You mean the Bakke SCOTUS decision that described Harvard’s admissions policies in particular extensively as the example of what was allowed?
And how are the international students irrelevant, if the question is discrimination against students who are ethnic Asians? How can it be irrelevant that the university welcomes dozens and dozens of actual Asians?
Bakke ruling says colleges can use race as one of several factors for admission. What you described is an explicit set-aside:
The school’s racial count is based on domestic students. Int’ls aren’t part of that numbers game, so Harvard has a free hand to admit the scions of all the foreign cronies they want. It would be interesting to see how many admits from China get harvard FA.
So, you’re saying Harvard is only situationally racist. Is that even a concept?
@circuitrider - Nice observation.
international admisisons are a completely separate game.
from the VERY little i know about it, there is a fair amount of racism done by elite schools there. for example, the international applicants from india are quite brilliant, by far the most talented, especially for India. Yet (I believe) elite colleges take a lot more applicants from white britain who aren’t AS qualified on average. It’s usually pretty well-noted that getting into MIT from India is one of the hardest tasks in college admission.
Since Harvard doesn’t report the racial breakdown of its int’l students, how do you know that the admits from Great Britain are white?
In any case, the geographic diversity thing is a red herring. I became aware at my S’s prep school (it’s a boarding school that draws a globally geographically diverse student body) how easily that the geographic diversity game is manipulated: rich families have multiple residences globally, and school’s don’t check-- schools just want to brag numbers. The applicants simply pick the address of the house that gives them the best advantage. I already mentioned my S’s Manhattan friend who is in the school records as a student from Colorado, based on a ski home. That’s why my S and his friends roll their eyes every year during the diversity ceremony were kids have to carry their nation’s flag. DS texted me, “lol, I had had to carry the __ flag”.
For my S’s college apps, a strategic decision was which of several addresses to choose from:
his boarding school address?
the states in the US where we keep property?
his US mail-forwarding address?
his parent’s “home” address in country X?
his parent’s homes in other countries?
@circuitrider
No, I don’t believe Harvard AOs are overtly racist, but everyone in the world has bias whether they admit it or not. For its domestic student body, Harvard simply wants to socially engineer a particular racial composition. To achieve this, applicants aren’t being benchmarked v the entire applicant pool but to applicants in their racial sub-pool.
It’s like if the 2012 Olympic Mens 100m event only gave out gold medals, one for each race. You’d end up w Usain Bolt winning, but Yohan Blake & Justin Gatlain go home empty handed because the medals would be given out to a white guy and asian guy who didn’t even make it to the Final heat.
Maybe the Scripps National Spelling Bee is headed this way, since the complaint is every year the winner and finalists are always indian-american. Just give out a gold medal to the best speller of each race, then everyone will be equal.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/30/scripps-national-spelling-bee-draws-racially-charged-comments-after-indian-americans-win-again/
You spoke of how very rich applicants can circumvent being in NYC. But what about the poorer ones? Most people at stuvyesant are not very affluent and cannot change their place of residence. I think that they are very smart applicants, and 77% of them are asian too.
Poor students are always at a disadvantage, that’s why I believe strongly that there should be affirmative action for poor kids irrespective of their race.
At my S’s prep school, the rich black kids hang out with the rich kids of all races; they don’t hang out with the poor black outreach kids from Harlem. It’s the outreach kids who deserve a leg up. But what happens is the rich ones who vacation in Bermuda during spring break end up getting a leg up too.
So, basically you’re in favor, (or at least in the case of geographic diversity, not totally against), all kinds of social engineering so long as they don’t benefit black people whose families already have a successful track record of making it in a predominantly white culture? That can’t be what you’re saying. It doesn’t make sense.
From my HS experience, social groups are formed on the basis of both affluence and race. I do agree however that affirmative action should be based on socioeconomic status, not race. Colleges will not do that because among poor applicants too the asians are probably the strongest by far (see how so many people at stuvyesant are on food stamps and it’s ~ 75% asian) and URMs will be very few and far between.
But don’t you think that geographic diversity is still BS? It puts poor and middle class applicants in more populated/represented regions such as nyc or the Bay Area at a disadvantage vs poor and middle class applicants from other regions. This might hurt asians even more as these 2 areas are very heavily asian. Also, from what you’ve posted, it seems like another way in which highly privileged applicants can game the system.
Get over the geographic diversity already. It’s a PRIVATE school. It can do whatever it wants as long as it isn’t illegal. It can give preference to students who like strawberry ice cream more than vanilla ice cream. There’s nothing illegal about it.
The crux of the complaint to the Dept of Ed & Dept of Justice is legal compliance.
And this is breaking news to you?
By your logic, I doubt you can conclusively prove in court that harvard discriminates against asian Americans or has set hard quotas.
