<p>I was responding to this:
If it were true that the representation of some group decreased from the beginning levels, would that really mean that the pool of talent in that group is deeper? It might simply be that more people in that group are interested in that activity. How well are Asians represented among top scorers on the National Latin Exams? If there aren’t a lot of them, does that mean that they aren’t talented in Latin?</p>
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<p>How do you “clearly” discern such an assumption, from the mention of a 2-tiered system? That has never been the assumption for AA. The effort has been to provide some economic access on the positive (very high) end, vs. preventing some “assumed” restriction to virtual poverty on the lower end. AA does not assume two extreme economic classes. It does assume wider economic access on the high end through channels of “elite” education, while not assuming there is no black or Hispanic middle class in the U.S. (when clearly there is).</p>
<p>For those who claim that Asian applicants may not be diverse in their interests, I quote from the opening posts’s link:</p>
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<p>I’d like to point out that if Asians are concerned about “penalties,” as Dr. Chang mentioned, then it is race-neutral admissions they should be advocating, not the abolition of affirmative action. Table 9.1 of the Espenshade presentation linked the opening post shows that Asian enrollment increases by only 2.2 percentage points from 23.9 to 26.1 percent if affirmative action were abolished. However, if admissions were race-neutral, then Asian enrollment increases by 15.1 percentage points from 23.9 to 35 percent.</p>
<p>I’m sure Dr. Chang knows a lot, but insisting that that Asian pool is diverse doesn’t make it so. How diverse is it?</p>
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<p>I’m borrowing a page from your book and claiming that since it is Tim Wise, not I, who argued that, you should be asking him, not me. After all, I represent only myself; I do not represent Tim Wise.</p>
<p>I do not agree that there is such a thing as a two-tiered system. To suggest that it’s a problem if there is one is to reinvoke Matthew 7:3. Proponents of racial preferences always claim that opponents have “senses of entitlement.” Yet, by arguing that a sufficient number (ie. a quota incognito) of “underrepresented” minorities must be in the first tier, they are arguing in favor of entitlements for aforementioned “underrepresented” minorities, thus completely ignoring the beams in their own eyes while focusing on the motes in others’ eyes.</p>
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<p>We should ask Dr. Chang, shouldn’t we?</p>
<p>Your post 765 is utterly illogical:</p>
<p>(1) I don’t have a [AA] “book,” let alone a [metaphorical] “page” from it. However, I am well aware that I am your convenient while inappropriate scapegoat for the AA policies of the Elites against which you rail virtually every week.</p>
<p>(2) I did not make a claim that you “represent” Tim Wise (while you regularly infer that I represent the Ivy League and/or their admissions policies, particularly and in sum.) You made a statement about him that assumed certain beliefs, while giving no support or substantiation for such beliefs. You further implied by extension that such beliefs are the foundation for AA, which they are not. However, there is nothing new about that. You have your own private definitions for various admissions practices, definitions which are artificially narrow and not reflective of the process, and you regularly argue from such nonexistent theoreticals.</p>
<p>I wasn’t referring to any belief of yours, regarding economic “tiers.” I was referring to your claim that AA is based on an assumption of two tiers, which it is not.</p>
<p>(3) The out-of-context reference to Matthew Chapter 7, verses 3-5 is off-topic for this discussion. Please don’t pretend to be a scripture scholar, as well as a mind reader. You’re out of your league.</p>
<p>
Well, maybe, if he has data.</p>
<p>Look, I’m just observing something that’s pretty obvious, at least in my local area: high-performing Asian kids are disproportionately interested in math, science, and engineering careers, and they tend to be concentrated in certain ECs more than non-Asian kids. Does anybody really deny this, or do you just dislike it? I certainly think that you’d need some data to understand how much of a factor it is in elite college admissions, but the dogged resistance to even the idea that this could be a factor is problematic.</p>
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<p>Maybe you should look at Penn, which is 38% Jewish, according to another thread in CC. How diverse must the Jewish population be to have such a representation? I think this is an acid test for the “Jewish filter”. Do you have evidence they pack every sports team, every orchestra, and every discipline of study?</p>
<p>Any one from Penn here that can confirm or deny the above?</p>
<p>Re 767</p>
<p>It is not I who “implied…that [preventing a two-tiered system from occurring is a] foundation for AA.” Those were the words of Tim Wise, whom I do not represent. If you have any questions about the legitimacy of the “two-tiered system” rationale, ask him.</p>
