<p>poetgrl Fine, Harvard can weigh any factors it wants as long as it is not based too heavily on a protected class of applicants. If Harvard wants sheep herders, fine it can accept sheep herders. If it want to accept children of postal workers, it can. What Harvard can’t do is decide that Asian American sheep herders or children of postal workers are not welcome. If Harvard administers its requirements equally to all ethnicity, there is no problem.</p>
<p>But every choice FOR some type crowds another type out. When H decides it wants students from NDakota, that “discriminates” against students from MA. </p>
<p>I have a different theory. Some of Asians are getting in only because of their high scores so the school averages can be higher. :D</p>
<p>Well, VOR, it may well be that a sheepherder is a sheepherder is a sheepherder, though I imagine there are some sheepherders who would disagree, but it is not true that any fencer will do, or any creative artist, painter, will do. It is not true that a singer is a singer is a singer, and it is not true that that any individual applicant can be substituted for any other applicant, cut and paste, even if they have a perfect SAT and GPA</p>
<p>But, and I hope you hear what I am saying. I believe you deserve an insight into how and why this is happening the way it is. I don’t think you should just have to take it as a given. And I think, at some point, these schools are going to have to open up the curtain and show us the Wizard. I don’t think you will find what you think you will find. But, I do think you deserve to see what is there.</p>
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I evaluate prospective employees holistically all the time, but I compare each prospect to the ENTIRE applicant pool. I don’t compare the white job applicant to only other white applicants nor do I compare the black job applicant job to only other black applicants.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl that is fine too, as long as Harvard doesn’t discriminate a student of a protected class.</p>
<p>texaspg That is exactly what I believe is happening at Washington and Lee. My best estimate is that Asian American students have to have about 200 points better on the SAT than the average student there.</p>
<p>poetgrl Fine, you can parse it however you want. Just don’t discriminate because any of the protected class.</p>
<p>@mathyone I checked the lists for 2011and 2012. They were 704 and 784 respectively. So 1400 perfect ACT scores lowers the value definitely.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2012/pdf/profile/National2012.pdf”>http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2012/pdf/profile/National2012.pdf</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2011/pdf/profile/National2011.pdf”>http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2011/pdf/profile/National2011.pdf</a></p>
<p>2013 seems to be 1162.</p>
<p>delete</p>
<p>To me, it comes down to whether race/ethnicity is being treated as one of many factors in a genuinely holistic review, or whether “holistic review” amounts to an entirely different set of standards being applied to members of different races.</p>
<p>Because I am not privy to the ins and outs of elite school admissions, I have no reason to believe the latter is happening, and to argue that because AA admits have, on average, lower SAT scores than Asian admits, Asian applicants are being discriminated against is silly. Anecdotally, I also haven’t seen much evidence that African-American students get anything like an automatic golden ticket to admissions. Affirmative Action helps, but you have to be pretty darn qualified to begin with to reap its benefits.</p>
<p>On the other hand, while 1998, the year Henry Park applied to college, was a long time ago, his story does give me some pause. Not because I think Park was entitled to get in, but because when a Henry Park doesn’t get into Columbia and a URM with a class rank of 60/79 and an 1110 SAT does, you do have to start wondering if we’re talking about an essentially totally different admissions standard. Now, I suspect that that kind of acceptance for a URM was rare then and practically impossible now, but IN THEORY, if that were anything like a common result, then yeah, I think you’d have a reasonable discrimination claim. Whether or not you could prove it would be another story. </p>
<p>apprenticeprof check out the UNC Chapel Hill lawsuit complaint page 18 that shows the academic index by ethnicity and their acceptance rates. I think the data will answer your question.</p>
<p><a href=“http://studentsforfairadmissions.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SFFA-v.-UNC-Complaint.pdf”>http://studentsforfairadmissions.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SFFA-v.-UNC-Complaint.pdf</a></p>
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<p>And …? What makes you think they don’t?</p>
<p>Whatever the criteria are that they administer, the fact that they chose those particular criteria does - in fact - have a disparate effect on Asian applicants. The problem with your argument (which must have been pointed out a couple dozens times by now) is that the disparate effect favors Asian applicants.</p>
