<p>No, that doesn’t logically follow. Disproportionate numbers of anything (in the dynamic of supply and demand) does not “result” in a policy favoring some form of AA. AA as a policy pre-existed a trend in significant application numbers from Asians to Elite U’s. It was never an afterthought: ‘whoops, better inaugurate a way to reduce Asian enrollment.’ AA would have existed were there no/few Asian applicants. Nor was it inaugurated specifically to reduce white enrollment (which it also did, and which it also does.) The result of AA is to decrease slightly both Asian and white enrollment.</p>
<p>It is not “an argument” that Asians restrict more narrowly than do whites their college lists, overall. It can be logically inferred from an enormous amount of self-reporting. What is self-defeating is the insistence on reducing one’s chances for admission when one joins a group of enormous supply relative to demand or capacity.</p>
Right–it’s either happening or not happening. This (along with the idea that Asians are self-limiting in other ways) are hypotheses that could be tested. If they were true, they would explain at least some of the disparity in stats between whites and Asians at highly selective schools. I guess I can understand why some people are so resistant to this hypothesis, preferring the hypothesis that the disparity is the result of racism. But neither hypothesis is proven by the data that we’ve seen.</p>
<p>For example, Asians residing in Nebraska, Kansas, TX and a few other states have self-reported acceptances to Elites with stats not as impressive as many Asians residing in highly clustered locations in the northeast and far west.</p>
<p>Cluster too many similar factors together, and one reduces mathematically the chances of acceptance.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how good this particular example is. Of those four you listed, only Rose-Hulman has an “underrepresentation” of Asians. Moreover, it is the only one that is “non-selective” (ie. percent applicants admitted > percent applicants rejected). Of the others, Rochester is 2-to-1 “overrepresented,” Cooper Union is over 3-to-1 “overrepresented,” and Harvey Mudd is over 4-to-1 “overrepresented.” In fact, the percentage of Asians at Harvey Mudd is not much less than the percentage of Asians at MIT.</p>
<p>It would appear that many Asians who are interested in engineering do not have such a “do or die” emphasis, as further evidenced by Berkeley and the young Franklin W. Olin College, which is already over 2-to-1 “overrepresented” with respect to Asians.</p>
<p>In light of Harvard’s 1920s admissions policies, Malcolm Gladwell would probably not agree with your “*t was never an afterthought” assessment. At the very least, he would likely say that the afterthought was a possibility.</p>
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<p>You make it seem like there’s something wrong with wanting to apply to “HYPetc.” But as long as these applicants have safeties, matches, and other reaches, what’s wrong? Nothing!</p>
<p>For sake of argument, let’s just assume that every Asian at the non-HYP USNWR Top 20 schools applied to HYP and was rejected. (Obviously, I’ve exaggerated; more than likely, quite a few of these students were accepted to HYP and turned their offers down because of merit aid, fit, and so forth.) But, even if it were true, the high percentages of Asians at seventeen other Top 20 schools shows that their lists were reasonably diversified! If they were not diversified, they would not be there, would they?</p>
<p>Post 824:
I totally hear what you’re saying, fab, but if, for example, by 2-1 you mean 8%, those odds still beats 20+%, but that isn’t the real issue. The real issue is the applicant numbers. It’s hard for me to believe that Asian applicant numbers to Olin (& similar) are, percentage-wise, equivalent to the applicant numbers to Elites. </p>
<p>I am also well aware that it is not a straight one-for-one. There is not an artificial ceiling, even for clustered areas. In fact, if anything, the policy is to award more seats to account for larger application numbers. (For example, the applicants from TX, Maryland, CA somewhat, and a couple of other states saw an increase in admissions to Elites in spring of '05 because of a surge in applications from those states that year. The committee accounts for that by “over-representing” applicants from such areas who also bring fabulous credentials to the table. The same thing occurs in haha, “lower” education as well: in years of gender imbalance for particularly desirable schools, there’s a realistic adjustment to account for that.) However, the selectivity and differentiation of those seats increases relative to the supply.</p>
<p>The “negative action” hypothesis does not presuppose racism. When Jerry Kang argued that Ronald Dworkin’s defense of affirmative action implicitly allowed negative action to occur, I don’t think he was insinuating any racism on Dworkin’s part.</p>
