@LucieTheLakie fair enough.
You know, RMIB, you’re sashaying a bit, too, to make some point. "…college admissions consultants coach Asians to hide their ethnicities so that they won’t hurt their admissions chances " That’s true, But you can’t prove it is necessary, effective, that these consultants are right that one has to hide ethnic or cultural identity, not even that they have any direct admissions experiences when they advise. And meanwhile, these consultants are lining their pockets.
How do you know which candidate “should” be admitted? And if you refer to stats, we’ll have to remind you it’s holistic.
@LucieTheLakie So are you for affirmative action or against? Sounds like you’re for affirmative action, but against discrimination. Sounds pretty hypocritical.
What are the erronous “facts”? Please do tell, other than of course some spelling errors.
@LucieTheLakie what I dislike about people is how everything is good and fair… until it puts you at a disadvantage.
@lookingforward Well you really don’t know what colleges want, though they do have average accepted gpas and sat scores.
It just so happens that accepted minorities usually have lower stats. Maybe they have stronger ECs who know, its just based statistically.
@LookingFoward The anecdotes in question have plenty of Asian applicants with EC’s just as strong as their academics, and unless if there’s some part of the truth we aren’t being told about, like their having a criminal record or something, the best interpretation of these stories is that colleges are just horribly ineffective at selecting applicants (as in, worse at it than you or me reading their profiles on the internet for a few seconds).
If we want to look at stats, we could survey applicants and compare their acceptance rates with their average SAT scores and GPAs. If we want to factor into account these holistic criteria, submit functionally identical resumes with different sounding names and see how the admissions play out.
As an Asian-American parent, I don’t think we would join this lawsuit and feel that effecting change in the admission process is a long and evolutionary (not revolutionary) process.
There are valid arguments on both sides of this debate, however, I am less interested in the real or perceived higher bar for today’s Asian American students (FWIW I believe it is real, but it is what it is), I am more interested in how other groups have successfully navigated prejudices.
It has been widely-discussed/recognized how several decades ago, Jewish applicants experienced discrimination/exclusion in the Ivy League admissions process. However, in today’s highly competitive environment, this no longer seems to be the case. How did the Jews do it? Or, put another way, what changed so Jewish applicants are now treated more fairly?
Did the Jews become more acceptable overnight? Or did they organize, cooperate, collaborate and focus philanthropy over a long period of time to get where they are now? I am pretty sure they did not bring a lawsuit against an admission office of a school they hope will admit their children.
Personally, I think Asian Americans (like the other immigrant groups that have preceded them) have built a prison of their own desires. If WE did not make Harvard (or other highly elite schools) the only acceptable outcome, there would be less of a problem. There are a lot of great schools out there and Harvard is not the only answer to a timeless, yet complex/complicated question.
At the risk of taking the discussion in a different (although perhaps more positive) direction, does anyone have any insight on how/why jewish applicants are no longer considered an over represented group?
I do have experience that many don’t. I do not see the fearsome situation so many hs kids agonize over. I do see the general blandness and misunderstandings in apps, no matter how high the stats. You may have missed my link to Brown’s admissions facts. Why do you think 84% of 800M kids were not offered admission? You think they’re all Asian American and that’s why?
Btw, I’m neutral on AA. Some kids are super applicants, no matter the category. Far from all or all with high stats and a little this and that. I find these discussions a bit ass backwards and though I’m not As-Am, I find they often turn these kids into unfortunate caricatures, even in the thinking of other As-Ams.
And you have no idea how URMs come across and how strong many are as candidates. Just as many would like to bemaon the “faceless” As-Am, they are guilty of making URMs faceless.
It is NOT all about stats. Get past stats.
@superdomestique This is a controversial idea that I admit is not based on much empirical data, but to be blunt, I think that those Jewish applicants in question probably had a lot more influence - and a lot more of the public sympathy due to certain connotations/implications that would arise from discriminating against them - than Asian applicants do. If Harvard’s president even hinted at trying to discriminate against Jewish applicants he would be gone by the weekend - but Asian Americans simply do not have the political clout or the sympathy for anybody to care.
But I honestly don’t understand your point about not obsessing over Harvard - it seems like a euphemistic way of saying that we should just “deal with it”, but frankly, this type of discrimination shouldn’t exist in the first place, and it’s just not a good idea on principle to let it continue.
@lookingforward that’s not a very shocking statistic, seeing as how a 16% acceptance rate is still vastly higher than the mean, and getting an 800 on the math section is not very impressive by the standards of Brown. It becomes more absurd when you have IMO medalists with Asian sounding names and lots of other EC’s and academic credentials getting rejected in favor of the guy who is good at swimming.
IMO is not a Get in Free card. Not for anyone. Much more matters than that.
And I’m on record as uncomfortable with athletic hooks.
@lookingforward yes…like your race.
I know applicants with practically nothing of note on their resume get into universities over people who were robotics world champions and USAMO qualifiers, because what - they started a poetry club and had the parents to give them cool sounding internships? Which do you think is more likely to contribute something big to society?
And quite frankly, something like an IMO medal should merit an automatic ticket to Harvard so long as there are no severe red flags on their application. Statistically speaking, it is MUCH more difficult to acquire than more fanciful “well rounded” attributes.
And while I actually am sympathetic to affirmative action programs for African American and Hispanic applicants, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if a black student won the IMO, s/he would not be rejected from a university in the country.
Nope. Why do you think a n As-Am kid can;t be as good at holistic as others? Think about it.
They can. But running off about IMO, USAMO, world acclimation, etc, shows a basic misunderstanding of how holistic looks for other attributes than Big Dawg.
But you are welcome to your opinions. The flaw comes when you rest a case on opinions and assume. I have an expression for an attitude I warn against: I think it, so it must be true and, I read it somewhere, so it IS.
What is IMO?
Big time math. International Math Olympiad. USAMO is the US math olympiad.
some on CC think it should make a kid a shoo-in.
@lookingforward, the ridiculous double standard here is that winning an essay writing contest would immediately appeal to admissions officers as demonstrating how “well rounded” you are, but winning the IMO makes you look “one-dimensional”. Here you can tell that they are stacked with liberal arts majors who don’t understand that there’s no intrinsic reason why liberal arts EC’s are somehow any less related to academia than STEM ones.
And quite frankly, even if it were a question of being one-dimensional, the IMO is statistically a far harder thing to get, and more highly correlated with future success, than starting a bunch of clubs or being captain of your softball team.
But, I suppose we’re veering off-topic. The Asian applicants cited had plenty of diverse EC’s.
No, winning an essay contest is highly overrated on CC. I can name others.
How does winning USAMO make one one-dimensional? It’s just one thing. Did you mean that’s the only thing that kid does, which might then make him or her seem unilateral?
And remember there is a full app to fill out,plus often a supp- not just a transcript and resume. Multiple chances to show perspective, rounding and fit. And maturity in thinking. Or not.
I wonder if an issue is that academic related ECs are discounted bc it is just “more academics”, whereas saving the raiforest, or swimming competitively, or having a job is seen as non-academic, and therefore, more well rounded?
This is not to say Asians only do academic ECs, but referring to why admissions may be less impressed with the IMO than one might think. i have no opinion on it, just wondering.
Occam’s razor.