@ucbalumnus: That’s hardly finer-grained. Sure, it pulls out Filipinos from “Asian only,” but still lumps together Uighurs, Karen, Khmer, Tamils, Bengalis, Meos, Hakka, Ainu, Han Chinese, Javanese, Malays, Japanese, Koreans, Pashtun, Uzbeks, Punjabi, Nepalese, . . . and dozens more. And separating out “Mexican Americans” from “Other Latinos” doesn’t tell you much about the differences among, say, Dominicans, Argentinians, Guatemalans, and Brazilians (who do not generally use the term “Latino”), or the vast racial and cultural differences within each of those national categories. And what about Persians, Turks, Arabs, Gnawa? The existing categories do not really fit them. And lumping together as “White” Main Line WASPs, South Philly Italians, Francophone Downeasters, Russian Jews, and Southern Evangelicals makes sense only if you don’t actually care about categories more fine than Black or White.
Two things:
Not Tampa, but close: http://www.clickorlando.com/news/massive-ski-snowboard-mountain-planned-for-florida-resort/31215950
And I do think the ones who complain the most about the “entrenched” discrimination against Asians are the ones who would not be benefited by a “100 point” bonus in test scores. The fact that anyone in their right mind thinks test scores only should be enough to qualify someone for acceptance for Ivies is pretty darn pathetic and shows extreme myopia.
That report is not as fine-grained as what they actually collect. See the application:
http://www.calstate.edu/sas/documents/application-undergraduate2014-15.pdf (questions 21-23)
Presumably, there are internal reports that make use of that finely-grained reporting.
If you follow the logic of the recent federal court decision allowing HUD to re-zone municipalities, only the statistical appearance of discrimination is required. Whether it is intentional or not, Asians are ,in fact, discriminated against.
Hopefully the OP will fall under the ‘two or more races’ category, which puts them below white and Asian, but above black and Hispanic and the applicant will be judged on merit alone.
My cousin, who is Asian, was rejected at all of the Ivy’s he applied to but accepted at Caltech. Coincidence? We don’t think so. I’d like to think that the work and education at Caltech is so important that the PC police have been kept out.
The sad part is that most everyone on this board knows a de-facto quota system exists based on the disparity between race-neutral schools and others. I don’t see how this is defensible at all in 2015. The only free-market solution is not to apply to any school that discriminates on the basis of race, and urge Alumni not to support their school until it changes policies.
No one is saying that. There’s this magic word “holistics” that all college admissions are hiding behind.
There’s no point to rehash this over and over again whenever Asians appear on the forum threads because the same posters @xiggi, @Hunt rehash their 'no discrimination" views ad nauseum.
80, considering the multitude of races and cultures, the diversity claims are just window dressing because the institutions are grouping applicants into just a few categories based on looks and attempting to keep some sort of balance lest an unwelcome group dominates the campus potentially tarnishing a brand.
We now know that there was rampant discrimination against Jews at elite colleges in the 1920’s. When it was happening, did they have statistical evidence to back it up or did they just have a sense of it within their communities? I wish the Asian community could be given the courtesy of the benefit of the doubt instead of summarily dismissing Asian students as “math-loving, piano-playing robot drones who came to our country only to get into 8 particular schools; therefore they are undesirable at the elite schools”. Also it seems unfair to put the burden on Asians to prove discrimination when it is very clear that the statistical evidence is unfurnishable due to a lack of transparency from the universities.
When there was rampant discrimination against Jews at elite colleges in the 1920s – which, by the way, is more or less when my grandmother and all of her brothers were at Harvard University, and her sisters at Wellesley and Vassar – it was completely explicit. It didn’t become unfashionable to discriminate against Jews until a couple of decades later. The quotas on Jews were discussed openly.
Some quotas lingered for a while. Princeton didn’t ever have more than 15% Jews until after it went co-ed, at a time when Harvard and Yale had 25-30% Jewish students. But no one would defend it, and it quietly vanished.
Thanks for the clarification @JHS. Definitely lacking in my knowledge of Jewish history and always appreciate your wealth of knowledge on many topics. Didn’t mean to infer that the two groups are comparable in the injustices bestowed on them, rather that there was a lesson to be learned.
So was my D’s classmate, also rejected from MIT. He got into Caltech and Olin. He’s white.
What Xiggi and Hunt are rehashing ad nause(a)m does NOT matter a bit! What matters is the total absence of any judicial decision that supports that “blatant” admission discrimination.
If it were so obvious and so prevalent, why has anyone been able to the abusers to their knees, or score the smallest of victories? Is it because the HYPS of this world retain all the competent attorneys and the plaintiffs only find ambulance chasers to back up the pseudo evidence?
How does one spell hogwash? Are the described students really considered undesirable … or part of a group that is massively ** over **represented? There is a limit to voodoo statistics!
No one here is advocating stats-only based admission. It’s entirely possible to have holistic admission that doesn’t give points for race. It’s already done in CA, MI, FL and 5 other states which have banned racial preferences in public university admissions.
No one is “dismissing” Asian students. There are many outstanding Asian students. But you can’t discuss the topic of holistic admissions without acknowledging that they are overwhelmingly focused on STEM. I think they are also disproportionately clustered on the coasts and so they are losing the benefit of admissions for geographic diversity.
“I wish the Asian community could be given the courtesy of the benefit of the doubt”. I wish the people flinging accusations of racism at all the people who work in admissions offices would give them the benefit of the doubt. I know a former admissions officer and it’s pretty offensive to me hearing these unsubstantiated accusations being thrown around.