I draw my line in the sand where morality lies; and I believe that the present version of affirmative action and geographical diversity (much smaller issue) are wrong. Laws can change and have been dreadfully wrong in the past. I knew very rich applicants would game the system in a multitude of ways, I had not realized that they do so through geographic diversity as well.
I think there are some inconsistencies in your posts; you posit that you support affirmative action based on socioeconomic status; yet as a private school; harvard is not obligated to do so. I merely stated that I’m opposed to using geographic diversity as a valid factor in admission.
I see no inconsistency. I am not Harvard. Why is Harvard obligated to do anything I support?
All I’ve been stating is, that as a private organization, Harvard has the right to do whatever it wants and associate with whomever it wants as long as it isn’t illegal.
I’m still trying to understand what is so dreadfully wrong about geographic preference. Residence locale is not an immutable condition, like race. You cannot change your race, but if you think being a New Yorker is lowering your chances, then there’s nothing stopping you from moving to NJ or CT and commuting to the city-- lot’s of people commute.
I do.
You seem to be saying that affirmative action is bad because it’s illegal. But, the reason you say, it’s illegal is because it harms Asian American applicants.
But, your extreme reluctance to apply this same test to geographic diversity results in this weird corollary, “Not every policy that is bad for Asians and Asian Americans is necessarily illegal.” Why? Because race is “immutable”, but, poverty isn’t? Not so sure about that.
Again, this discussion suffers when people conflate discrimination agaisnst Asians with affirmative action in favor of URMs.
I do think geographic diversity has SOME place but it should be very low on the scale. The only time it would really be applicable is when talking about state schools. For example UNC-Chapel Hill must admit a large majority of its class from NC.
I would also like someone to respond to my solution to this problem. I find it to be a very good idea because writing ability seems to be very much independent from socioeconomics, race and geography. Anyone can be a good writer or tell an interesting story, whether their poor/rich, black/white/hispanic/asian, male/female, gay/straight, poor/middle class/rich etc.
“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.”
If you don’t like my idea what ideas do you think could fix this problem?
I’m reposting this “real world” example from another thread because I truly think Harvard and other colleges should think about doing the same.
The truth is that colleges Don’t give a flying saucer about essays. Holistic admissions is a black box that was started to facilitate discrimination against Jews, and today is used to deflect accusations of discrimination against asians, and ridiculously favoring URMs, legacies, and rich applicants. The 3 asians who got into harvard (the first one to yale, stanford as well + princeton and mit waitlist, the 2nd to yale stanford and mit as well + princeton waitlist, and the 3rd to Yale (didn’t apply to mit or stanford) and every single BS/MD program he applied (~15) including northwestern and brown) from my school in the past participated in serious levels of academic honesty, took adderall for the SAT and was a heavy stoner, took coffee pills and colluded with others to grab leadership positions respectively. In the neighboring school, the asian girl who got into stanford slept 3hrs a night junior year, and the boy who got into princeton skipped school every other day to do 3k hours of community service. The other capable asians who did not resort to such measures ended up having weaker applications on paper and getting rejected, unless they were brilliantly gifted (I’m talking national camp for math, physics, etc level). Colleges don’t care about character or personality, that’s just a black box to justify unfair admission policies, they want the people who’ll be the most successful under their ethnicity/athlete/legacy quotas. They take some people they foresee being brilliant academics or musicians or writers or athletes, but the majority of the people they take are heavy grinders who’ll still be very successful (see the pipeline to finance and IB in particular).
Not to mention that richer applicants can hire services that basically write the essays for them.
I have been consistent in my reasoning. What I have been saying is the flatlining of asian admits in the last 2 decades is statistically inconsistent with their concurrent doubling in tbe US population, and implies a racial quota which would be in violation of Grutter. Because admissions data is not publicly available to review, it remains to be seen whether this flatlining is the result of a deliberate racial ceiling (illegal) or is the result of set asides for lacross players (not illegal).
Poverty is certainly not immutable… A poor person who receives a large sum of money is suddenly not poor. A black or asian person who wears ugly golf pants isn’t suddenly not black or asian.
I have no “extreme” reluctance in regards to the geographic diversity issue. It was brought up as an example by another poster, and I was merely pointing out how it differs from race, and is therefore not subject to the considerable number of laws regarding discrimination.
If this complaint to the dept of justice & dept of education is to be taken seriously, then the complaintants need to stategically focus on issues that have legal footing (racial quotas) and not dilute their case and theie credibility with gratuitous complaints about things that have no legal footing (preferences for geographic diversity).
“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.”
I just returned from D’s graduation at a top 10 LAC. Judging by the names on the program, it is easily one-third Asian and perhaps even closer to 40%. and that’s not counting those from India. Incredible diversity. I think it’s great and I don’t want to hear whining that this LAC “discriminates against Asians” - they could not be more represented if they tried.