<p>Large variety of reading, combined with (in the last 10 years + currently) a large variety of personal encounters within a huge Asian demographic, within the field of education in which my Asian students are applying to Elite U’s, to whose files I have intimate access, and whom I know rather well personally. (Hmmm.)</p>
<p>Engineering departments vs. French language/literature departments.
Mathematics departments. vs. Art History departments.
Molecular biology vs. Rhetoric.</p>
<p>etc.</p>
<p>And the college lists are not widening much.</p>
<p>As I said earlier, among the Top 20 National Universities as ranked by USNWR, only two have Asian enrollment below 10% of their freshman classes; that is, none has an “underrepresentation” of Asians. Moreover, quite a few have Asian enrollment exceeding 20% of their freshman classes. Among the Top 20 LACs as ranked by USNWR, only two have either an “underrepresentation” or a “proportionate” representation; Asians are “overrepresented” at the other eighteen. Two of these eighteen can lay claim to freshman classes that are at least 20% Asian, and a third is very close at 19%.</p>
<p>If the college lists of Asians are really so narrow, why do we find an “overrepresentation” of them in thirty-eight out of forty top ranked schools?</p>
<p>I previously gave twenty as a bright line for a wide range. Others balked and claimed that twenty was too narrow, but so far, no one has offered a better bright line than twenty.</p>
<p>Edit</p>
<p>I didn’t go past twenty, since that was my bright line, but I’d be willing to bet that you’d have to go pretty far before you consistently stopped finding schools where Asians were “overrepresented.”</p>
Gee, it sounds bad when you put it that way. But if we said, maybe, that Asians are much more likely to indicate interest in a smaller subset of available majors than white students, and are much more concentrated geographically, does that make it sound better? Duke might give Asians, on average, very high ratings, but Duke still wants to fill all its departments and wants geographic diversity. </p>
<p>As for the ramen noodles: you tell me, do Asians eat more Asian food than non-Asians do? And if they do, is it insulting to say so?</p>
<p>lol, all of this time we have been assuming that Asian applicants indeed have a limited range of majors they choose from. But has anyone bothered to look at hard statistical data on this at all? But according to the Asian/Pacific/American at NYU, a credible scientific source (unless you think it isn’t), Asian/Pacific-Islanders had these porprtion of majors:</p>
<p>Now, the article does include Pacific Islanders, but they make up such a small percentage, they’re not statistically relevant. It’s not surprising to anyone that Asians are overrepresented in math and engineering, but it’s more surprising to see they have the exact same proportion of people earning degrees in science. Futhermore, more Asians are getting degrees in Social Science/Humanities than in math and engineering. What a shocker!</p>
<p>Unless anyone has any better data, it can be fair to say that Asians do not have a more limited choice of degress than any other racial group.</p>
<p>That’s a very interesting report, with a lot of interesting stuff in it. (For example, it cites a study of law schools that seems to suggest an absence of “negative action.”) But it really doesn’t have a lot of information about the primary topic of this thread, which is what is happening at highly selective colleges–and thus, high-performing Asian students. Look at the proportions cited in #845. It’s pretty obvious that this would not be the same for Asians or overall at highly selective schools–way too much business/management, and too much education. It would be interesting to see those kinds of numbers for the most selective schools.
Also, take a look at the information in the report on concentration in geographic areas and concentration in a limited number of colleges. It is quite dramatic.
I also think the report is a bit biased and spins all the data to support its conclusions, but it’s still well worth reviewing.</p>
<p>Much thanks to chaosakita. I think we can finally settle the question of whether “AAPI” students have diverse academic interests with a resounding YES.</p>
<p>As for the “narrow” vs. “wide” range of schools issue, while “AAPI” students mostly attend public institutions and are evenly distributed in two-year and four-year institutions, the AAPI student population is nevertheless concentrated in a small percentage of institutions. This one isn’t as clear cut as the “diverse interests” claim, as one could focus on either the “concentrated in a small percentage” part or the “mostly attend public institutions” part.</p>
<p>I remember you now. To tell the truth, it is a bit disconcerting to have someone reading me this well. My interest in the area started with Chinese internal martial arts as a teen and lasting to this very day. The quote from Deng in that thread reads like something coming straight out of the Tai Chi classics.</p>
<p>My fear of a China-India border conflict seems to be spot-on. I knew we are heading for trouble when Britain changed its long held position on Tibet, and left India dangling in the cold.</p>
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<p>I find too many people argue for its own sake. They start with a premise and look for stuff to prove it. I always try to encourage folks to come up with a reasonable hypothesis based on existing data and test it mercilessly with new information when it becomes available. Falling on deaf ears it seems.</p>
<p>This financial crisis has hurt a few of my friends badly. You would think people this bright would have a better understanding that risk is truly a four letter word…there seems to be a difference between being intelligent and being rational. I personally prefer the latter.</p>
No, I’m really afraid that we can’t, in the context of this discussion. This discussion is about Asians seeking admission to highly selective schools, and in particular, those with higher stats, on average, than white students. It’s certainly a data point, though.</p>
It doesn’t matter how you make it sound; it still applies the same reasoning. First of all, last time I checked geographical diversity applied to a whopping, maybe, 20 students at a top school? Caucasian applicants from Virginia aren’t getting any advantage over Caucasian applicants from New Jersey; the only time geographical diversity really matters is for the person residing in Wyoming or South Dakota. </p>
<p>As for majors, once again; you are putting way too much stock into one factor that the vast majority of colleges even claim to be irrelevant for the purposes of admission. At many schools you don’t even declare your major until after completing a year or two at the school. And as you yourself acknowledged, Hunt:
