<p>
What leaves you unconvinced? Remember that we are only talking about elite colleges here. At the vast majority of institutions in America you are right; Asians do not face disadvantages there. But what you just said seems to directly contradict with your previous statements suggesting that top colleges would be dominated by Asians without racial affirmative action. Seems like you’re drifting from overstatement to overstatement on opposite spectra.</p>
<p>I would hope they do discriminate against asians, then there would be too many of them at my school.</p>
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</p>
<p>And a very small number of “elite” colleges at that. There are very highly selective private universities that would welcome applications from students identifying as Asian.</p>
<p>^ Which “very highly selective” institutions are you referring to, specifically? For instance, I hear that midwestern LACs welcome Asian students; but I wouldn’t characterize any of them as VERY highly selective. That, in my mind, implies <20% acceptance rate. So schools that qualify would be… Middlebury? (Is paying $600 for at least one Asian to attend a diversity weekend.) Williams, with its isolation? Dartmouth would seem to follow the isolation path, but Hernandez would say otherwise about welcoming Asian applicants, I think.</p>
<p>^^^^^^^</p>
<p>I believe they are referring to the article in the OP that refers to seven elite colleges (not named,) not midwest LAC’s.</p>
<p>To the OP’s question:
Yes or No depending on which elite colleges we are talking about. It seems that elite colleges such as Caltech, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and MIT don’t discriminate against Asians while schools like Stanford and some Ivies do.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=Bundle]
So, should colleges just accept students with the highest grades and test scores? Nothing else should be a factor?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What a strawman! Since when was wanting to get rid of racial AA with getting rid of non-racial holistic admissions the same thing?</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=Shrinkrap]
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.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think that’s a more of a socioeconomic thing. Black and white and Asian kids whose parents make the same amount of money all have the same amount of opportunities. I don’t see why a black student living in a suburb or the inner city wouldn’t be able to succeed as much as a student of another race with the same background.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=Yakyu Spirits]
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.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Do Asians make worse members of a class than people of any other race? Do they do significantly less extracirriculars or volunteer work or have worse essays than people of any other race?</p>
<p>Anecdote: At my school, the Asian and black populations are about the same. </p>
<p>
[QUOTE=mariambaby3]
Not sure if this have been mentioned or not, but UK universities, including Oxbridge and the G5, do not factor in race, athletic recruitment, legacy status or any other factors which we would call “hooks” in their admission process.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I would be interested in seeing the demographics of the student body there. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a very substantial amount of Indians.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=tomorrow23]
I would hope they do discriminate against asians, then there would be too many of them at my school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Oh no, too many Asians! What would we do? What would happen if there was “too many” black or Latino students at your school too?</p>
<p>“Too bad we don’t have explicit statements from college admission committees about just what their policies are”. </p>
<p>tokenadult is spot on about this. I can’t see admissions people becoming more candid anytime soon.
I think that in the individual case, students should be tactical- or at least understand how these things are apt to break. I’ve known several Asian-American students here in Illinois who decided that Berkeley was the place for them. Some knew that the odds were longer for out-of-state students, some didn’t. None seemed to understand that what Berkeley had was plenty of Asian-American students, likely more than they wanted. None of the kids I know were accepted (except for a none-too-bright white girl). And then there are the Asian-American males interested in a MIT education. Of course people get admitted, but out-of-state Asian-Americans may have 4 or 5 times the chance of getting into Michigan or UVA than Berkeley. And the MIT Asian-American (male) applicant has several times the chance to get into Dartmouth or Williams.
In general, Asian-Americans have the best chance at LACs, rural schools, and schools in the South and Midwest.
We can complain about this all we want, but the US college admissions system is largely a product of supply and demand. I have yet to see a case where gender bias in college admissions has been challenged in the courts, although such bias is frankly admitted at some colleges, including public ones (William and Mary). It is certainly possible I may have missed some legal action or another.</p>
<p>Re: Cal Tech</p>
<p>Cal Tech has long had a female bias in admissions. According to the 2008-2009 Common Data Set, 29% of Women were admitted vs. 13.4 % of Men.</p>
<p><a href=“http://finance.caltech.edu/budget/cds2009.pdf[/url]”>http://finance.caltech.edu/budget/cds2009.pdf</a></p>
<p>We have no way of knowing whether Cal Tech has a similar bias against Asian-Americans, because this is not asked about in the Common Data Set. Who knows? But I know which way I would bet.</p>
<p>“I think that’s a more of a socioeconomic thing. Black and white and Asian kids whose parents make the same amount of money all have the same amount of opportunities. I don’t see why a black student living in a suburb or the inner city wouldn’t be able to succeed as much as a student of another race with the same background.”</p>
<p>But it´s NOT just a socio-economic thing, where kids with comparable status have the same advantages. As a generalization, Asian families tend to put more emphasis on academic achievement and are more likely to set the goal of elite higher education. There is nothing wrong with pushing your kids to achieve. I have certainly done it with my two, in the way of supporting and emphasizing school work, signing them up for music lessons and getting them to practice, and much more. And they are clearly at an advantage in the application process because of it. Hopefully, they also have innate qualities that did/will make them valuable to adcoms, but my same kids with a different upbringing , would not have achieved so much, but maybe would have just as much potential for success if given the opportunity. Why shouldn´t colleges try to identify the those kids who will be the highest achievers given the right circumstances, instead of just taking those that have achieved because of past circumstances?</p>