<p>Espenshade’s presentation contains an interesting slide. He shows that AA does “decrease slightly both Asian and white enrollment,” for if you abolish affirmative action, both groups’ see small percentage point gains in enrollment. The infinitely more interesting result, however, is directly adjacent to that: if you abolish affirmative and negative action by instituting race-neutral policies, only Asians see gains while the other three groups see losses.</p>
<p>Thus, I reiterate once more that if Asians are concerned about “penalties,” then it is race-neutral admissions that they should be advocating. Indeed, we see that it is misleading to argue that Ward Connerly’s civil rights intiatives “end affirmative action.” They do, but they also end negative action, and that’s why Asians benefit from them.</p>
<p>It is the position of Jerry Kang, Frank Wu, and William Kidder that you can have it both ways here. You can have “affirmative” action for “underrepresented” minorities and end “negative” action for Asians. Would that more people agreed with these three.</p>
<p>I’m curious, what exactly are we debating in this thread? Are we debating on whether negative action for Asians exists or whether the existance of negative action is justified?</p>
<p>Both. Some people are unconvinced or skeptical that negative action is a real as opposed to academic phenomenon; others have contended that even if it exists, it’s not a problem; and still others believe that negative action exists and is completely unjustifiable.</p>
<p>Racial balancing is an opened secret in college admission game. I don’t know why there is such a debate (or denial) here. Is lower rate of admission to elite colleges Asian applicants’ fault because too many of them? It would be Yes, if the qualification of Asian applicant pool in average is lower than that of the other races, or no, if the qualification of Asian pool is same or higher than that of the other ethnic pool.</p>
<p>There are some arguments in this thread saying Asian students have less chance to HYP because they focus too much in sciences and engineering and these schools don’t have enough resources to accommodate them. These arguments are just guess work.</p>
<p>Let’s take a close look at the major concentration of the Harvard class of 2013:</p>
<p>Humanities 22%
Social Science 26%
Bio Sciences 26%
Physical Sciences 7%
Engineering & Computer Sciences 11%
Math 8%
None listed <1% </p>
<p>This statistics clearly indicates that math, engineering, and sciences (except Bio sciences) are not impacted majors at Harvard. As matter of facts, social science students complain that Harvard don’t have enough resources for them:</p>
You’re right–that was an overstatement. But I do think that the “negative action” hypothesis is still different from the “over-concentration” hypothesis, and neither is proven.</p>
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I think this gives some idea of the potential impact of the “over-concentration” hypothesis, if it is real. 48% of Harvard’s concentrators are in the humanities and social sciences.</p>
<p>Who do you think is “denying” that balancing efforts include race, as well as SES, geography, academic interests, e.c.'s, etc.? </p>
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<p>Not “fault.” Result. If I apply to a job in a region where there are too many of me with exactly my skill set, relative to the number of openings in that location, and if I restrict my job efforts to such locations, it is both a likely result and my “fault” that I am unemployed.</p>
<p>I’ll probably hear that the model is not parallel, but in some ways, it is. Companies don’t always hire only those of a certain level, even when there is an abundant or overabundant supply of those. They need to fill various functions. It still could mean that everybody they hire is educated/overeducated, but those employees are filling a variety of roles, & the company may believe that additionally a variety of personal backgrounds will serve the company’s needs better than a more homogeneous group.</p>
<p>The economics of it is very important to consider, because even if it’s not on a priority list for any applicant, you can count on economics being a priority of the college/U. They are not just academies; they are businesses.</p>
<p>Im asian, and although affirmative action will hurt me, I actually prefer that hispanics and african americans get priority consideration, because in the end, the white man is still pushing us down</p>
That doesn’t change the differences in accepted applicants’ profiles at top schools. Even if the supposition that Asians are applying en masse to top schools, it doesn’t follow that the profiles of accepted Asian students are higher than the profiles of accepted white students across the board unless they are being judged at the same standards. That Asians may be applying to a narrower range of schools has no logical connection to the above.</p>
<p>epiphany, if the increase in Asian applicants affects Asian acceptance rates and not all racial acceptance rates at equal proportion then one would logically assume that Asians are being judged within their own racial pool.