Applicants at top schools are largely clustering towards certain majors already, regardless of race/ethnicity. To conclude from here that Asians at top schools are applying for an incredibly narrower scope of majors than other ethnic groups at top schools would literally have to come pretty close to stating that all Asian applicants are pre-meds and engineers. And even if that were true, keep in mind that the majority of college majors have many overlapping classes and that only a few classes are truly major-specific. All the above and the fact that the average college student switches majors once during his/her tenure at a college (how many people do you think really stick with engineering?) suggests that you can’t put any stock into the college major argument.</p>
<p>Huh. How many Asian kids on CC have posted something along the lines of, “I want to be an ___ but my parents insist I study pre-law / pre-med / engineering”? Or are you just going to pretend that that type of occurrence isn’t far greater in Asian communities than it is in non-Asian communities? Good grief, my kid went to a competitive summer program and the clustering of Asian kids in the biology / chemistry / physics classes was overwhelming. And, many of them mentioned that they would have preferred studying English or philosophy or something else, but nope … their parents wouldn’t have it any other way. </p>
<p>But, go ahead and pretend that Asians don’t cluster – whether it’s by nature or by nurture – into some very specific majors and EC’s. </p>
<p>There’s an incredible emphasis on conformity in the culture. “The way” to upper middle class success is through a top 20 university. “The way” to upper middle class success is through pre-law / pre-med / business / engineering. “The way” to a top 20 university is through dogged pursuit of violin, tennis, and math / science EC’s. Not my fault that there are a lot of unsophisticated people out there who don’t realize that there isn’t one best path that trumps all. Not my fault that there are a lot of unsophisticated people out there who think that spots at elite universities are “deserved” by some and “not deserved” by others.</p>
<p>Do you actually even understand what a “cluster” is? (No, I thought not.)</p>
<p>Again, some of you have no clue the way admissions actually works in a dynamic framework. You think it’s some kind of math equation? Ever heard of the word “holistic?” That doesn’t just apply to looking at a candidate as a whole, evaluating his or her academic promise based on varieties of academic considerations (way beyond scores). It applies also to the process of selecting a class. </p>
<p>It’s not about single-issue eliminations, and rarely is it about single-issue acceptances. It’s a process of weighing, with multiple factors viewed in tandem, and mega-equations explored. You think that looking at data points on a CDS or Accepted Student Profiles on graphs or charts gives you any inkling of the value of geographical diversity in any particular person’s acceptance or rejection? It doesn’t. Looking at published data gives you results, and that’s all it gives you. It does not differentiate beyond that.</p>
<p>A student from VA may very well be favored over a student in NJ, but it wouldn’t be single-issue geography or single-issue anything else. One possible reason, among many, could be a composite oversupply of NJ students with the same academic interests as student X from VA, as well as the VA student’s essay being more compelling, as well as the VA student’s teacher recs being more explicit, as well as the VA student appearing to be more creative than some otherwise similar students from NJ.</p>
<p>A few rounds ago there was a rural NJ Caucasian girl admitted RD to P’ton. I noticed one thing about her tone in her posting of that admission: the humility/absence of entitlement. Entitlement attitudes will get most people nowhere in Elite admissions. Unless you have major entitling bucks behind that attitude, or major entitling celebrity, or major entitling (& unusual) athletic material. “NJ” in her geographical profile was not in itself the determinant of her acceptance, particularly with so many other New Jerseyans applying.</p>
I expect better reasoning from you, Pizzagirl. One core basis of arguments for the existence of Asian discrimination in admissions is that aiming for a specific “representation” necessarily requires comparing Asian candidates to other candidates, which is discriminatory. Given cultural differences and objectively measured achievement differences, et al, it is absurd to imply that only 4% of Asian applicants to a given school are best-qualified for admission compared to X% of white applicants (whatever the current population proportion is).</p>
<p>“Spots at elite universities” are not deserved or undeserved by anyone. However, they CAN be quantified as X number of best-qualified applicants, taking into consideration a diverse class (excepting race, gender, disability, and other protected characteristics), where X is the number of students the admissions office is accepting to aim for Y enrolled students.</p>
<p>An interesting side analogy: consider TASP admissions. Take a look at the ethnic make-up of any TASP, and it is clear that the committee prioritizes ethnic diversity, though only after a certain standard of essay quality (there are 2 rounds of admissions, and only finalists undergo interviews). Telluride also maintains a ranked, gender-separated waitlist of about 5 girls and 5 guys. Note that this is a RANKED waitlist. Seminar preferences are ignored. So if a spot in one program opens up for a girl, the #1 WL girl is admitted, and so on. There are several possible conclusions to be drawn from TASP admissions data, but I point out one in particular: in possibly one of the most subjective (and “holistic”) admissions processes in the nation (first round entirely based on essays), the admissions committee still ranks the applicants. Applicant A is directly preferred over Applicant B, although both are deemed meritorious of admission.</p>
<p>Are you at all familiar with the history of Jewish enrollment “in the nation’s top schools”? If you were, you’d know that [“overrepresentation</a>” does not disprove discrimination](<a href=“Getting In | The New Yorker”>Getting In | The New Yorker).</p>
<p>How do you know for sure these posters are actual asians?
Anyone can pretend to be asian to make his/her chance posts appear in the worst case scenario.</p>
<p>Are you aware that you have clumped three very different fields into one? Even if it were true that Asians “cluster” into pre-law / pre-med / engineering fields, that cluster is an incredibly diverse one; Judge Denny Chin, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Ajay Bhatt do very, very, very different things in their careers.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s just an amazing coincidence that the vast majority of the posters who say that their parents are pressuring them into certain majors, or their parents seem to think they can get into all the Ivies and will be horribly disappointed if they don’t, and all the aunts / uncles / relatives in the old country are counting on this and have strong preferences over what the kid goes to, happen to then reveal Asian descent. Give me a break.</p>