Do Elite Colleges Discriminate Against Asian Students?

Applying to College
1041

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Wow. I can’t even remember what I said. Did you look over all my old posts for the telltale signs of anti-Asian bias? I’ve got over 3500 posts, and you couldn’t help notice the disparity? Sheesh.</p>

<p>Look, my point is that the only evidence that anybody has presented is a disparity of results between stats and admissions–without consideration of any “soft” factors, at 10 unnamed colleges 12 years ago. And yet, you guys want to freak out, call racism, and see what I said last year about Chinese gymnasts when anybody suggests that there might be some other differences between white and Asian applicants that might explain at least some of the disparity (if there even is a disparity today at the most selective schools–something we don’t know at all–didn’t Princeton say there isn’t one when you adjust for legacies and athletic recruits?). You don’t think Asian applicants to highly selective schools are much more likely to indicate STEM majors than white students? Prove it. I provided the only data I’ve seen on that topic. Where’s yours?</p>

<p>I just went back and looked at the Chinese gymnast thread. Canuckguy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. My position in that case was that the allegations of cheating should be investigated, because it’s naughty for governments to issue fake IDs so underage athletes can compete. I also think that the disparity in Espenshade should be further investigated. However, I am willing to consider multiple hypotheses that might explain the results. In this case, as well as that one, though, you think you already have all the answers you need.</p>

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<p>The burden of proof lies the people making affirmative statements (ie. X is).</p>

<p>The evidence you have submitted is purely based on personal observations and extremely limited self-reported data, and yet, you write as if such evidence is sound.</p>

1043

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That limited self-reported data is, as far as I know, all there is. It’s consistent with the hypothesis. What is the evidence that is consistent with your hypothesis, which I suppose is that there is no concentration of intended STEM majors among Asian applicants to highly selective schools? How would you suggest finding out which hypothesis is correct? Also, you have made the affirmative statement that highly selective schools are limiting Asians in order to protect the brand. What’s the evidence for that? As far as I can see, it’s only the Espenshade results.</p>

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<p>…which tell us only that 12 years ago there was a SAT/ACT discrepancy in the admit rates of different races at 10 colleges.</p>

1045

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<p>The most prestigious university I found who offered data detailing degrees conferred by racial classification was the University of Michigan. Michigan is selective; it rejects more than it admits. Nevertheless, I am well aware that you will likely dismiss it as “not representative.” I counter by pointing out that “limited self-reported data” is hardly representative, and that Michigan provides far, far more information that is infinitely more reliable.</p>

<p>[In</a> 2003](<a href=“Office of Budget and Planning”>Office of Budget and Planning), Michigan awarded 717 bachelor degrees to Asian American students (372 male, 345 female). The most popular major was actually Economics (57+36=93). Business Administration follows (33+28=61), and Psychology (12+31=43) comes in third.</p>

<p>Where are the STEM majors? Despair not, after three majors, two finally arrive: electrical engineering (33+5=38) and computer science (30+5=35). But, the next major is political science (15+15=30). Industrial engineering shows up, but it’s tied with English at twenty-eight each.</p>

<p>At least at Michigan in 2003, the “Asian” major was Economics. Shall we create a new stereotype? Or perhaps we should recognize the gross limitations of “wide-spread observation[s]” and try to prevent stereotyping?</p>

<p>As for finding out which hypothesis is correct, I suppose we’d have to ask the appropriate people at these elite universities, no?</p>

<p>My evidence for my affirmative action regarding brand protection comes from none other than [Malcolm</a> Gladwell](<a href=“Getting In | The New Yorker”>Getting In | The New Yorker). Espenshade never posited such an explanation.</p>

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<p>I’d like to ask a previously asked question again.</p>

<p>Since when did “wide-spread observation[s]” become reliable evidence? I understand that I’m running the risk of forcing people who have strongly committed to its supposed worth to become even more strongly committed out of spite, but still - I’m surprised that <em>this</em> many people are confident that their observations are free of personal bias and can be extrapolated to a group of applicants that may number in the thousands.</p>

1047

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Based on this teensy sample, it’s also much more likely for a white applicant to indicate a non-science major than for a URM applicant. In fact, Asians and URMs have approximately the same ratio of STEM/non-STEM majors; the conclusion I would draw here is that white students are disproportionately interested in non-STEM, rather than the other way around.</p>