<p>It’s like if some sort of institution said it would pick members/students/job-seekers/whatever on the basis of two criteria: speed in the 100-meter dash and skill at riding a unicycle. Lets say, hypothetically, that the use of those criteria results in African Americans being over-represented because a higher percentage of them can run the 100-meter dash very fast. You’re the guy complaining that the institution is racially discriminating against blacks because they don’t use only 100-yard-dash times.</p>
<p>The situation here is a bit different from the hypothetical, in that there aren’t just two criteria, but an agglomeration of quite a few. If anything, I think that just makes it a stronger case.</p>
<p>I don’t have time to read all the posts on this thread now, but I just wanted to add that because of all the resentment and acceptance shaming of blacks who get into selective colleges, I am reluctant to send my son to a school that uses AA in admissions. My African American son is a sophomore right now in a school where he is one of only about 40 black kids out of 2500+. He regularly earns the top score in the class in honors math and physics, but I’m afraid that if he went to his dream college (Cornell), everyone would assume he is there only because of AA, and I think that could turn him into a bitter and jaded person when it comes to race relations (something he is far from right now).</p>
<p>ThereAreLlamas Why do you think that Asian American applicants are not up to par with other ethnicity in the “whatever the criteria are that they administer” factors? Do you have any data to support this conclusion? If so where? </p>
<p>This is the same old tired argument of the there has to be something else argument with no data, no facts to support the argument. You can just make it up as you go.</p>
<p>Zekesima Please allow your son the opportunity to attend “his dream college”, if he is qualified then he should not feel the need to explain his acceptance on his merits to anyone. </p>
<p>@Zekesima Please send you son to Cornell if he gets in and that’s where he wants to go. He will do quite well, and nobody will be thinking that kind of thing, at all. Please.</p>
<p>@voiceofreason66 I actually think they have a better chance at UNC since UNC is a public and stat based. But, on the other hand, they may have a challenging argument to make when you consider UNC is nearly 70% women. They really do go pretty heavily by qualification. Believe me, the girls wish there were a lot more guys there. Also, being in the south, and having a high African American population, relative to the Northeast or West, the need to accept African Americans at UNC is high, for various historical reasons.</p>
<p>Whatever the number of perfect ACT composite scores that year, it’s clear that was a significant achievement. But these top schools turn away kids with the 36 or the 2400 all the time. There is no mystery here. All the schools say that test scores are just one part of what they are evaluating. For instance, Princeton, which is easier to get into than Harvard, accepted 14.8% of its applicants with 2300-2400 this past year. <a href=“http://admission.princeton.edu/applyingforadmission/admission-statistics”>http://admission.princeton.edu/applyingforadmission/admission-statistics</a> So, they turned down 85% of the applicants in the highest score range. This is why it’s nonsense to assert that perfect test scores entitle anyone to admittance at any of these schools. Every admissions session I attended at highly selective schools made it quite clear that they aren’t interested in students who are overly obsessed with testing, making statements like “Taking the SAT is not an extracurricular activity”. If a student’s lettters note that the student has been attending test prep school for years that could well be viewed as a negative, or at least cause the schools indeed to hold the student to a higher standard of performance.</p>
<p>@voiceofreason66, I don’t think that the Asian students have any more time in their day than anyone else does. If they spend every Saturday in test prep school for years, that’s time they aren’t spending on other activities that colleges may value more than getting a few more multiple choice questions correct on a test. And no, I don’t suggest that everyone else is writing novels, it was merely an example. </p>
<p>I also believe that schools have a valid interest in diversity not just across the school but within departments. I’m sure they could fill their entire STEM program with qualified Asian applicants, but perhaps they want their STEM program to be more diverse. It certainly would be interesting to see what the admittance rate is for Asians expressing interest in STEM vs. Asians who want to major in say, drama.</p>
<p>mathyone yes perfect score applicants are turned away but since there are only a handful of such applicants, these same schools know that these top scorers will not come to their schools even if accepted so they dismiss before they get a chance to lower the schools yield. You do realize the 2300-2400 is superscored. Ask them for the data for single sitting perfect scores and their admit rates. Just check out their middle 50%. The top 25% have 800s. Given only “14.8%” had 2300-2400 how do you think this is possible that the top 25% have 800s?</p>
