<p>Dartmouth had an Asian president until recently.</p>
<p>I think the difference comes from the parenting of these kids. Jewish parents have figured out what gets kids into HYPS and they’re delivering. The private high schools in my area are about half Jewish - the parents are typically very active in school, making sure that their kids have the opportunities - creating opportunities if necessary. They have figured out that Harvard wants kids with tippy top academics, sure, but they also know that the metric has changed and they need sports and other ECs. I see kids in Catholic school playing basketball and hockey - hard to get recruited in those sports, while Jewish kids are playing squash and crew. Very few top kids from the Catholic HS’s here are ever accepted into HYPS without an athletic hook - I actually can’t think of a single one EVER. But if you look at those students they tend to focus on the same old same old - they follow the curriculum that their school offers, play the typical sports, and do the typical ECs. They also tend to apply to HYPS in fewer numbers, because many want merit aid and won’t qualify for need-based.</p>
<p>My own comments about some remarks about Jews was based on this thead. Not specifically Unz. I think that it’s tough to try to paint any one group with a broad brush, without falling into stereotypes and sometimes hinting at value judgments. Some things may be true, others may just be perceptions. Same goes for Asians, URMs, and even Whites.</p>
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Overall, I do too and I said as much. </p>
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It’s one thing to say: “Welcome to America, the land of opportunity! Carpe Diem!” The way I read her comment was: “Welcome to America, it’s the way it’s done around here. Get used to it.” Maybe I misinterpreted her intent…</p>
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<p>If it were really the case that universities with Asian presidents had an unusually high number of Asian students, the Asian community would not be justified in complaining about it if the numbers supported that observation. It would just be the facts, not Asian bashing.</p>
<p>^^Not worded very well. Let me re-phrase…
If it were really the case that universities with Asian presidents had an unusually high number of Asians students, the Asian community should not be offended by that observation, especially if the numbers supported it. It would just be the facts, not Asian bashing.</p>
<p>Some interesting things from that article about Bates, not really related to the original topic but since the article was posted in this thread I’ll mention them here.</p>
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<p>Wow. I wonder how someone can tell this from a college app?</p>
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<p>I like that. I’ve often heard it said that it’s best to get As in the hard courses but a lot of waffling about whether it’s better to get a B in a hard one or an A in an easier one.</p>
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<p>Wild. Student is given an academic and personal rating and then put into EC groups and sort of stacked up against those. </p>
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<p>And this is where I think the 1850 kid *possibly *jumps ahead of the 2350 kid. </p>
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<p>It’s like they discuss BATES’ needs first - in this case geography and yield likelihood, and then see if grades and scores are high enough to let her in. Seems backwards, but maybe not if you are looking at it from the school perspective.</p>
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<p>^^argybargy</p>
<p>The Bates article describes a process that has similarities to some books I’ve read (Admission, A for Admission, The Gatekeepers, etc ). A good read.</p>
<p>Has anybody else noticed that nobody has said anything new on this thread for about the last 450 posts?</p>
<p>Hey now annasdad, I wondered how an adcom can tell a kid is too high energy for his college…I thought that was kind of original ;)</p>
<p>^^^Probably coffee stains on the note she sent thanking her interviewer.</p>
<p>I wondered if “high energy” was a nice was of saying something like " annoyed the **** out of me at the interview."</p>
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<p>Did you read them? </p>
<p>I get so sucked into these arguments for some reason.</p>
<p>The main points of the Unz argument don’t deserve to be dismissed out of hand as anti-Semitic. Ivy “holistic” admission policies arguably are wrong-headed. Not necessarily “corrupt”, but arguably wrong-headed. </p>
<p>Of course, these are private institutions so they can craft their classes pretty much however they like. If you don’t like that, you can send your money (and your kid) somewhere else. The trouble is, it’s not just the Ivies but nearly every other very selective school that is caught up (more or less) in the class-crafting baloney. They seem to expend tremendous effort striving for the right balance of Asians, Jews, and field hockey players, yet fail to select for real diversity of viewpoints. </p>
<p>A possible remedy would be to hand over to professors the responsibility for real academic interviews (similar to the Oxbridge process). Give professors (not professional adcoms) some say in what students they’d most like to have in their discussion sections or research projects. Then drop race and ECs from the application altogether (but do maintain a genuine recruiting effort in underrepresented communities).</p>
<p>Not that most currently admitted students aren’t already fabulous. Given the competition, I don’t know how they wouldn’t be. What puzzles me is why, given the nation’s wealth and the growing demand for higher education, we’ve hardly built any new private universities in about 100 years. We’ve had other priorities, I guess.</p>
<p>poetgrl, I read the first 50 posts and the last 50. No differences.</p>
<p>There has been a very fruitful conversation in the intervening 400 posts. </p>
<p>When I go out for a drive, the first few blocks and last few blocks are typically the same, but there can be a glorius journey in between.</p>
<p>wait a sec- some think admissions is like that- look at a few, skim others.</p>
<p>^ or short list a few thousand, throw them up in the air catch the number needed.</p>
<p>A thought on the desire for a points system. Personally, I think trying to define such a system is a fool’s errand … it would be complex, incredibly time consuming, and while quantifying things would not be anywhere close to precise. If such a system was in place and worked as designed it would still work very much at cross purposes to the goals of the school. What if among the top 1000 applicants by the “non-corrupt” points system were a couple hundred kids with the same ECs to generate the points (say violin and math club, for example) and from limited geography (say NJ) … while these applicants were the highest scorers by the new scoring system this exactly the result the schools do not want … a class of kids that bring the same thing the school. Why would the schools implement a system that fails to fulfill one of the major goals for their incoming class?</p>
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<p>The people who are all about the “it’s not fair that the 2390 kid didn’t get in while the 2100 kid did!” either don’t consider the fact that the colleges don’t want a class of people-who-all-look-the-same or don’t care, because darn it, the 2390 is more qualified and that is that. Which is their prerogative, of course, but then they look pretty silly when they seem to think that college admissions is about rewarding the most meritorious students as opposed to filling that particular college’s mission and needs (as the Bates example suggests). It’s a really, really naive point of view. If colleges wanted to define merit as test scores and take only the top ones, nothing prevents them from doing so today. Not a thing. They don’t HAVE to be diverse. They WANT to be diverse.</p>
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<p>Hang tight here. The % of the class which is Jewish may be equal to the % of the class which is Asian … but that says nothing about the admissions rates for applicants of either ethnicity. The missing people is the # of students of each ethnicity who applied.</p>
<p>The % of a class which is Asian might go down if fewer Asians apply to that school, even if the admission rate is the same. </p>
<p>Or, if all of a sudden Jewish students stormed the doors of a given college, their admission rate could go down but the % of the class which is Jewish might actually go up (e.g., there used to be 4,000 Jewish applicants and they admitted 10%, so 400 … now there are 8,000 Jewish applicants and they admit only 8% but that’s now 640). It would be best not to confuse % makeup of a class with admissions rates.</p>
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<p>Versions of this are repeated a lot on CC, but seem to me to be not quite true. Almost all private institutions take federal money (for research, for example), so they have to toe the line with regard to a whole lot of anti-discrimination laws.</p>
<p>For example, they could not explicitly exclude an entire race or religion.</p>