I’m still trying to get my head around this issue.
So adoptees from China with white adoptive parents are disadvantaged because white parents are such slacker parents compared to ethnic asian parents who are all Tiger Parents.
So, how is your kid’s college admissions situation any different than that of asian-biracial kids where the kids bear the non-asian parent’s last name? You daid your kid has an obviously jewish last name.
I’m still trying to get my head around this issue.
Me, too, @PrimeMeridian.
@inthegarden Number One: stay off the race thread. Unbookmark it and forget it.
Let your daughter experience the beginnings of high school, see how her strengths and interests develop. Encourage her to stretch, in and out of school. This quota thing is overblown. Some studies are misinterpreted by folks who likely heard about them from someone else who heard about them- and none of those vetted out what they “heard” or saw in some media article. Those are not proofs. Eg, she does not have to score x points higher. She will not be at a disadvantage if she plans her hs time well, balances depth and breadth, finds colleges right for her. And, if she and you have done enough research by that point, to know the colleges she targets, what they value, what they offer her and she offers them. Not just rep. Not just stats.
Love your daughter and encourage her talents. Don’t let your head be spun by fearmongers. If you hear something, vet the source and do your own research.
I have no idea, PrimeMeridin, how Asian adoptees’ situation compares with that of biracialAsian-white kids, nor was that part of my questions. I live in a small town and don’t know any biracial/Asian kids and have not done national research on the topic. I’m not stating anything, I’m asking. I am coming to CC humbly, to learn and to become aware what I should know, not to politicize any particular stance or to whine about it. I did read today ON THIS FORUM someone stating evidence (or perhaps non-evidence, I don’t know what information to trust) that an Asian applicant generally needs to achieve 50 points higher on the SAT , other things being relatively equal than a white student for consideration. If that is not true, I am happy to hear it. I am not trying to start anything but to LEARN. I am not intending to pressure my daughter, either. Just wondering if what I thought might be matches in her distant future will be unlikely reaches, and if, perhaps she would need more safety schools than the average white kid in her accelerated classroom. I am new here at CC. Please be gentle. And now I think l’ll just crawl back into my lurker hole for the next three years …
Asian American kids Do Not Need to score X points higher. That study was limited and the dang lead researcher himself is on record saying not to base anything on the perspective they used to study scores. He also admits they did not see whole applications and were not looking at the data/details the way adcoms do.
But, noooo. To some on that race thread, that study “proves” something. Man oh man.
Thank you.
There are a few schools that consider race as a negative, but not that many. Most schools are thrilled to have minorities apply and attend. Even at the Ivies, Asians are admitted at a rate of 2x or sometimes even 3x the national Asian population rate.
There is absolutely nothing about my daughter on paper that would indicate she is racially Asian - not an activity, not her name, nada. She thought about whether to check off the Asian box at all, and I left it totally up to her. In the end she did check it and in the end it made no difference.
She doesn’t have to check the box, but then she shouldn’t write essays about adoption.
Sorry. I truly didn’t mean to jump all over you. I tend to be direct.
My bad.
If you are worried about your daughter getting the short end of the college admissions stick because of her asian ethnicity , then the simple solution is to not tick the race box at all. With an obviously Jewish last name, the AdComms will assume she’s white and read her application without their asian biases
She’s lucky she has that option. The kids with sir-name Wong and Gupta don’t get to play that card.
The fact is that the scores of STEM majors tend to be higher. And Asians are highly over-represented among STEM applicants. They are choosing to jump into a more competitive pool, then complaining that it’s more competitive. Many of the top private colleges are receiving an overwhelming number of applications from potential STEM majors and Asians are highly over-represented in this group.
Have a look at the Harvard freshman survey. The exact same evidence that “proves” that “Asians need to score higher” also “proves” that “Harvard legacies need to score higher”. Do you honestly believe that Harvard is actively discriminating against their own legacies? Yet many of the Asians on this site are utterly convinced that they are being discriminated against because they “need” to score higher. I’ve not seen any legacies posting that they are also being discriminated against.
Your daughter has different interests. She should be fine, let her do what interests her. Don’t give her the Asian victim complex.
Really, what “Asian biases?” Please don’t promote that Wong and Gupta face something other than the challenges of their own hs years, college search, and doing a bang up job on their own app and supps.
Are these legacies’ stats normalized for race? Are you saying asian legacies have higher scores than asian non-legacies? I’d like to see the data.
Thanks, all, I think we’re OK now. If she goes the science route at all, it’s not going to be heavy STEM…she’s thinking maybe physical therapy in graduate school, which does not require a particular UG major.
As for the Asian victim complex, I almost have to laugh…she is the least likely to embrace that, despite the elementary years when insistent classmates told her (in all childhood innocence, no bullying intended) that she’s NOT a real American and can’t be. She’s also pretty private about adoption and would likely not write an essay about it. Though she’s comfortable enough acknowledging her origins, she is not of the camp of adoptees who actively explores it (though we offered that option to her, and traveled back to China for a month.) She’s of the mindset of “yes, I know Chinese is a useful language but I’d rather learn French and Spanish!” She has a few Asian-American friends (there are not many here) but she is uncomfortable and puzzled when she sees other kids of Asian heritage grouping themselves apart and is probably as assimilated in her attitudes as humanly possible. I guess that is why I feel I should possibly prepare her for some realities she may encounter outside of the safe little childhood bubble she has lived in. It’s a fine line between that preparation and the above-stated victimhood. I wonder, if you are not a minority or the parent of a minority, can you truly appreciate the challenge of calibrating that fine line gracefully?