Whenever this issue comes up, there are plenty of posters who are quick to point out “it’s you, not them”. Just because Asian students are focused on STEM, does not mean that they don’t have other things to offer. What it may mean is that they are decently bright if they are able to do well in the STEM subjects. My math loving son may decide to get a masters in English due to his love of poetry; or my computer science kid who double majored in music may pursue a singing career; or my other computer science kid who wants to focus on art, may want to start a gallery some day. I am not convinced that a multitude of Asians will not bring about a diversity of backgrounds, attitudes, talents, academic interests, or skills. The only thing a multitude of Asians may do is change the visual landscape of a campus and that is threatening to some people.
The two camps will argue forever but isn’t there a way to resolve this in a more objective manner? My solution is to make the applications anonymous so that students are chosen on merit alone. I wonder why more people don’t find that solution appealing?
There was nothing on my daughter’s application that would indicate her race other than the box that asked for race. She worried over it but in the end checked the box. It didn’t matter, and the school she chose is happy to have more minorities. Kids like mine are outliers with a name mismatch, but for the most part the admissions officers can figure out most kids from their names, activities, foreign languages, even high school.
For me, I guess it comes down to whether a school wants its students to LOOK diverse or actually BE diverse. My daughter is Asian in skin tone only. She was not raised in an Asian home, doesn’t like Chinese food or music or art, doesn’t celebrate holidays, doesn’t have Asian friends. She’s American, through and through.
The solution has call it is one that looks for a … problem to solve! In a nutshell, you’re assuming that:
- The application relies extensively on the name. I shall assume that the anonymous term is really in your proposal a proxy for ... being racially blind. In other words, it goes beyond being anonymous
- The adcoms are focusing mostly on racial differences, sticking to often used stereotypes, and are mostly unable to appreciate, understand, and ... rewards the finer attributes of applications.
- You are assuming that the "anonymous" application should also be devoid of other elements that are now part of the holistic review. Are you suggesting that applications should be so 'sterilized" and devoid a identifiable attributes that the only distinguishable feature should be ... scores?
For the twists and churns, it all boil down to a very simple conclusion. Now --and it was NOT always the case, the Asian population in general and in average shows better test scores. Over the past decade, the advantage for non-Asians in the verbal components has vanished and the contributing mass of Asians who ALSO score high on the verbal component (a more rewarded and rare attribute at the HYPS) has increased.
And all the vocal dissonance can be resumed to a simple argument: our people who score high on the SAT should not be rejected if there are URM who happen to score … lower and are taking the spot of the “more” deserving Asian on that … simplistic metric!
And THAT is it! In its abject simplicity. One can dream that hiding the name (and I will add the racial profile) will change the dynamics of admissions, but the reality is that the adcoms will always try to compose the best class of freshmen AND rely on a comprehensive review where merit is indeed evaluated in its appropriate context, and not the myopic context some would like to see.
You are absolutely correct safe and except for the future tense and the threatening part.
The type of student you describe happens to form a very tangible group of students at the most cherished schools. They ARE accepted in large numbers and DO indeed contribute to the diversity of the school as long as the term diversity does not become a joke altogether due to overrepresentation.
The Asian Pic de la Mirandole you describe are faring well – very well-- in admissions as the statistics underscore. The same cannot be said for the army of Stepford children who still rely on individual sports and EC and have yet to understand that the 1980 and 1990s are part of the past century when admissions could be rigged by resume padding.
Re: “score high on the verbal component”
My child’s performance on the verbal component of any standardized test has always been very high. Actually, if I remember it correctly, both his PSAT and SAT verbal scores were the highest possible scores. He never missed a point in his verbal subtest. (Well…a correction here: He surely missed several points on a verbal component test for professional school standard test though. He reached his limits there, but still scored relatively high though. But this is not bad for a kid whose preschool teacher once told us she believed he understood what she was saying after two months at that preschool. But another teacher, later during the preschool graduation ceremony, told us that if the preschool has a valedictorian, he would be the one. So he was no longer behind after his preschool. That teacher also asked us whether we knew the word: valedictorian - and we did not until several years later. /Bragging off.)
@xiggi said
I think the ACT has stopped releasing scores by ethnicity, but there are few URMs each year with a 36 on the ACT. For example, in 2013 36-scorers included five blacks, 17 Hispanics, 218 Asians, and 541 whites. So there is a very small pool of high-scoring URMs, and I doubt any are being rejected with 36 ACT scores.
There was a post last year about the surnames of National Merit winners. In California the list is now almost all Asian. Here are the most common surnames of California NM Finalists: 68 Lee or Li; 62 Chen 44 Wang 41 Kim 34 Zhang 30 Liu 25 Huang 24 Wu 19 Lin, Lu, Park 18 Xu 17 Chang, Yang 14 Wong. There were also one Smith, three Williamses, and three Joneses.
A final note. People of mixed ethnicity are allowed to proclaim themselves any race they wish to be. Perhaps those of you who say there is no discrimination against Asians are right, although I don’t believe it. But there is certainly no harm in a half-Asian with an Anglo surname identifying himself as “white.” So there is nothing to be gained by identifying oneself as Asian, but there is at least a chance that it could be detrimental. Why take needless risks?
“Just because Asian students are focused on STEM, does not mean that they don’t have other things to offer. What it may mean is that they are decently bright if they are able to do well in the STEM subjects. My math loving son may decide to get a masters in English due to his love of poetry” Over many years I’ve been to a lot of activities. Your math and poetry loving Asian kid may decide to get a masters in English but the fact is that if you go to a STEM event around here you will see at least ten times as many Asian students participating as if you go to a literary event. Ten times. I have seen it many times over many years.
So when these colleges want to fill their poetry classes, they have to admit kids with a demonstrated interest in poetry and statistically, they are not likely to be Asians. Is this so hard to understand?