NPR story on Harvard's Asian bias

An insider’s view of affirmative action and bias against Asian Americans at Cornell, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/418530/what-ivy-league-affirmative-action-really-looks-inside-david-french

let Education be Education…!
And politics…go to DC!

take it to court or whatever if you can’t accept the fact the whole process is subjective!
yeah, me Asian, yes I am.

BTW, how about those rejected high achieving non-Asians?

This comment–and the article from the former Cornell law professor–bring up an important point that apparently needs to be emphasized in every discussion of this topic:

Affirmative action for URMs does not constitute anti-Asian bias. Anti-Asian bias would be discrimination against Asians in favor of white students. You may not like affirmative action, but it is *not the same issue * as whether colleges are trying to keep the number of Asian students down.

@Hunt Is it really affirmative action when the URM is affluent and has the same or more advantages as a non-URM student – aren’t those just unspoken quotas then? Frankly, it is bias if a much lesser qualified URM is selected (who has had access to the same opportunities as a non-URM) to address quotas of different racial groups.

I agree. The only way this complaint is going to go anywhere is for the complaintants to demonstrate that asian american applicants are required to jump a higher bar than white applicants.

@JustOneDad
Pray tell me, how does the Duke study only show what Asians think of themselves?

I think it shows that the asian students were the most qualified in every way, both the objective measures and the soft factors.

I think the big thing in the future will be to balance the complaints of both sides. URM’s must have a seat at the table but not at the expensive of high achievers, particularly Asians and Whites. I honestly think that the best way to do admissions would be to have a preliminary screening process in which AOs would only read essays in the first round and then eliminate candidates whose essays didn’t fit well with that particular school. In the second round AOs could look at EC’s and letters of rec and then weed down more from there. In the final round AOs would consider test scores and GPA. I feel like this system would not completely rule out race, but leave it out just enough to control for bias. It also places a human face on the admissions process.

There’s no doubt that there has been a lot of wrong done to African-Americans up until the recent past. Given that numerous studies have found African-Americans to benefit more than any other group with a degree from an elite school, I think the current system simply does not go far enough. The current 10% admission rate of African-Americans amounts to nothing but a token gesture to make up for legacy admissions. In addition, admitting African Americans alongside other groups invite only unproductive comparisons. I think it’s time our top 10 universities stop just paying lip service to the racial equality they so cherish and fully embrace it by making their admissions 100% African-American. Give the best education we can give to as many African-Americans as possible until their average income is at parity with whites.

Anyone who opposes this proposition is a racist.

@theanaconda I’ve made no comments about the Duke study.

  1. With all the frothing at the mouth people are doing based on evidence of an Asian quota around 15% in the Ivy League, not one is dealing with the fact that Asian admissions have increased substantially since that data was collected. The data was upsetting, and contrary to the ideals and principles of the institutions, and I think they took a look at their behavior and made substantial adjustments as a result. At Harvard, today, ethnic Asian undergraduate enrollment is probably somewhere just under 30%. (That includes about 21% who self-identify as Asian-American, some percentage of students who decline to specify their race -- a category that anecdotal experience suggests may be overwhelmingly people with ethnic Asian backgrounds -- or who self-identify as mixed-race, and about half of the 10% of international students who are nationals of countries in Asia.) The famous study that claimed Asian students effectively had a 200 SAT-point penalty was based on data that is 20 years old now.
  2. I agree completely with Hunt. Across the Ivy League and similar colleges, there have been many thousands of people involved in college admissions over the past two decades, including hundreds of people with ethnic Asian backgrounds of one sort or another. Comparatively few of them have long-term careers in college admissions, so they have little or no incentive to keep quiet if they think they have seen abuses. I doubt that more than a small handful of them, if that many, would be willing to argue in favor of a cap on admission of Asian applicants. This isn't like anti-Semitism, where (when it was being applied) it was completely socially acceptable to support it, publicly and explicitly.

And no one, not a single person, has come forward with a smoking gun. That does likely mean there isn’t any quota, and never has been. It’s awfully hard to maintain a vast conspiracy to do something morally reprehensible. If you are really going to do it, it takes a lot of work, and leaves a lot of evidence.

That doesn’t exclude the possibility of institutional policies that unintentionally disadvantaged Asian applicants – including things like recruiting heavily for sports with few Asian participants. I believe universities have been actively working to get rid of those over the past 5-6 years. (Except for not getting rid of football, basketball, hockey, and lacrosse, of course.)

  1. It would be polite if some of you would acknowledge that you are accusing lots and lots of people of really awful behavior and crass hypocrisy in covering up their misdeeds. You are calling hardworking, idealistic people racists, liars, and cheats. And there's awfully scant evidence for that.