My younger son was a special needs adoption from China. He was abandoned at age 1, spent 3 years in an institutional orphanage, was malnourished and developmentally delayed, and has some physical issues. But he has an indomitable spirit, is amazingly resilient and adaptive, and is a well-adjusted, happy boy. I have no idea how he’ll do with the college application process, but I am 100% sure that he will succeed no matter where he goes, and succeed at the bigger game of life.
Stuyvesant High School is a specialized high school in NYC and its admission method is straightforward and transparent: solely based on an entrance test. 71% of its student population are Asians. It admits Asian students at 4X the Asian population rate in NYC. When these students apply to very top universities, they are admitted at “only” about 2X the Asian population rate. This time around, the admission process is holistic; that is, many factors are taken into consideration and thus the process is not observable from students’ perspective. Furthermore, many private top schools disclose very little about application statistics, e.g., the acceptance rate for each race. Now just pretending yourself as an Asian American for a second, wouldn’t you have some questions about the association between a reduced admit rate from 4X to 2X and a less observable admission system?
I do not have smoking-gun evidence nor strong views on whether very top schools intentionally discriminate against Asian Americans. Because this is not what I really worry about. Actually, I think the current college admission system is quite nice (particularly compared to other admission systems in many, many other countries). As an Asian American parent, I have my eyes on the diversity challenges after the college education.
There is strong, prevalent preference among top employers (and also med schools, top business schools, etc.) to have a diverse incoming cohort for good reasons. These post-graduation screens can be even less transparent to Asian American applicants.
I do not have solutions or suggestions. I do not have strong views. I simply share my observations and thoughts, which you can surely disagree with.
The data is here http://features.thecrimson.com/2014/freshman-survey/admissions/ legacy 2296.1 compared to a 2237 average for non-legacy students
and here http://features.thecrimson.com/2014/freshman-survey/admissions/ (Asian, 2304.4, all legacies, 2296, White, 2239.4).
I don’t think most schools release test scores by race, so this is what’s available, and yes, I realize this is self-reported although the response rate is pretty high. You have only to think about the racial makeup of Harvard’s student body several decades ago to know that the vast majority of these legacy kids are white.
They’re different pools with different standards. And one for city, the other, in part, with geo diversity and balance in majors also in mind, among other factors. And there are hundreds of great college options across the US, fewer top hs in NYC.
Plus, when a college shows, say, 20% Asian American (Princeton,) 18% (Harvard,) you’re at roughly 4x the general population.
So, IMO, OP can breathe. Her daughter will grow in surprising ways over the next few years.
I tried to compare apples with apples. In NYC, Asians account for about 17% of HS-age population. This yields 4X when compared to 71%. In the U.S., Asians account for about 8% of HS graduates. Since Asians have a higher percentage of attending a university. This will yield about 2X admit rate for very top schools; that is, about 10% Asians in all universities vs. 20% Asians in very top universities.
I do agree that the bar should be higher for kids from more wealthy and better educated families. Therefore, I do think it is sensible that “on average” there should be a higher bar for Asian Americans because they tend to come from more wealthy and better educated families (this is the way I teach my own kids why they need to set a higher target for SAT or anything if they want to get into very top universities, and should not be upset about it). But at the same time, we need to recognize that not all Asian Americans are made the same. The label of Asian American is quite heavy for those Asian kids from poor families even though it could be partially offset by the first generation label.
I think @PrimeMeridian nailed it very simply and elegantly when she said
After all, there is one’s ethnicity based strictly on genes, i.e. what a DNA test would say, and there is one’s ethnicity based on upbringing and environment. So why should she declare something that, given her life experience, is not so clear-cut anyway? Seems like a perfectly honest and simple answer to all this, when it comes to college admission.
Frankly, I have no idea what you mean by that. I have read it 4 times and it makes no sense to me. There is some difference to being born in China versus India versus Vietnam versus Japan versus Afghanistan versus…when it comes to this issue?
My peeps!
My daughters were adopted from China, and the oldest is now a junior. In my darkest heart of hearts, I wonder what that all-so-important first year spent in an orphanage did or did not do to/for them. They are fabulous - absolutely fabulous - human beings with many qualities I wish I had. But over the years, as they struggled with this or that academically, the extra special adoptive mommy guilt kicked in big time. I am just a mush of emotions when it comes to this kind of stuff, especially as we sit on the edge of standardized testing, applications, etc.
We are also in a small town where they’ve been treated like everyone else. Perhaps the only place I’m now noticing it is in the dating situation at the high school.
@MurphyBrown, OP’s daughter isn’t required to report that she was adopted. I don’t think colleges make the effort to deduce race or ethnicity based on clues in the app unless it’s to confirm an URM status claimed on the app. I don’t think they have the time or interest to parse out the “biological heritage” of students who leave that section blank. And frankly, I think guessing, and then making admission decisions based on that guess, would be inappropriate.