<p>In briefly recalling the Chinese Culture Club at my school–yes, the majority of the members are Asian. But there’s a significant white contingent as well (white people enamoured with Asian culture is not that uncommon, and indeed, at Scripps I met an African-American girl planning to major in East Asian Studies), and people of all races who just want to hang out with their friends. The high school overall is 20% Asian.</p>

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Really? Has Princeton explicitly claimed that it does not give special consideration (or their equivalent of Stanford’s term) to URMs?</p>

<p>I feel compelled to note here that widespread interviewing of applicants (and using the resulting data as a not-insignificant part of the admissions process) is practiced almost exclusively by LACs among the elite schools.</p>

<p>I think we’ve addressed the “soft” factors issue (noting the distinction between “soft” factors and “tip” factors, the latter being things like development and athletic recruit admits) by way of the Duke mismatch study, repeatedly. There is no evidence to suggest that Asian students have lower-quality “soft” factors; there is insufficient evidence to come to any valid conclusion on whether Asian students do indeed cluster in specific academic/extracurricular interests. Your brief sample of Yale SCEA, for instance, is inconclusive (see my first paragraph). I was actually surprised by the data, since I had previously agreed with you in Asian students’ inclination towards STEM; but your own data says otherwise. If Asians and URMs have approximately the same ratio of prospective majors, the white students must be the ones out of whack.</p>

<p>Actually, I know a lot of Asian students going into business/majoring in Econ. It’s a financially secure career that doesn’t require math/science interests–which makes sense, since I doubt that Asians innately prefer math/science more than any other race does.</p>

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<p>Try adding all the Engineering majors together, and you will get a different result. Or does the E in STEM only apply to Electrical Engineering?</p>

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<p>^</p>

<p>I said the “Asian” major was Economics. Major is singular, not plural.</p>

<p>Edit</p>

<p>Michigan does offer a generic engineering major. It is not popular among Asian Americans at all, however; only four bachelor degrees in that field were conferred to Asian Americans in 2003.</p>

1050

<p>Ok. But you also said this:

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<p>So I added all of the Engineering majors together and got 102, and all of the Science majors together and got 85. For Tech and Math I got 35 and 9, respectively.</p>

<p>Not that I care about these numbers, but I think you are being disingenuous in stating your conclusions.</p>

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<p>fabrizio was referencing the fact that STEM majors were not the top three majors at Michigan, not saying that there were no STEM majors at all.</p>

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<p>I see. Is “Science” a major that is commonly offered at universities? Or “Technology” or “Engineering?” If not, why would you even be looking for these majors? What is the point?</p>

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<p>Re 1050</p>

<p>I certainly did, but we have to analyze context. The top three majors as determined by degrees conferred are Economics, Business Administration, and Psychology. My question was posed rhetorically to highlight that none of those three majors is a STEM field.</p>

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<p>Does someone want to add up the numbers of all STEM majors vs. all humanities/socsci majors? (For a STEM/non-STEM comparison, hum and socsci are more similar to each other and should be grouped together.) I say someone else because I still have homework to do… right now it is also disingenuous to give a huge number of collective STEM majors without also adding up all of the non-STEM majors. Of course there will be more engineers than economists; one department vs. one school(? you get the idea).</p>

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<p>Nope. I remember it because that was the only time we encountered each other on CC and had some exchanges. I certainly would not go back into old posts and look for signs of anti-Asian bias, it is not that important to me.LOL</p>

<p>In my previous life, I kept mental profiles of those I had to deal with. Their pattern of behaviour was something I founded useful to my work. It tells me a lot about the type of personality I had to deal with, and over time, gave me a clearer and clearer picture of the people, allowing me to move from being cautious to being bold. Old habits die hard, I guess.</p>

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<p>That is not how I remember it. I guess I will have to go back and look…we can not both be right.</p>

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<p>^Hunt,</p>

<p>I believe this is the thread we are talking about:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/554353-ioc-investigation-age-cheating-chinese-gymmasts-17.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/554353-ioc-investigation-age-cheating-chinese-gymmasts-17.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Here are some of your more provocative comments, #163 (p11), #189 (p13), #249 (p17):</p>

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<p>Then there was my rational response to you, #246, (p17):</p>

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<p>I find not just your argument, but the insinuation, and the tone of voice so different from your position now when the shoe is on the other foot. Don’t you think so?</p>

<p>Others are feel free to look over that threat and come to their own conclusions.</p>