<p>No doubt, generalizations about ethnicity is a factor, but I think there are other ways adcoms try to separate the circumstantial achievers from the innate potential people. For example, seeing multiple SAT sittings and extra overall testing is an indication of how much stock is put into getting high stats. Having too many superficial extracurriculars is another red flag that college admissions is given too much priority. I really think adcoms at the elites, would, if they could completely identify them, eliminate candidates who are overly obsessed with getting in. And yes, this means “discrimination” against upper middle -class private school applicants as well, which from what I´ve read on CC seems to occur now (adcom will pick the kid from the public lower-status school, all else being equal).</p>
<p>Basically it´s impossible to isolate that “potential” factor, but that´s what the elites try to do, and to do it fairly among all races.</p>
<p>Maintaining power is my aim;
Divide and conquer is my game.</p>
<p>I see folks are still dancing away from my hypothesis, and trying desperately to explain what is happening with positions that are inconsistent with quantitative and qualitative data.</p>
<p>Interesting study of human behaviour.</p>
<p>danas - That directly contradicts what I have been told about Caltech’s admissions policies, by someone who who claimed to be on an adcom. It is possible that the female applicants are extremely self-selected, of course; but those numbers seem rather suspicious.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/california-institute-technology/575639-ive-heard-rumors-caltech-way-easier-girls-get-into-than-guys-true.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/california-institute-technology/575639-ive-heard-rumors-caltech-way-easier-girls-get-into-than-guys-true.html</a>
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/california-institute-technology/357613-easier-get-into-caltech.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/california-institute-technology/357613-easier-get-into-caltech.html</a></p>
<p>keilexandra,</p>
<p>I should not have said ‘colleges’ when I meant universities. One example of a university is Vanderbilt–as of last year, admission rate is below 20%, since that seems to be your cut-off for selectivity (good deal below 20% for Arts and Science).</p>
<p>On another CC forum, there is a thread with data about ethnic diversity at groups of top-ranked colleges and universities. If you scan the top private university list, you will find several that have less than 10% of students identifying as Asian. Those are the universities that welcome Asian applicants. Most are somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line.</p>
<p>There’s a difference between being extremely selective and discriminating. The schools have the right to shape their student bodies as they wish. Again, I don’t see enough evidence in an examination of 7 unnamed elite schools to support the conclusion that Asians are being discriminated against at the elites. Nor do I see any evidence that the colleges are engaged in some sort of illegal behavior. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I suspect we’ll see continued refinement and sophistication of the admissions process, and a lot more targeting and recruitment, but the elites will continue to shape their product to attract their preferred customer base. In terms of access trends for the vast majority of American students their impact will remain minimal. In many ways the elites operate in a world of their own.</p>
<p>speedo,</p>
<p>I think monstor344 brings up a good point about your overstatements. How do you reconcile your earlier fear of Harvard “[going] 90% Asian” with your more recent assessment of Dr. Espenshade’s study as “unconvinc[ing]”? (By the way, ‘I do not like it’ is hardly a valid reason for dismissing a study.)</p>
<p>I agree that if the schools don’t want to be bound by Title VI, they don’t have to be. In turn, they simply have to [reject</a> any federal assistance](<a href=“http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/qa-race.html]reject”>http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/qa-race.html). After all, if protecting their brand is so important, they should be willing to do so out of their own endowments, no?</p>
<p>And exactly what point are you trying to make with your “these schools are highly selective” comment?</p>
<p>I want to make it very clear to any posters who know me from other posts that I do not in any way mean to approve of the alleged discrimination against Asians at some schools when I point out that there are very good schools out there that clearly are not interested (at this time) in discriminating against Asians.</p>
<p>As an aside, I have trouble saying and writing about “Asian” as if there is some uniform, standard Asian Student out there. We live in a diverse academic community, and my children’s friends include kids from east Asia, south Asian, southeast Asia, central Asia, Himalaya Asia, some of whom were born in the US, others born in Asia, some of whom are biracial, and so on. In this case of this town, most of those kids are from well-educated families, but some are pretty low income (big need-based aid) and others are full-pay families. In other places, “Asians” are from poorly educated families with no college history. It is a useless term, in my opinion.</p>
<p>fabrizio</p>
<p>I am not taking this personally, I don’t care if all elites go 100% Asian. I’m just trying to look at things from the colleges perspective. As for the study, only 7 schools included, un-named. Researchers did not have access to all information used by the schools to make a decision. Without a wider study and full access to all data, including interviews etc, I don’t think it is possible to make a discrimination claim. My main points have been that the schools have the right to be as selective as they wish and that any alleged discrimination that may have occurred is insignificant given the massive economic discrimination throughout the rest of the higher ed system. This may be a major issue here in the rarefied air of CC, but given the huge access problems facing most American families, a small subset of the disgruntled and entitled, just isn’t that important, outside of a small circle of friends.</p>
<p>"a small subset of the disgruntled and entitled, just isn’t that important, outside of a small circle of friends. "</p>
<p>disgruntled and entitled?..man are you reincarnation of Drosselmeir?</p>
<p>speedo,</p>
<p>I remind you once more that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” An attitude of “even if it happens, it’s insignificant, thus irrelevant” reveals a lot about the person’s value system.</p>
<p>the fact that asians are categorized together to begin with is discriminatory.</p>