@JHS

From Harvard’s 2013-14 Common Data Set

Of 1657 entering freshmen undergraduates:


[QUOTE=""]

11.2% int’l
88.8% domestic

[/QUOTE]

Of the 1472 domestic students:


[QUOTE=""]

11.3% Hispanic
7.9% Black
48.6% Wh, non-his
0.4% Native Am
20.8% Asian, non-his
0.3% Pac Islander
7.5% multi-race, non-his
3.3% Unknown

[/QUOTE]

Sure, you can add together:
Asian + ½(multi-race) + Unknown = 27.8%.

But you can add the data from 20 years ago the same way.

If the Dept of Justice and Dept of Ed decide to investigate the situation, no doubt they’ll be looking at recent data, in addition to data that is 20 years old.

Granted, Wesleyan isn’t Harvard. But it is a very selective elite LAC with similar diversity goals. In the book, “The Gatekeepers”, there was one asian-american AO who discussed his dismay at how his other-race colleagues would persistently down-grade the asian-american applicants. He wanted to quit admissions but was afraid that the asian-american candidates would get savaged even worse is he wasn’t there to moderate.

It’s because it takes YEARS for the trend to become apparent in the data:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/asians-click.png

But the AO’s don’t think what they’re doing is morally reprehensible. To them. the holy grail of Diversity justifies throwing unfavored groups under the bus.

YES, I am accusing lots and lots of people of really awful behavior and crass hypocrisy in covering up their misdeeds. I think these hardworking, idealistic people admissions offices are indeed closet racists, liars, and cheats.

@GMTplus7

So far, no one’s discussed the most discriminated group of applicants - as a whole - that I can think of: native New Yorkers. No one denies Harvard has a right to choose a geographically diverse class; for some reason, over the years, discrimination on the basis of where you live has become a socially acceptable admissions policy. It is a well known fact that people from underpopulated parts of the United States have a “hook” at many elite colleges.

Get rid of Harvard and Stanford’s (particularly, the latter’s) fear of being regarded “merely” regional in their appeal, and I have a funny feeling all of these suits would go away.

Gimme a break… as i can readily attest to as an expatriate global nomad, geographic residence is hardly an immutable condition as race is (unless u are Mindy Kaling’s brother).

And unlike public schools, private schools don’t set set state residency definitions. For harvard, one day you’re a NY resident. If you move to CT or NJ, then you’re instantly a CT or NJ resident. My son best friend (from Manhattan) has a family ski home in Breckenridge, who applied to schools as a Colorado resident.

Idaho residency is just a P.O. Box away…

@GMTplus7

Sorry, you missed my point. My fault entirely.

Is anyone willing to refute that the Duke study clearly suggests that asian American applicants are being held to higher standards and it’s biased against them? Anyone?

And I’m also against geographical diversity BS.

There’s nothing illegal about favoring geography. In fact, many schools (especially public colleges) have it written in their charter to serve the local community.

If you feel disadvantaged by your geography, then there’s nothing physically preventing you from moving. When I’m in a crowded supermarket, I move to the checkout with the shortest line…

@theanaconda

As well you might since it’s pretty obvious it disproportionately impacts Asian Americans, recent immigrants, and just about anybody who lives in a major metropolitan area located in the northeast or California.

Actually, GMT, what I do is add those numbers together just like that, multiply times .888 (the domestic percentage), and add 6.6% (roughly the percentage of the entire class who are non-US citizen residents of Asian countries), and I get a class that is more than 31% Asian. If you did that 20 years ago, paying attention to where the international students were coming from, I don’t think you would crack 20%. Forty years ago, when I was entering college, it was not much more than 10%, if that.

The change is even more impressive if you divorce it from your anti-affirmative action rants. As far as I am concerned, and I think Harvard as an institution agrees with me, there is an institutional policy that something like 15% of the seats will be filled by what usually gets called “URMs” here. Those seats are not available to other applicants; if there were no acceptable domestic URM applicants, the class would be smaller, not more white and Asian. On that analysis, about 37% of the available spaces are being filled by ethnic Asians.

That doesn’t scream “discrimination” to me. It’s certainly way more than in the past, and hardly evidence that Asians are being “thrown under the bus” in the name of diversity.

Wesleyan: I’ve read that in The Gatekeepers, too. But I can also say that, in the past 12 years or so, I have not seen a single qualified Asian applicant in my community get rejected by Wesleyan. I think Wesleyan would love to get more applications from Asians, and my strong impression is that there, and at other LACs, being an Asian applicant is a plus.

The int’l students are irrelevant, since they are in a separate admissions pool.

Minoirty set-asides are illegal, as per the Bakke SCOTUS decision.