<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, of course that’s the only message, because the earlier messages of “Whether they would admit it, it’s obviously true [that ‘underrepresented’ minorities cannot be admitted in a race-blind review that consists of both quantitative and qualitative factors]…” and “Yes, of course [‘underrepresented’ minorities cannot be admitted in a race-blind review that consists of both quantitative and qualitative factors]” must have conveniently been incinerated in the memory hole.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Good questions. I am not advocating for the type of “open admissions” policy that destroyed CUNY. The socioeconomic preferences I envision would benefit those students who have succeeded academically (ie. have high grades and scores, not low ones) but who come from poor families.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Of course Janet Rapeleye wasn’t just going to sit by idly without firing some defensive shots. Her comments, though, are weakened by two facts:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Li was waitlisted at Princeton. If an institution is willing to waitlist a guy whose EC’s were not that impressive, what does that say about them? Surely they could’ve chosen another student whose EC’s were impressive. Talk about shooting your own foot!</p></li>
<li><p>Li was admitted at Yale. Rapeleye must think that Yale is not even remotely comparable to Princeton if they admitted a guy whose EC’s were not that impressive.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The following is a quote from Espenshade’s report. I am interested in parsing it, and in whether I am parsing it correctly.
This says that if you look at SAT scores only, the share of white students in the admitted group goes down by 3.7%, the share of Asians goes up by 15%, and the share of URMs combined goes down by 13.8%.
Let’s assume–just for the sake of analysis–that before this adjustment, the schools used SAT, except that URMs were admitted based on a different standard. If they drop that lower standard, what happens? Presumably, the higher standard drops a bit, and some students with scores lower than the old standard get in. Under this scenario, this suggests that most of those people would have been Asians. But that may not be what’s happening–it may be that the Asian students have higher SATs, and are the victims of bias–but is that demonstrated by the data in this study? I don’t see it there.</p>
<p>If you don’t see it from this data you are in denial.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It could mean any number of things, including that his ECs are not that impressive, but his SAT scores were. It could also mean that Princeton waitlists 100s (even 1,000s?) of students it knows it will never admit, in the interest of good public relations. It could mean that they already admitted 5 perfect SAT-scorers who had better ECs, and if one of them had matriculated elsewhere, Li would have gotten the seat. What does any of this have to do with race?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>He was also rejected at Harvard, Stanford and I don’t remember where else. Maybe Yale took him because they knew they would get him (i.e., none of their competitors would admit him), or because they wanted an Asian kid who participated in Boys State or was from New Jersey.</p>
<p>You are really grasping at straws, fab.</p>
<p>
Well, from the data in that report, it could mean either that: (1) there were a lot of Asian students with SATs better than the URMs, but not better than most of the white students who were admitted; or (2) Asian students with higher SATs than whites were being discriminated against. Actually, I would say that the latter is shown, at least to the extent of about 4 percent of the difference in Asians’ share. But where, in the data in that report, is it clear where the additional 11% came from?</p>
<p>Jian Li transferred from Yale to Harvard. I guess if I were Harvard, I’d accept his transfer application–rejecting it could have cost them a lot of money in litigation costs.</p>
<p>^ Yes, I’d agree that Harvard and Yale come out clean in this potential lawsuit.</p>
<p>I guess he forgave Harvard for rejecting him the first time around.</p>
<h1>607</h1>
<p>You cannot assume that none of those URM drops went to white.</p>
<p>
Why not? The number of white admits went down.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>[Link</a> to Princeton Common Data Set for 2005-2006](<a href=“http://registrar1.princeton.edu/data/common/cds2005.pdf]Link”>http://registrar1.princeton.edu/data/common/cds2005.pdf), the year Jian Li applied.</p>
<p>On page six, we see that Princeton received 16,510 applications and offered admission to 1,807 applicants, 1,229 of whom enrolled.</p>
<p>14,703 applicants were not offered admission. 1,207 of these applicants were offered a place on the waitlist, 794 of whom accepted. Princeton could’ve offered Li’s waitlist position to any of 13,496 other applicants. Why didn’t they?</p>
