Do Elite Colleges Discriminate Against Asian Students?

Applying to College
541

<p>If you believe that, fabrizio, you are highly prejudiced about why people respond to any issues, including editorials, blogs, discussion boards, and the like. You have stated that you “personally do not consider” etc. That defines a prejudice, not a fact. You have not enough life experience to understand that many people, in communications such as journalism, in education, in medicine, even in politics, care passionately about information, because they believe passionately in thorough debate, in exchange of ideas, and that debate cannot proceed with any credibility if the starting points are blurred or outright inaccurate.</p>

<p>I read a great deal that I do not always directly reference on CC, including what has been made public about Jian Li, E&C, Duke, and much else. I’m sure the poster siserune has too, yet he denies the supposed validity of some of this “data.” It is data with limited value for the purpose of understanding how that data transfers to the dynamics of college admissions. That’s why I don’t repeatedly “reference” it on CC.</p>

<p>So own your prejudices regarding individual posters, because they are self-created conclusions which are not warranted from the posts themselves, including # of posts or any such “inference.”</p>

<p>You are engaging in the same kind of selective & shaped argumentation that you were criticized for by AdOfficer long ago: inventing your own reality about motivations you have no basis for knowing. For example, I would not call the tone of my previous posts “vehemently” [pro-AA] and certainly not the tone of my more recent posts. I have felt, still feel that OTOH AA should not be summarily tossed aside out of political pressure from either Asians or whites, without examining what true harm has supposedly arisen to non-URM’s, and without examining what benefit has resulted to those accepted under such a policy.</p>

<p>Second, I have, rather, vehemently opposed the new U.C. policy on SAT Subject Tests (eliminating them), which will go into effect in a couple of years. I radically & passionately oppose this policy and have stated so publicly on CC. And to me, it is quite obvious that the reasoning behind the policy is strictly to increase URM enrollment. It was a policy devised directly in context – hand in hand --with the bemoaning of reduced URM enrollment at the UC’s, by the Powers That Be. </p>

<p>You either can “do the work” at a U.C. or a private Elite, or you can’t. (That’s the only bar that is required for a URM applying to an Elite, but note that the SAT subject tests are required by all applicants to private elites, to my knowledge, unless the policy about Subject Tests there, too, has also changed recently.) The SAT subject test is one of the measures to assess such readiness. I am not in favor of lowering UC standards, or handicapping URM’s by making them kind-of-ready for UC, which does not have the support mechanisms in place for URM’s which many of the privates do.</p>

542

<p>I stand by my statement. I do not consider anyone who staunchly opposes the elimination of policy X to be “neutral” with respect to that issue. If one were truly neutral, one wouldn’t care whether policy X were in existence or abolished.</p>

<p>For me, it’s simple: if one thinks a policy just has to exist or else, then one isn’t neutral.</p>

543

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<p>I never said it “just has to exist or else.” Not previously, not recently.</p>

<p>So I’ll say it again, referencing the new SAT Subject Test policy at UC, designed specifically to increase minority enrollment and for no other purpose:</p>

<p>If such vehement resistance of mine (to the new policy) results in no gains for URM’s, so be it. To me, the new policy is an improper back-door avenue to improving racial balance at UC, at the expense of those admitted under such a policy and at the expense of UC"s excellence. But you didn’t bother to avail yourself of your research options on CC, to discover what my opinion was on this matter. This is hardly a radically pro-AA position.</p>

<p>Unlike the SAT I, the SAT subject tests have recently been cited as a more targeted, effective tool for predicting college performance beyond Year One. That’s why it’s important to keep them, for any U that considers itself a standard of excellence. Yet there are definitely “white female posters” on CC that vigorously disagree with me. Call them passionate if you want, not me.</p>

544

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The Duke study offers enough aspects of the college admissions process to render its “dynamics” insignificant to the purpose of evaluating admissions trends for tens of thousands of students. You seem to enjoy this concept of dynamics but don’t realize that it simply cannot be applied to such a large scale. Any adcom at these schools will tell you that, over large sample groups, substantiated quantifications trump individualized admissions taken into “context,” unless that context is what we fear it to be (race).</p>