<p>Regarding point two, you now know just how exasperated I feel every time I read a variant of, “I do not represent admissions officers’ policies.” The medicine is bitter, isn’t it?</p>
<p>As for point three, nice ad hominem. My reference is neither out-of-context or off-topic. On the contrary, I selected it for its relevance. I was pointing out how ironic it is that the very people who always invoke the “sense of entitlement” card don’t realize that they themselves are guilty of the very flaw they ascribe to others.</p>
<h1>745, ““Before I answer this post, let me make a comment about your other post, #732.””</h1>
<p>Thanks for your compliment. I do engineering and science. :-)</p>
<p>““It is not so much their definition of merit has swayed from academics as much as the fact that they don’t seem to have a definition of merit at all. If we don’t even have a definition, then how can we be in a position to modify the process when the “products” (think Iraq, Wall Street etc.) are clearly unsatisfactory?””</p>
<p>I suppose they do have some unspecified definitions of merit, otherwise elite admissions would drag on forever because of decision paralysis. Afterall, 3.9+ uwGPA and 750+ SAT I & II are still approximately the initial screen for the unhooked; national and international competition achievements as well as published research accomplishments are still sought after; ASB presidents, school-paper editors, and entrepreneurs, etc. are still highly valued. It isn’t a problem of nailing down more precise definitions of merit, but rather, the elites are also admitting under-qualified (by the unhooked standards) applicants with some other unspecified criteria. The real questions are, how much should private institutions be accountable to the public? And how much social responsibilities should be attached to private operations? Improving transparency of the selection process may at least allow closer public scrutiny.</p>
<p>““My other point is that there are those who seem to think the Adcoms have some kind of secret method of detecting future potential. I am unaware of any work in the social sciences that make it possible to do so at this time. If such a method exist, ones who have it would not be working on college admission, elite or otherwise;””</p>
<p>If this were the case, then it would be tricky to define what should be merit in elite admissions, as mentioned in my earlier message, #740. By-and-large whether it is elite admissions or job recruitment, we assume candidates with established records continuing to succeed… until they don’t. Actually, there maybe few other reliable way. Even the application of science is based on the assumption that statistically-robust patterns continuing to repeat (Science is science because it is verifiable for consistency with past patterns). Furthermore, each corporate or government sector has its own blend of filters, rewarding those with certain behaviors and marginalizing those incompatible. For example, it doesn’t matter how the elites have shaped their graduates, when executives in Wall St. firms are still awarded bonuses after losing huge sums of money ----- the clear message for them is to take even more risks, just in case they may hit home runs next time.</p>
<p>““My position is that the elites have failed America because they have always been the handmaiden of the ruling class… My working hypothesis is that the elites are only interested in protecting their brand by catering to the ruling class on one hand and project the image of a meritocracy to the public on the other. The government can force them to make a choice, cater to the rich and powerful and do without public funding, or take public research money and turn the schools into true meritocracies. (I am not holding my breath here, BTW).””</p>
<p>What we are seeing is the practices of rewarding merit with more power and the distribution of inherited power. Merit here is defined as what triggers the relevant system to reward more power which is also defined by the relevant system. Let me give a simplified example with the stock market. Profitable trades (merit as defined by the stock market) are rewarded with more money (power as defined by the stock market). Some participants are more successful and begin to steadily accumulate money. It takes effort to manage money and as more money are accumulated, more work are required to ensure the money flow. So the largest participants would acquire controlling positions in the stock market to secures their operations, with layers of lower-tiered participants helping around. And the rest of the participants are at the mercy of these people. I may not have described it very clearly, but I hope you see the underlying pattern. Variations of this hierarchy are all over the place in economical, political, professional, and social settings. Unless you prefer to re-define merit as only those traits beneficial to our society, this is indeed meritocracy although modified with human characteristics. It is really a matter of aligning private interests with public interests, such that private ventures shouldn’t be compromising our society.</p>