<p>BTW, they found no evidence of age tampering, so the results stand.</p>

1057

<p>That information from Michigan is very interesting. I took a shot at doing what Keil suggested, counting up the math/science/computer majors for both whites and Asians. It’s hard to figure out some of them (I left out “movement science,” for example). I also left out nursing, but that’s debatable.
Also, it was hard to keep count, and somebody can also check my math if you like. I didn’t compare URMs at all.
There were 4102 white students overall. I counted 1132 in STEM majors, or 27.6%
There were 717 Asian students, with 280 in STEM majors, or 39%.
I also noted that there was at least one white student in 111 majors, and at least one Asian student in 64 majors.
Even among the STEM majors, there were Asians in 22 of them, and whites in 32.</p>

<p>Of course, it could be that this distribution is different from the distribution when students were applying. But again, the data support the hypothesis that Asian students are more likely to concentrate on STEM majors than whites. It could also be that they are more likely to concentrate on STEM majors plus a few others, like econ and business. It would be very interesting to have similar numbers from one of the Ivies, where the distribution of majors is probably somewhat different.</p>

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No, I don’t. I will say that your tone is pretty much the same in both threads. You see what you want to see, and attack those who ask questions that don’t fit your view. Don’t you think so? I also think it’s pretty bizarre to think that suspicion of the actions of the government of the People’s Republic of China has anything to do with this thread.</p>

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<p>If you look at STEM plus the three top majors for Asians that fabrizio identified, then the numbers look like this:
Asians: 478, or 66.6%
White: 1932, or 47%
Does this mean that one-third of Asians are competing with more than half of the whites for spots in the other majors?</p>

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<p>Though this you is specifically referring to someone, in general, this is a true statement, and this is why I have repeatedly argued that “wide-spread observation[s]” need to be taken with a certain degree of skepticism.</p>

1060

<p>^ Yes, one should question the physical world, assuming rather an evil plot/conspiracy in the works. Thus, when one attends graduations at Elite U’s, separated by departments or colleges, and/or attends departmental honors/ceremonies at those institutions, and notices that the science components have somewhere between a large number and a preponderance of Asian faces, one should immediately suspect one’s own vision. That is particularly true when the U in question allows no transfers. In those cases, there must have been some sinister reason why so many Asians are graduating. It couldn’t possibly be that approximately the same number of Asians were admitted as freshmen, even when transfer admissions are accepted. (Clue: the vast majority of admitted freshmen students to H, Y, or P, do not seek transfer to one of the others, and those who do not qualify for one of those three are rarely admitted later as transfers.) </p>

<p>Academic majors aside, it is difficult to believe among – say a class of admitted freshmen to Princeton – is exactly equal to the number of highly qualified applicants. (Even if the U’s hadn’t already said that several hundred times.) It appears that I’m way more believing in the excellence level of Asian students than some of the pro-Asian, anti-race-consideration protesters on this thread. I actually believe that far more than 1200-1450 (approx. size of Princeton freshman classes) Asian Americans are highly qualified for admission to any particular college/dept., since such U’s receive anywhere between 9K and 15K applications every admissions cycle. I also believe that the same can be said of white applicants – far more than the total number of accepted students are among the highly qualified. For the moment, we will even leave competitively applying URM’s out of the equation – which is not fair or realistic, but I’ll do it, since so many of you have trouble wrapping your imaginations around the teeny tiny possibility that any URM could possibly be as accomplished as a particular Asian applicant (i.e., not receiving “special consideration.”) Let’s just stick to over 1450 highly qualified Asians + over 1450 highly qualified whites. </p>

<p>But the U has maximum space for only 1450 freshmen. What’s “fair”? A class of 100% Asians? Would that be “fairness” to you? (Based on some kind of biased assumption of future success because you believe they “work harder” than all other groups?) Would a class of 100% whites be fair? When there is an oversupply of equally qualified members, artificial choices have to be made. And most institutions do not favor extreme unbalance, because that jeopardizes their business. Most applicants also do not favor extreme unbalance. I’m sure there are posters here, and particular students, who have no problem with extreme unbalance, but the U’s have heard from student bodies, who largely want balance – in ethnic distribution, in available e.c.'s, in academic opportunities. So again it goes back to economics. American universities compete economically with each other as well as academically. The social environment is a key factor in student choices to matriculate or not; thus the balance factor relates to the economic survival of the institution. So capitalism actually does play into the legalities of college admissions.</p>

<p>There are those institutions, however, which are highly unbalanced – for example, certain colleges & U’s which are 90+% white preppy or white suburban. They don’t seem to have trouble filling their classes, but they don’t have the same group of applicants that the Elites have.</p>