<p>One of the problems that I see with Li's lawsuit just on face value is that Princeton is going to be able that they have admitted Asian students with less than perfect scores for his admitted class.</p>
<p>Li is using the previous study by Espenshade, Chung, and Walling ‘‘Admission Preferences for Minority Students, Athletes, and Legacies at Elite Universities.’’ Social Science Quarterly 85(5):1422–46, 2004 as a basis that Princeton has discriminated against him because he is Asian.</p>
<p>Objective. This study examines how preferences for different types of applicants exercised by admission offices at elite universities influence the number and composition of admitted students. Methods. Logistic regression analysis is used to link information on the admission decision for 124,374 applications to applicants' SAT scores, race, athletic ability, and legacy status, among other variables. Results. Elite universities give added weight in admission decisions to applicants who have SAT scores above 1500, are African American, or are recruited athletes. A smaller, but still important, preference is shown to Hispanic students and to children of alumni. The athlete admission "advantage" has been growing, while the underrepresented minority advantage has declined. </p>
<p>Conclusions. Elite colleges and universities extend preferences to many types of students, yet affirmative action-the only preference given to underrepresented minority applicants-is the one surrounded by the most controversy.</p>
<p>Findings:</p>
<p>Model 1 is estimated using only those cases that report race and SAT score. The odds ratios are roughly the same in the two models, apart from the effect of being a non-U.S. citizen. A comparison of the other models in Table 6 with Model 1 shows that each set of interaction terms is significant at the 0.001 level. The penalty for scoring less than 1200 on the SAT is significantly greater for African-American and Hispanic students than the penalty for white students who score less than 1200 2). Similarly, the reward (i.e., increased likelihood of admission) that is produced by scoring more than 1300 is significantly smaller for African-American and especially for Hispanic students than the reward for white students who score more than 1300. </p>
<p>Models 5 and 6 add athlete and legacy status, respectively, to Model 4.*** Being a recruited athlete significantly improves one's chances of being admitted to an elite university. The odds of acceptance for athletes are four times as large as those for nonathletes. Put differently, the athletic advantage is roughly comparable to having SAT scores in the 1400s instead of the 1200s. Legacy applicants also receive preferential treatment in admissions. Children or other close relatives of alumni have nearly three times the likelihood of being accepted as nonlegacies.*** The SAT effect is somewhat "steeper" when athlete status is controlled, but it changes little when legacy status is added. These results are partly explained by the fact that athletes in the applicant pools have lower average SAT scores than nonathletes (1298 vs. 1335), whereas there is a smaller gap between legacies (1350) and nonlegacies (1332).</p>
<p>*** the largest admission preferences are conferred on applicants who have SAT scores above 1400, who are African American or Hispanic, and who are athletes or legacies. ***</p>
<p>The athlete advantage is weaker than the preference for African Americans, but stronger than the preference for Hispanic or legacy applicants. The legacy preference, while substantial, is less than that shown to Hispanics. Using the estimated logistic regression coefficients, it is possible to convert the magnitude of these preferences to a common SAT metric.*** The bonus for African-American applicants is roughly equivalent to an extra 230 SAT points (on a 1600-point scale), to 185 points for Hispanics, 200 points for athletes, and 160 points for children of alumni. The Asian disadvantage is comparable to a loss of 50 SAT points.***</p>
<p>*** The biggest flaw with this study overall is that it speaks to colleges would prefer to have and not what is actually happening in admissions at these schools (and there is a big difference between the 2). ***</p>
<p>While I would prefer to be independently wealthy, the reality is that I am going to get up in the morning and go to work becasue I don't want to live on the street. Just looking at the posters on the chances thread on CC, most would "prefer" to be admitted to and attend Harvard or some other elite institution, but what actually happens in the admissions process tells a different story. People are not admitted, people are admitted and can't afford the school, people turn down the school for a better financial opportunity at another school or a host of other things.
Most elite schools (the ivies, AWS) don't give athlethic scholarships. Although these schools have a "preference" toward admitting this type of student, there is nothing in the study that indicates that this actually happens. An African American student who is a recruited athlete and has SAT scores over 1400 although 'preferred by elite schools " will in actuality have many options including and being more likely to to accept a full ride at a school that would give athletic/academic scholarships in a school that would definitely give them more exposure in their sport (ex: Duke/ Stanford) than to pay to attend an Ivy because they do not give either athletic or merit money.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Espenshade, Chung, and Walling conclude their article by stating:</p>
<p>The relative weights assigned to different student abilities are in constant motion, and our data indicate that admission officers at elite universities are placing a declining weight on belonging to an underrepresented minority student group, whereas the admission advantage accruing to athletes has been growing. By 1997, in fact, being a recruited athlete mattered more than any other type of admission preference we have examined. A subsequent article in this journal will consider the opportunity cost of admission preferences (Espenshade and Chung, forthcoming). Who are the winners and losers from current admission practices?</p>
<p>Examining preferences for recruited athletes and children of alumni in the context of admission bonuses for underrepresented minority applicants helps to situate affirmative action in a broader perspective. Many different student characteristics are valued by admission officers and receive extra weight in highly competitive admissions. *** It is all part of a process that views academically selective colleges and universities as picking and choosing from many different pools or queues in order to create a first-year class that best advances institutional values and objectives.***</p>
<p>Espenshade and Chung’s study basically shows a halo effect and because it is a Princeton study, there could possibly be no problems and every one takes it as gospel when infact there was an article last week that stated Espenshade and Chung’s own data was contridictory.</p>
<p>There was an article in Chronicle of Higher Education 6-21-2006 By PAULA WASLEY
that states:</p>
<p>State Bans on Affirmative Action Have Been of Little Benefit to Asian-American Students, Report Says</p>
<p>Contrary to predictions in a widely cited 2005 study that said Asian-American students were the biggest losers in affirmative action, those students made only minor gains at law schools when the practice was banned in three states, according to a new study.</p>
<p>The article can be found at:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.advancingequality.org/files/kidderarticle.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.advancingequality.org/files/kidderarticle.pdf</a></p>
<p>One of the major points of the study says;
[quote]
</p>
<p>Espenshade and Chung’s inattention to the distinction
between negative action and affirmative action effectively marginalizes
APAs and contributes to a skewed and divisive public discourse about affirmative action, one in which APAs are falsely portrayed as conspicuous adversaries of diversity in higher education.</p>
<p>***
The problem is that Espenshade and Chung’s study is internally
contradictory: their research design confounds the role of negative action
against APAs with the role of affirmative action for African Americans and
Latinos, yet the research question they posed was about the “impact of
affirmative action” and their conclusion that APAs “would gain the most”
appears to attribute causation to affirmative action per se (or at the very least, Espenshade and Chung’s blurry conclusion will mislead many reasonable readers into believing that a strong causal claim about affirmative action has been made). ***
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What one must remember that when it comes to elite college admission it never has been a system that was soley based on merit (it started out based on who you were related to and how much money you had and the student population was overwhelmingly rich white men)</p>
<p>Now the shift has been to have a diverse population that realizes that learning happens both inside and out side of the classroom and it takes a variety of multiple intelligences (not simply scores and grades) to make up a community that carries out the school's institutional mission. </p>
<p>As other's have mentioned Li was not short when it came down to the quantitative factors to be admitted in to the schools where he was denied admission. However, he may have fallen short where it came down to the qualitative factors. It would be one thing is Princeton was alone in stating that Li was not a good fit for their school, but they were not the only as 4 other colleges/universities came to the same conclusion.</p>