Do Elite Colleges Discriminate Against Asian Students?

Applying to College
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<p>"Well, a new thread opened by the site administrator will not be merged into the existing affirmative action thread,</p>

<p>“Race” in College Admissions FAQ & Discussion 5</p>

<p>so the discussion here will tend in a different direction."</p>

<p>Tokenadult; I don’t understand this. …and how is this thread a different direction?</p>

<p>I know I am biased, but every time I read one of these threads, I can’t help but look beyond college admissions on an individual basis, to the big picture. </p>

<p>If I am understanding the 1997 data correctly, and other pieces of data that I have gathered since, we are “only” talking about maybe 1500 African American kids that all this applies to. That is, maybe 1500 African American kids scoring high enough on the SAT to give them a “hook”. </p>

<p>Also, what portion with a good enough GPA, not to mention just graduating from high school. I mean c’mon, just thinking big picture for a minute, and ignoring for a moment who’s “fault” it is, have you seen comparisons of high school graduation rates, and college attendance rates?</p>

<p>Then you have to account for the proportion with the wherewithal to even “get” this whole “college admission as competition philosophy”. I know that because I am highly educated and well off, few will believe this, but it just never occurred to me that it really mattered where you went to school, until I came to College Confidential. I chose my school, back in 1997, because I went to a GREAT party, and thought I fit in well there. My husband, OTOH, first generation West Indian, TOTALLY get’s it. He did the Ivy leage thing ( and after 20 years is STILL paying loans), and wanted my daughter to take an SAT class, and maybe take the SAT twice! I said WHAT! are you crazy? That’s how I found college confidential.</p>

<p>Big picture, for me, I am extremely concerned about what the odds mean for the vast majority of African Americans. For me, how much time do “we” want to spend bemoaning the fact that 1500 African American kids might get a “boost”, and can maybe even afford to take advantage of it. To me, perhaps aside from applying for an elite university, it seems like a pretty good thing to be Asian. Being born Asian, at least in the US, and without trying to decide who deserves credit or fault, seems to increase your odds of “success” drmatically.</p>

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<p>kmccrindle - If you do not support blind racial affirmative action, why not replace it entirely with socioeconomics? From anecdotal observations of admissions results, I do believe that many students like the examples I cited are receiving a significant benefit from AA that similar Asian/white students are not. I am cynical enough to disbelieve colleges’ claims that current race policies do not involve “benefit for race alone without examination of all factors/variables.” At least in one example, Michele Hernandez explains how ALL URM applications at Dartmouth are marked and singled out for special review, without even a simple socioeconomic filter like qualifying/not qualifying for FA.</p>

<p>I agree with Bay in that a certain concentration of any one race does change the campus culture. OTOH, I firmly believe that it is unconstitutional for colleges to partially fund racial discrimination in order to balance the culture with federal money.</p>

<p>Shrinkrap - Regardless of how racial groups fare ON THE WHOLE, affirmative action appears by all available data that I’ve seen to unfairly disadvantage certain INDIVIDUALS in applying to elite colleges and universities. That is racial discrimination, plain and simple, if the data is correct (and I don’t see many people refuting the statistical logic of Espenshade’s study).</p>

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<p>Thanks for adding your perspective to the discussion. I’m about to be away from my computer for a while, and I’ll think about what you wrote while I’m offline.</p>

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OMG massive Asian conspiracy!!1
Once again, I fail to see any legitimate argument that the Asian population percentage at top schools would go up to more than 35% (look at my earlier posts directly citing exactly what the Espenshade model predicts, a 31.5% Asian population).

Gosh darnit. Didn’t I lay this whole thing out in the thread already? Duke study on mismatch. Look it up. Asians are essentially at the top ACROSS THE BOARD, not just in quantitative factors.</p>

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<p>“Regardless of how racial groups fare ON THE WHOLE, affirmative action appears by all available data that I’ve seen to unfairly disadvantage certain INDIVIDUALS in applying to elite colleges and universities.”</p>

<p>I DO understand that perspective, and that it seems of dire importance to so many here.</p>

<p>I’m just sharing what I end up thinking about. Is that okay? Whenever I see this, I think, we are “just” talking about maybe 1500 African American with the scores that will get them on the “pile”, and many of those won’t have the GPA or finances to take advantage of it.</p>

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BUT could you legitimize the acceptance of an upper-middle class African-American with a 1150 SAT and a 3.5 GPA over an upper-middle class Asian-American with a 1500 SAT and a 4.0 GPA, both living in the same town and attending the same school? This is what racial affirmative action at its heart is; when all else is essentially equal, the URMs get favored for nothing other than their ethnicity. You could make the argument that in your example, the African-American certainly deserves to get in the most, but it is not because he is black; it is because of his disadvantaged background, his tumultuous environment, and his difficult upbringing. To assume that all URMs are disadvantaged, or that all ORMs are advantaged, and to award the URMs based upon those assumptions, is to promote racist stereotypes.</p>

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<p>just what is wrong with UC Berkeley anyways, it is a great college</p>