<p>This situation can actually be described by Coase Theorem, stating that “when trade in an externality is possible and there are no transaction costs, bargaining will lead to an efficient outcome regardless of the initial allocation of property rights” [url=<a href=“http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/coasetheorem.htm]Illustration”>Illustration of the Coase Theorem]Illustration</a> of the Coase Theorem<a href=“some%20numerical%20errors%20in%20the%20tables,%20but%20can%20easily%20be%20corrected”>/url</a>. There is also an extension of the theorem by Steven Cheung suggesting that the details of bargaining arrangements would be determined by finite transaction costs. For example, because of the high-risk ventures in the financial markets, the Wall Street firms have cost the society a lot of money in terms of bailouts (negative externalities). Coase Theorem would suggest that the problem canbe solved by (a) the society paying the Wall Street firms to curb their high-risk ventures (socially unacceptable), or (b) assessing extra tax on the Wall Street firms to compensate for their high-risk ventures. Because of apparent political entanglement (finite transaction costs), we still haven’t implemented (b), so we are still in trouble. I suppose these are more directly related to the recent problems then tracing all the way back to elite admissions. :-)</p>
<p>Hunt - Not necessarily overrepresentation of Asian interest in math, but perhaps a different work ethic or other factors that lead Asian students below genius-level innate mathematical talent to nevertheless excel at a higher level than comparable students of other races also below genius-level innate mathematical talent. Simply put, what I said earlier: the pool of Asian math talent reaches deeper -> overrepresentation. This doesn’t necessarily indicate that Asian students strong in math aren’t also interested in debate; it may well be true, but the data on math students is not support for such a hypothesis.</p>
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[QUOTE=Hunt]
if Asians are highly overrepresented at the early stages of a competition based on an objective test, but are not overrepresented at the later stages–also based on an object test, what does that suggest? To me, it suggests that a lot of Asians are interested in trying to participate in the competition. What does it mean to you?
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What it means to me: Of the X number of Asians participating in the competition and X number of white students (for instance), a higher percentage of Asians qualify for Y cutoff point. As the cutoff point increases, Asian overrepresentation also decreases because the math talent required relies less on “nurture” factors and more on “nature” factors.</p>
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[QUOTE=Hunt]
If it were true that the representation of some group decreased from the beginning levels, would that really mean that the pool of talent in that group is deeper? It might simply be that more people in that group are interested in that activity. How well are Asians represented among top scorers on the National Latin Exams? If there aren’t a lot of them, does that mean that they aren’t talented in Latin?
[/quote]
More people interested in an activity != more people succeeding in an activity. Even the first cutoff for USAMO is indicative of a certain level of mathematical ability. Perhaps Asians are less-represented among top scorers on the National Latin Exam because fewer Asians take Latin and/or fewer Asians achieve in Latin at that level–if fewer Asians took Latin but all were very good at it, they would still be well-represented.</p>
<p>Re:#756
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<p>I don’t understand why you assumed that I would disagree with you here. If you carefully read [one of my earlier posts](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063413267-post719.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063413267-post719.html</a>), you will find that I in fact agree with you on this point.</p>
<p>But I hope that you will understand why I find your following statement objectionable:
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<p>Here you have a “speculation” that “Asian interest in math” is “out of proportion to innate ability” based on an assumption of “heavy overrepresentation of Asians at the earlier stages of these competitions”.</p>
<p>A quick browsing of some threads on CC, including this one, one will find that many posters make this type of reasoning exercises. The exercise normally goes like this: for a host of supposed reasons (e.g. lack of personality or personal quality, boring/uncreative EC, coaching, parental pressure, unhealthy competition, boring math grind/grade grabbing/lack of creativity, … etc), the true potentials or “innate abilities” of asian students are really MUCH lower than what their demonstrated accomplishments (GPA, SAT, academic awards etc) reflect. And it is often stated explicitly or implied that it is just the opposite for the jewish and non-jewish white kids. Therefore, it is completely reasonable and just for colleges to admit a lower percentage of asian students than whites.</p>
<p>I won’t be surprised that some admission officers hold this kind of views about asian students. Without knowing him or reading his file, Marilee Jones stated bluntly her thought about an asian student and Korean students in general: “It’s possible that Henry Park looked like a thousand other Korean kids with the exact same profile of grades and activities and temperament … yet another textureless math grind.”</p>
