse student body environment – certainly a large core of those applicants. And many of those applicants are desirable academically to those same U’s. This is a business decision, IOW.</p>
<p>I personally do not consider anyone who frequently participates in discussions of policy X, has hundreds of posts on policy X, and vehemently opposes the abolition of policy X to be anything other than passionate about policy X. One may disagree and believe that unequivocal support is a necessary and sufficient condition for being passionate, but I don’t see it that way.</p>
<p>If one were truly a disinterested observer, one would be reading more than writing on discussions of policy X and would not be so strongly against ending said policy. Indeed, one shouldn’t care if the policy were ended if one were in fact disinterested!</p>
<p>^ That will never happen. In absence of any national quantifiable test, SAT (or ACT) will be used for a foreseeable future.</p>