545

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You’re right. I don’t sense pro-AA in you as much as I do sense anti-Asian. At least you’re still being consistent.</p>

546

<p>Re 543</p>

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<p>When I requested clarification on why a policy that supposedly has a “minimal” positive at best shouldn’t just be dropped, I received an answer that centered on how the elites currently teeter “precariously” toward a position of racial inbalance as-is, the implication being that ending the policy would result in far more than just a “minimal” negative effect; it would get us “severe unbalance.”</p>

<p>Naturally, “severe unbalance” is “bad, mmkay.” Now, who was it that gave me such an answer?</p>

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<p>Just FYI, Yale does not require the SAT subject tests; the ACT with writing will suffice.</p>

548

<p>OK, Bay, thanks. Perhaps that’s a newer policy, or maybe not. It’s been several years since I have had to be refreshed specifically with their testing policy.</p>

549

<p>Post 545:
No, not anti-Asian. Just very aware of how anti-anything-but-Asian several posters on this thread have demonstrated themselves to be, and how they continue to post in that very racist manner.</p>

<p>Psst: The quotes you cited are reflections of the superiority complexes evident by many Asians on many of these “race” threads.</p>

550

<p>Re Post 546:</p>

<p>The “severe unbalance” refers to the all-but-disappearance of a core group of URM’s who would be able to find more than a handful of others with the same identity on campus, not to feel isolated. Again, from the college’s point of view – and I don’t represent the colleges – although you would love it if I did, because it’s the Elites that you truly despise, so I’m your convenient but misidentified stand-in for your animosity – from the POV of the college, it is unrealistic to admit so few URM’s to their institutions, because isolation does not promote academic success. This has been shown to be true over the years, and additionally has been reported by minorities at various institutions who have nevertheless “stuck it out,” as resulting in a very unpleasant experience at the U, for that reason alone. THIS IS THE VIEWPOINT OF THE COLLEGE ADMINISTRATIONS.</p>

<p>From their standpoint, dramatically reducing admissions of underrepresented minorities, by becoming entirely race-blind toward those particular minorities, is a precarious position for attracting and maintaining URM admission. </p>

<p>Students of all backgrounds like to feel some identification with other students who look like them, as well as many who do not look like them. Again, this is a business decision. (I have no investments in institutions of higher education; not my business decision; nothing will happen to my finances if the decision is changed.)</p>

551

<p>Bay, This from the Yale website:</p>

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<p>Not for admissions, but helpful/necessary for placement. Also, I do know students who send in scores even when not required. (Just as AP scores are not “required” as application info for most colleges, but some applicants send them ahead of course placement, anyway, as add’l evidence of achievement and to lend more credibility to an AP course grade.)</p>

552

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<p>That was my question, and I can see American posters are avoiding it like the plague. IMO, “realpolitik” can explain it easily. </p>

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<p>If you are talking about British Royalty, there may be a large enough audience for a tell-all book. In fact, I am aware of former employees of Her Majesty who have broken their vow of silence for the payoff. My feeling is that only a small fragment of humanity will ever be interested in elite college admission in the US, and the cost/benefit analysis does not work in favour of a “turncoat”. Knowing how much people like Dan Golden and Jerome Karabel make from their books may give us some indication of the value of such information.</p>

553

<p>Bay,</p>

<p>I’m for the SATI over the ACT or the SATII subject tests because I think that SATI does a better job of revealing core aptitude while the other two are better at revealing content knowledge. Thus, the SATI is actually more fair to the kids in lousy schools while the ACT and SAT II subjects would probably advantage the already advantaged.</p>

<p>No test is perfect, of course.</p>

554

<p>I have to agree that if elite colleges were deliberately and explicitly limiting the number of Asians to prevent having “too many,” there would have been some kind of smoking gun. So, what are the possibilities? One possibility is that discrimination is happening, but it’s not an official policy, or is unconscious. Another (and these aren’t exclusive) is what I’ve been talking about: that Asians are concentrated in certain ECs and areas of interest, which affects their admission results. I hadn’t even thought much about how efforts to get geographic diversity might impact Asian admissions.
Here’s another way to put it: it’s possible that Asians suffer in holistic admissions for one (or both) of the following reasons: (a) a number of the categories in holistic admissions (like “personal qualities”) are so vague that they provide a pretext for descrimination that is really designed–consciously or not–to create racial balance; or (b) some of the categories in holistic admissions value characteristics that Asians are less likely to possess because of cultural norms.</p>