So these Asian applicants have the same skill sets? Do all Asians play the piano and eat Ramen noodles and participate on the math squad? Is this stereotype the most cogent argument you can give in support of the idea that the abundance of Asian applicants is dramatically hurting their admission rate? I’m sure by now you are well-familiar with the Duke mismatch study. Do you think adcoms would have given Asians the highest overall marking on the achievement index if their achievements were, as you have indicated, generic and indistinguishable skills?</p>
<p>What is the Asian skill exactly, epiphany? And why is it your assumption that what Asians lack in this skill every other ethnicity has?</p>
<p>I’m Hispanic, and the white man certainly isn’t pushing me down. My family has a comfortable income, I live in a good neighborhood, all that stuff. And I have simply never, EVER, been in a circumstance where I could have had a good opportunity if only I were white. In fact, I’ve gotten into multiple good programs that were only open to me because I am a minority. </p>
<p>By the way, guess what? Most of the people in those programs were BETTER OFF than me. They went to high schools of a quality I didn’t even think EXISTED before I met them. They paid thousands of dollars every single summer to jet around the country for internships and such. And I reiterate this; I am quite solidly in the middle class. The majority of these people were, by any reasonable standard, RICH.</p>
<p>You can make an argument, perhaps, that I deserve affirmative action (although I wouldn’t agree with it). Yes, my family can’t always pay for everything we think might be cool, and yes, maybe that would be different if people had been less racist 20 years ago. But the fact is, the point of affirmative action was to provide poor, disadvantaged minorities with help, so that their descendants don’t have to inherit the status of “poor, disadvantaged minority” forever. Affirmative action programs today rarely do that. And the ones that give Hispanics and blacks priority over asians at top schools never do.</p>
<p>The similarities are not in lifestyles, first of all (food, etc.:rolleyes:). However, compared to a highly diversified white group – diversified in geography, academic skills, e.c.'s, academic interests, and college lists – there appears to be considerably less clustering among white applicants than among Asian applicants. There are at least 4 or 5 other posters on this thread that have suggested the same thing, so no need to single me out for demonizing. </p>
<p>That’s the economy of college admissions. Supply…demand.</p>
<p>The only conclusion can be drawn from this statistics and from the large percentage of math, natural sciences, and engineering professors over social science professors at Harvard is students should have more chance to be admitted to Harvard if they intend to major in the less concentrated majors in math, natural sciences, and engineering if Harvard does want to balance resources. And Harvard actually does want to balance the resources: "In a letter posted online Monday, Knowles writes that “most of the net growth in the next few years…will be in the sciences and engineering.” " [The</a> Harvard Crimson :: Opinion :: Soft Science, Hard Facts](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=518015]The”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=518015)</p>
<p>Other interpretation of this statistics is merely distortion of truth.</p>
The “economy” of college admissions doesn’t make it any less discriminatory.
Like I said before…This claim of Asian clustering and Caucasian diversity assumes that the Duke adcoms neglected to consider it when evaluating factors such as personal qualities and achievement (how could they have?). That they most likely considered it and still favorably measured Asian applicants shows that this argument holds no water. I’ve made the counterargument before, and I am singling you out only because you are the most recent person to argue such.</p>
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Once again, besides college lists (a point for which you provided a remarkably weak argument), where are you finding evidence other than mere conjecture of Asian applicant characteristics?</p>
The real issue is the applicant numbers. It’s hard for me to believe that Asian applicant numbers to Olin (& similar) are, percentage-wise, equivalent to the applicant numbers to Elites. </p>