<p>I don’t think Li was the most attractive candidate in the application pool that year. But to insinuate that he was “run of the mill” isn’t a tenable position, in my opinion.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re still ignoring that if Yale admits a guy whose ECs are not that impressive, they must have lower standards than Princeton. You really want to argue that?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t see how you get the first interpretation at all. epiphany’s claim that all Espenshade and Chung showed was that Asians on average had the highest SAT scores is true, but leaving it at that misses the key point: Asians shouldn’t have the highest SAT scores on average! Their scores should be equal to those of whites. Kidder, Kang, and Wu see this as evidence of “negative” action, which they believe is a distinct practice from “affirmative” action.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Remember, Li didn’t sue anyone. He filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights. There’s no litigation here.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t know, and neither do you. Maybe Princeton wanted to brag that its admitted class was so good, it had to turn down perfect SAT scorers. Or maybe Princeton only offers waitlist positions to high-scoring applicants, or maybe it offers waitlist spots to New Jersey residents, to prove that it is showing the love to locals. Or, like I already said, it was planning to admit Li if any of the other perfect-SAT-scorers with way better ECs matriculated elsewhere. What does this prove?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What? So Yale is required to admit exactly the same students as Princeton or else it has lower standards? How does that even make sense? Maybe Yale already had 1,599 spots offered to applicants with amazing ECs (that were even better than all of Princeton’s added together!) and admitted Jian Li to bump up its average SAT scores.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My procedure knowledge is a little rusty, but Li is probably required to exhaust all of his administrative remedies before filing suit in federal court, so he didn’t have a choice but to file the complaint with OCR first.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Nope, I surely don’t. All I know is that Princeton could’ve chosen any of 13,496 other applicants instead of Li to waitlist, but they didn’t. My view on this is simple: if a guy wasn’t all that good, why offer him a waitlist position in the first place? These schools always say that many of their rejected applicants could’ve been admits, they couldn’t find another person better than Li?</p>
<p>I mean, I think we’re missing an obvious point here. Rapeleye only made that comment because Li dared to file a complaint with the OCR. If he hadn’t done so, would Rapeleye have singled him out? Of course not!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re still ignoring the key point: if Yale admits someone whose ECs have been deemed by Princeton to be “not that impressive,” Yale must be easier to impress than Princeton. I know you don’t want to argue that because you’ve been avoiding this particular point.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to ignore it, I just don’t think it is necessarily true based on Jian Li’s record alone. One could certainly conclude that Yale is easier to impress than Princeton if they wanted to, and I don’t see this as anything significant. My D1 was admitted to both H and Y, my D2 was admitted to Y but rejected from H. D1 had better grades and test scores than D2. Using your reasoning, Yale is obviously easier to impress than H, at least. So what?</p>
<p>Jian Li like so many other top Asian kids will one day hold position of influence and power in America’s corporate boardrooms and high offices of the American political establisment. The trend is pointing toward that direction. As more and more Asians aspire to be CEO, CFO, CIO, Senator, Congressman, Governor, instead of Scientise, Engineer, Doctor, Researcher (nothing wrong with the latter group), Asians’ stereotype will be erased and they will be perceived as exciting and interesting. I don’t think the elite colleges intentionally discrimate against Asian just because he/she likes violin or play the piano and score perfect on the SAT. There as just too many of these fine Asian kids and they are not necessary boring just because they are good at what they are doing. No matter where they end up, these kids will do just fine. Top colleges cannot ignore them if they do, it will be their loss. I was looking at Wellesley College for my daughter and I noticed that Lulu Chow Wang, endowed her alma mater with $25 million for a building which was named after her. What would happen if Wellesley discrimated against Lulu Chow Wang?</p>