<p>Along this line of reasoning, one poster here, someone who claims intimate knowledge of admission and adcoms, [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063412783-post716.html]argued[/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063412783-post716.html]argued[/url</a>] repeatedly and vociferously that Asians, and especially east Asians, are in fact intellectually inferior to some other ethnic groups using made up and distorted statistics.</p>
<p>The fallacy of this kind of arguments is that they are based on FALSE assumptions. In the case of your speculation, the assumption that “heavy overrepresentation of Asians at the earlier stages of these [math] competitions” is clearly false, but the speculation/conclusion of lacking “innate” ability is damning for all asian students. Common sense will inform us the impossibility that asian participation in lower level math competitions like Mathcounts (local, district, or state level), AMC10, AMC12, or AIME is anywhere near their presence in USAMO and IMO (~50% or more).</p>
<p>Just imagine if someone makes this speculation: suppose an African American man is really worth only three fifths of a white man as surmised in our original constitution, isn’t American slavery totally justifiable and justified?</p>
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<p>No, the true potential or innate abilities are the same. It is only that quite a few Asian kids start developing these abilities at a younger age and in a more intense way compared to many of their White and Jewish peers. It is only natural that this leads to overrepresentation at the earlier stages of the competititions. Later on White and Jewish kids catch up (which should not surprise anyone because their true potential has always been equal). It has nothing to do with losing or gaining innate abilties or getting dumber or smarter. Different cultures simply focus on different things at a different time.</p>
<p>^Exactly what I’ve been trying to say. The pool of Asian math talent is “deeper” at the beginning levels because at those levels, “nurture” (cultural influences, for instance) plays more of a role than innate ability (“nature”).</p>
<p>Is no one aware of studies that have shown the REASON so many asians who have learned to read and write in their own language are better at math than non Asians? It’s because both asian languages AND math are symbol based, not phonetic based as are most Western languages. Learning to read a Asian language stimulates the same areas of the brain as does the study of math and music[ which is also symbol based] . So voilla! Many Asian students “get” math earlier. Does this make them “smarter” overall? No. but it is an advantage neurologically speaking. The same applies to the study of music. And this also helps to explain the seeming frenzy 10-15 years ago in so many Asian parents for their children to learn Violin or Classical Piano- 2 decidedly non-Asian instruments. It helps the brain develop to a degree that might not happen without that type of stimulation.</p>
<p>To Menlo and others:</p>
<p>There exists a lot of explanations on why Asians seem so much more ambitious/smarter than the average person; many of these are cultural. You just gave one of them.</p>
<p>I think culture has nothing to do with it. Asians are no smarter than blacks, Latinos, whites, or anybody else.</p>
<p>The average Asian-Americans, however, is probably more ambitious and talented than your average American. This is because many Asian-Americans are immigrants, or first-generation. And to get into America these days, you have to be extremely smart, talented, and ambitious.</p>
<p>So to the average American it seems that Asians are more talented/intelligent than the mean. That’s because he only sees the top 1% of the population, the guys who made it into America. The 99% of Asians who are just as stupid as everybody else: they’re still stuck in Asia.</p>
<p>As for the question of the post: Do elite colleges discriminate against Asians?</p>
<p>Of course they do. That’s why after Jian Li sued the percent of Asians at Princeton went up from 13% (his class) to 20% (class of 2013).</p>
<p>Menloparkmom: Actually I was aware! I am struggling with your: * Does this make them “smarter” overall? No.* </p>
<p>When kids get older: Will Asian kids be staying ahead in math and lagging behind in other areas (otherwise they would be “smarter” overall) and vice versa for Western kids. Or will Western kids catch up in math and Asian kids in the other areas?</p>
<h1>761
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<p>Top national spelling bees every year.
Not only Latin but also Greek.</p>
<p>I guess most Asian students don’t go to schools that have programs for Latin.</p>
<p>lol Woeyir. The asians here are far from the top 1% of asians. In fact, most of them aren’t even close to asians in china/korea etc. (you can argue taht it’s only the prevailaged kids who go to school in asia as well… but still, far from the top 1%)</p>
<p>I’m not saying asians are superior either, though. It’s the way they learn. Many more asians work much, much harder, and they know how to work. A black student can be very diligent and hard working, but because his parents don’t really care about education or cares but was not able to get the education themselves don’t know how to help. Thus the black student will stuggle to learn, even if he is as bright or even brighter than an asian kid.</p>