<p>The trouble with superscoring confuses people think exactly like you did.</p>
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<p>I’m not saying that, and there’s no implication to that effect in my post. You really need to think about how statistics and probabilities work.</p>
<p>If Group A scores higher that the rest of the population on criterion X, and exactly the same on criterion Y, using both criteria will result in Group A doing worse than if only criterion X were used. Indeed, that’s even the case if Group A does better on criterion Y also, just so long as they’re closer to the rest of the population on criterion Y.</p>
<p>Also worth noting is the fact (at least in the Harvard situation) we’re not talking about comparing the mean scores of different populations. We’re really looking at the count of outliers. That’s affected by the mean, but also by the standard deviation and whether the distribution is even normal to start with. Without analyzing all of this - which I don’t see anybody making an effort to do - all the statistical arguments are just anecdotes. Indeed, it’s really impossible, because there’s no “score” of artistic talent, or altruistic efforts, or demonstrated leadership ability, or anything.</p>
<p>First time poster here but long time reader. Actually, I was a member back in the mid 90’s but forgot my old log-in and had to create a new one just to post.</p>
<p>I’ve long suspected anti-Asian discrimination by elite colleges even when I was applying to colleges in 1992. I’m Asian-American, was valedictorian, near perfect test scores at a time when perfect scores were exceedingly rare (perfect scores now are too common), and tons of ECs including atypical sports in which you don’t see many Asians. I was not accepted to HYP while 8 of my URM classmates were accepted, often to all 3. Still, I ended up at a “lesser” Ivy in Ithaca.</p>
<p>While in college, classes with large URM enrollment were very easy while classes with large Asian enrollment were very difficult. Even with these factors tipping the scales, graduation rates were highest for Asians and the dropout rate were highest for URMs. So I guess everyone wasn’t exactly equally qualified to begin with if the disparity was so apparent!</p>
<p>During medical school interviews, I was always asked some extremely delicate geo-political question designed to trip up my interview. Once admitted, I found out that I was not alone in that the other 16 Asians in my class were also asked ridiculous questions. This was not true of my URM classmates, and admittedly, the sample size was small but all 4 of my URM classmates had no difficult questions and mostly had the “what’s you favorite movie” and “what’s your favorite type of food” questions. Meanwhile, many of my Asian college friends (with much higher college GPAs/MCATs) than my URM medical school classmates never gained acceptance and pursued other careers. All of my Asian medical school classmates and I graduated. Only 1 of the original 4 URM classmates finished.</p>
<p>So, were there quotas in which Asians had to compete against other Asians for a limited number of spots? I don’t know if statistics alone would help prove one way or another. But the consequences are not pleasant…</p>
<p>With the impending physician shortage in America and the critical nature of caring for a growing population, I cannot help but point out that over the past 20 years, thousands of potential Asian doctors who would have graduated and practiced, were denied admission in favor of “supposedly better/equally qualified” URM candidates which statistics have shown, never graduated to serve their communities. Thus, policies limiting Asian enrollment at top schools like Harvard, via quotas documented or surreptitiously applied, will have profound effects for the next generation.</p>
<p>Also, just to again hit the obvious points that have been made before:</p>
<p>It’s manifestly the case that Harvard does consider criteria other than test scores … and even criteria other than test scores and GPA. There are numerous instances in which applicants with lower test scores and lower GPAs have been admitted and applicants with higher numbers have not, where there is no racial difference between them.</p>
<p>Your argument somewhat amounts (I’m exaggerating a little here) to the notion that Harvard at al. just invented the notion of taking things other than numbers into account as a rationale to keep Asians out, and then went through the rigmarole of rejecting some high-scoring white students to cover their tracks.</p>
<p>To use a real-world example (which I hope doesn’t set off anyone’s racial sensitivity alarms):</p>
<p>At the 2012 Olympics, every finalist in the 100-meter dash was of African ancestry and all but one of the finalists in the 200-meter dash were.</p>
<p>In the decathlon, the top competitors were a more mixed bag, ethnically. Even though a significant part of the criteria that makes one succeed as a decathlete is sprinting speed (and long-jumping ability, which is pretty closely related), the inclusion of the other criteria changes the mix. That doesn’t mean that the decathlon is a product of racial discrimination.</p>