<p>Agree with the posters who suggest an emphasis by Asians on STEM may cause some of the numbers disparities re admissions at Ivies. But I also think there is still the “students (used to just be men) of character” issue where the Ivies, especially the tippy top ones just like in decades past, look for future political leaders/business magnates etc and do not believe Asians are as likely to make that impact. Instead, I suspect they view most Asians as “grinds” (what Harvard used to call very smart Jewish students) likely to become great future scientists and intellectuals. But they do not want a class full of “grinds” likely to have brilliant academic or scientific careers but not make much, if any, political or business impact. Accordingly, I suspect there is a de facto quota of Asians. This is the same basic pattern laid out by Karabel in The Chosen regarding Jewish students, and I do think that Asians have become the new Jews and held to much higher standards in college admissions.</p>
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THat sounds like my department at work.
Well, other than me, an Armenian fellow and a Middle Eastern guy, but otherwise this description pretty much pegs it. :)</p>
<p>Where do you get that? Yale says, all over the place that they like “future leaders,” but goes on to define it broadly. Ministers, coaches, community leaders, teachers, etc. Who says Asians can’t have impact? Who says they are grinds? (This begs the question: know many Asians?) It’s building them up only to tear them down. Makes me uneasy, all the stereotypes and assumptions.</p>
<p>And, why do all the threads that tackle this always get back to the Jewish issues in the Lowell era? That was ages ago.</p>
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Hispanics like the bassoon?</p>
<p>My IT group is similar. It is so bad that most of our contractors speak one regional language from one country. I wonder how that impacts the morale of others.</p>
<p>Muckdogs07, I think there’s a bias against students who are only stars in the classroom. If you’re aiming for the few spots reserved at the Ivies for the leading scholars in their generation, you face intense competition on academic terms, no matter your heritage. I think one sees the bias against purely academic applicants in the Asian population, but I think it applies to all applicants who spend most of their time on academics.</p>
<p>I dropped the article when the writer started trying to deduce ethnic/religious affiliation through surnames. The Chua daughters are of Chinese and Jewish heritage. Do they count as Asians? Jews? Both? Do you split the difference, and put one tick in each column? The assumption that one can rank students on the basis of their PSAT scores is also ridiculous. On any day on CC, one can find students who have wonderful standardized test scores and terrible grades.</p>
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You think “Brandon” is Hispanic? Well, maybe. That shows how hard it is to go by names. I don’t think I’d be going out on a limb, though, to point out that the ethnic makeup of the orchestra would appear quite different if it was only strings, and even more so if it was only violins. What, if anything, does that suggest?</p>
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Maybe I’m a pollyanna, but I don’t like either of those explanations–I prefer to think that it’s a manifestation of cultural differences that are likely to fade with more assimilation. It’s my opinion that nobody at Harvard or Yale cares about how many Jews there are, and there is no longer any stereotype about what Jews study or what ECs they do–they do all of them. This will happen with Asians as well (and I wonder if it’s already happened with Asians on the West Coast whose families have been here longer).</p>
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Baptista sounds potentially Hispanic. You can’t tell anything by first names. My best friends in college were all Hispanic and their names were Randy, Art, and Ken. I know they exist but I never met a Julio.</p>
<p>hunt - The makeup of the orchestra does not look too different nameswise from a good middle school or high school orchestra from Houston!</p>
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<p>If you look at how race is reported now, you can deduce how many spots you will be competing for (as I believe texaspg has done), based upon which box you plan to check. This assumes that the numbers are relatively stable from year to year. For example, Yale reports 47% White, 15% Asian, 10% Hispanic, 6% Black, 6% mixed, 10% international. Yale has 5,349 undergrads and 1,349 freshmen. (Yale Hillel reports 1500 Jewish, which would be 28%, if accurate, leaving 19% for non-Jewish Whites).</p>
<p>Texas, before the rest of us go running off with that “100,” where did you get it?</p>
<p>Are those Jewish students practicing Jews? Or do they have a Jewish mother? I know a fair number of people who have some Jewish ancestry. It doesn’t mean they self-identify as Jews. </p>
<p>The child of a Jewish mother and Catholic father grows up in the Unitarian church. I would not call this person Jewish.</p>
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And in Maryland. And the reason is the same–Asian kids do not choose to play wind instruments, especially brass instruments. If you look at a concert band, you will find Asian kids disproportionately represented among clarinets and flutes. I would posit that this is not because Asians have an innate talent for those instruments–it’s a choice based on cultural norms. My point is that a university is somewhat like an orchestra–it’s not all violins. If you’re only interested in the violin, and there are a lot of people like you, your overall chance of getting into the orchestra is reduced, because there’s more competition for each of those violin seats. And nobody would argue that an orchestra should be composed of the “best musicians,” no matter what instrument they played. (I got into the Yale Concert Band years ago on baritone sax, although I really wasn’t very good–I’m sure many much better instrumentalists were turned down. But they played other, more popular instruments.)</p>
<p>100 engineering seats at Yale? Yale is very proud to discuss that in their literature - only engineering school in the nation to show 1:1 student to faculty ratio where they have 100 students and 100 faculty.</p>
<p>I am a bit concerned though that it may be much smaller now. They are claiming 60 and 60. Have they dumped some fields and made it smaller?</p>
<p><a href=“http://seas.yale.edu/undergraduate-study[/url]”>Undergraduate Study | Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science;
<p>Oops, in #111, I forgot 5% unknown. The Chua girls could check Asian, White, mixed or unknown. They’ve got options.</p>
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<p>Race is reported according to applicants’ self-identification. It doesn’t matter what race you or I would “call” a person, but how they self-identify. </p>
<p>With regard to the Jewish student figures, I doubt they are 100% accurate, again because religion is not surveyed in the CA.</p>
<p>The Jews at Harvard are overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, white. The singing groups when I was there included at least three Jewish women of mixed descent who identified as Jewish and African-American. (You’ve probably heard of one of them, the actress Rashida Jones, whose name would definitely not ring any Jewish bells.) Another was the president of Harvard’s gospel and black-diaspora choir. Our Jewish community was easily 95% white, though.</p>
<p>75% is way too high as a guess of how many of the white students at Harvard are Jews. I don’t have an exact figure, but it’s not nearly that high. My guess is a little less than half, maybe 40%, which would make the overall undergrad population a little less than 20% Jewish.</p>
<p>Now, the faculty is a different story, especially the law faculty. It’s mishpocheh central over there.</p>
<p>Hunt, you’re a jewel in the rough, or so the green box tells me.</p>
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<p>Not in Reform, it’s not. In Reform Judaism, which accounts for most Jews who will be applying to elite schools, one can be matrilineal or patrilineal; it’s based on self-identification. Hillel does not “fact check” - so if Susan Li shows up and says she’s Jewish, they count her – they don’t bother to ascertain that her mother was Hannah Goldstein (whose mother was Jewish, and so on and so forth). Similarly, if Noah Goldenberg never bothers to respond to any letters or events put on by Hillel, they’re not to count him as Jewish (unless he has otherwise indicated so) - for all they know, he was raised Catholic and had a non-practicing Jewish father. </p>
<p>The name thing is fraught with terrible inaccuracy.
I had a very Jewish maiden name - I didn’t do a single Jewish thing as a kid other than eat bagels and lox, it just reflected a non-practicing historically Jewish father. I married a Jewish man, raised our kids Jewish, and our last name is one of those that could easily swing either way.</p>