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<p>“Quite simply, until Asians become the best athletes and are more often the offspring of wealthy legacies, their percentages at top private colleges won’t go up.”</p>

<p>A person I knew at a North Carolina high school was an East Indian and he was a football star with a 4.0 GPA and a 2100 SAT score (first time taking it). He now attends Brown University.</p>

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<p>Also, going to a deep south school, I can say that most football coaches in this town are not open to having an Asian on their team. Most Basketball coaches consider Asians to be physically inferior to Blacks, Whites and Hispanics. If we are to have the next best athlete or the next superbowl winning QB of Asian Descent, chances are that he will most likely be from a state like California or Washington. North Carolina and Virginia are kind to Asians but Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi are no place for an Asian. I unfortunately had to live there, an Asian among Black and White kids who was picked on and jumped on 2 separate occasions because he told them to stop.</p>

<p>As a result, I had to go to a magnet school where I now have a 3.2 GPA and I only took the SAT once with no prep, sadly I made an 1840, taking it the second time tomorrow, wish me luck guys.</p>

<p>PS: Despite my struggles, I love people of all races.</p>

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<p>I don’t think the Laffer Curve applies to “diversity.” That is, ceteris paribus, I don’t believe that there is ever a point where an additional admit of group X decreases diversity. Of course, many disagree with me on this point.</p>

<p>Given that Grutter legitimized the idiotic theory of “critical mass,” for now, it is Constitutional. I am hoping that Grutter will be overturned before 2028.</p>

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<p>One thing to consider when evaluating here is that this study only concerns 7 elite private universities. The other 99% of colleges in the US may tell a very different story. The overall trend in college access remains the systematic elimination of low income, especially African American students from “higher level” universities and the ever increasing stratification of access along economic lines. Whether Asian students are discriminated against at a small number of elites, is rather insignificant given the scope of discrimination within the system, especially considering that Asians are heavily represented at most elites. The cure, rigid adherence to admissions criteria like SAT scores, in an already ridiculously selective admissions environment would probably result in less access for grossly under-represented populations - african americans and low income whites. The Berkeley syndrome.</p>

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<p>speedo, please read the entire thread, particularly my response to another poster regarding group vs. individual parity and many others’ words on “rigid adherence to admissions criteria like SAT scores.”</p>

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<p>As Dr. King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” We should be wary of condoning discrimination merely because it may be “insignificant.”</p>

<p>You speak of “heav[y] representation at most elites” as if it is good enough, as if asking for treatment without regard to race is crossing “the line” and being ungrateful. Is it really now?</p>

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<p>they’re called highly selective for a reason</p>

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<p>What ever happened to race blind and merit. Admissions and hiring processes should not be about coming up with results that match total population representation. Having 2% admit rate for black students is not racist if admissions is based on merit. Having 80% admit rate for asian students is not racist if the group of asian students as a whole is the best and brightest of the bunch. Admissions should not factor race at all. Race should never be considered (nor asked for).</p>

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<p>Your point being? I don’t see how this responds to any of what I or Keilexandra wrote.</p>

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<p>I love the gross sense of entitlement of CC. The elite colleges are trying to build a class, not just assemble the highest SAT scores and GPAs. If they wanted to do that, they would just feed your transcripts and test results into computers and make decisions electronically with no human intervention.</p>

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<p>^ And again, the straw man reappears. Please note the repeatedly referenced Duke mismatch study that found Asian applicants tended to have higher qualifications ACROSS THE BOARD, not just numerically. Building a class is admirable, but discrimination is illegal.</p>

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<p>I go back to what I said before in post 63. Elite universities in their admissions are trying to identify FUTURE potential for success, and they use past accomplishments as only one important indicator. I think their goal is to try very hard to identify a certain quality, lets call it factor X, an undefinable combination of intelligence, personality, work ethic and creativity. We must assume that factor X is distributed equally among ethnicities, i.e. there will be the same percentage of individuals with a 10 on the X scale from each group. If average grades and scores are higher in group A, because of cultural background, circumstances or whatever, it stands to reason that people with the same amount of factor X will on average have higher stats in group A. Group B has the same percentage of people with high X but since, in general, their life circumstances make them less likely to have as high academic achievement, the average stats for top X-filled people will be lower. </p>

<p>That is why 2400s, 4.0s, 10 years of piano, months of lab research, are no guarantee of admission for anyone. You can have all those things and still lack enough X. If adcoms could isolate X and base their decisions solely on its quantity, all races would represented in proportion to the population.</p>

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<p>I think most regular participants on CC are well aware of that. I was astonished to discover, however, that most participants on CC are not as aware that there is federal law against discrimination by race that applies to essentially all of higher education, </p>

<p>[Know</a> Your Rights](<a href=“http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/know.html]Know”>Know Your Rights) </p>

<p>and certainly all of the “elite” colleges talked about in this thread. A college can define “merit” however it likes, and I don’t see ANYBODY in this thread advocating defining merit solely on the basis of test scores, or solely on the basis of test scores plus grades, or even solely on the basis of test scores plus grades plus activities. But all the elite colleges are required by law not to discriminate on the basis of race.</p>