555

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<p>It is also possible to deliberately create categories that Asians are less likely to possess and make it look unintentional. Baseball’s “intentional unintentional walk” comes to mind.</p>

<p>Your points are falsifiable. Now if we can only get the elites to open their books…I am not holding my breath, however.</p>

<p>Got to go.</p>

556

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<p>I think it is easy for people to fall into institutional practices that they can, in sincerity, justify on grounds of institutional necessity that nonetheless constitute discrimination by race. Sometimes only litigation discloses what is really going on, because usually each admission officer working on each case just touches one part of the elephant at a time, and never has a chance to step back and take off the blindfolds of busyness and established institutional practice to look at the whole elephant.* </p>

<p>*I am referring of course to the traditional story from India about people who couldn’t see and who disagreed in describing an elephant, </p>

<p>[Blind</a> men and an elephant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant]Blind”>Blind men and an elephant - Wikipedia) </p>

<p>by way of analogy. Often people who are busy doing a job don’t have a lot of time to engage in introspection about their job processes, especially introspection from the perspective of someone not employed in that workplace. </p>

<p>After all, previous cases on admission practices have been litigated up to the Supreme Court of the United States with the standard practices of those admission committees being found to be illegal. People can be sincere and yet be sincerely wrong.</p>

557

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Well, sure. But how come nobody has dropped a dime on them, if they are doing this deliberately?
Could it be that holistic admissions is hurting Asians because they are now often similar to what Jews were like when the system was instituted? A generation or two ago, a typical stereotype of a Jew was a violin-playing non-athletic kid with immigrant parents, who studied a lot and who wanted to be a pre-med. Like many stereotypes, there was a fair amount of truth in it because of cultural norms. Jews were also concentrated in certain geographical areas. Today, American Jews are quite a bit more diversified in their interests and activities, and even in geographical distribution (I think–less sure about that). Asians today share some of these same characteristics (I think they are largely immigrant striver characteristics, not ethnic ones)–and thus it may be that categories that were originally set up to limit Jews are simply functioning now to limit Asians.</p>

558

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<p>No one dropped a dime on much more blatant practices, which were not disclosed until they were disclosed by litigation initiated by rejected applicants. Most people don’t blow the whistle on current or former employers even when the employers are doing something plainly illegal. I think [post</a> #556](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063391034-post556.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063391034-post556.html) suggests a plausible mechanism by which discriminatory practices could occur overall without being noticed in the individual instance.</p>

559

<p>What if, for example, you found that a preference for geographical diversity was a significant factor in favoring white students over Asian students with similar stats? How would you decide, if you were the college, whether to stop taking geographical diversity into account in admissions decisions?</p>

560

<p>Some of you are mistaken in believing that elite American universities are solely academic institutions. If that were the case, then almost every Ivy League school would look like Berkeley.</p>

<p>But American universities don’t strive to just have the highest cumulative GPA. What they really want is to be relevant, to graduate students who will become highly visible and/or influential members of society so that it may reflect well on the university and result in greater accumulation of resources (i.e. fundraising) for the school.</p>

<p>So if you admit a heavily Asian freshman class, you may get exemplary academic results, but what about after university? Do you think Asians have a better or even equal chance than whites to become leading politicians, captains of industry, famous scholars, etc.? Most likely, no. Asians are stuck in a middle ground in that they do not enjoy white privilege, yet they also do not enjoy “minority privilege”, if such a thing exists. For example, if we had an Asian presidential candidate, s/he would not generate nearly the excitement that a black or Hispanic candidate would. </p>

<p>We still live in a racially biased society that gives whites the best chance to succeed. I’m not saying that it’s so egregious that we need an armed revolution, but the playing field is not even.</p>

<p>In short, if universities want to stay relevant in today’s society, they will continue to control for the admission of Asians.</p>