Will all those who haven’t started college please raise their hands?
Ok, if you are Asian American, you do not need 450 additional points. You will not be penalized for playing violin and tennis. What you need is to think; Harvard and its sisters like thinkers. If you can so easily make these assumptions, chances are you’re making others, which can affect your app surer and swifter than being As-Am.
You will be evaluated on individual merit first. That’s actually where many stumble- not race, but assuming, not really thinking this through and developing strategy to match your cosmic dreams, through hs and in the app.
You’re tied of hearing that the deck is not stacked against you. That doesn’t make you right.
“High achieving” for admissions to an elite is NOT high stats. You’re going in circles. What’s the rest of your story? Can you write an effective essay and short answers that bring you to life, reveal the attributes these colleges tell you they look for? (Have you looked for that info on their web sites?) Or you just want to moan about being As-Am?
There are lots of high school top performers applying to Harvard. Lots of kids with research or internships, some club titles, maybe a job, lots of legit volunteering, maybe college courses and on. Your academic and social rank in your high school is great, congrats. But you are not applying for a lateral move to a better hs. You are applying to make the leap to college- and a giant leap, if it’s Harvard. You want to be Harvard? Then rise to the challenge it takes. Think. Do the legwork. Present yourself well in the app. And be savvy enough to know they cannot take every great kid.
multiverse,
Red post # 140. Then read it again. And again. You at the delicate age of 17 may be tired of hearing it, but we who are many decades older than you , are more tired of saying it and having it fall on deaf ears. They DO build a class. They DO want interesting students. Most all will be super smart with top stats, a strong work ethic and creative successes. The candidates need to individuate themselves ASIDE from that. You can choose not to listen. And be here a year from mow whining about the unfair outcome of your applications. We’ll try not to say we told you so.
However, it is often brought up how, as a group, Jews were once discriminated against at top universities (thankfully, the practice has stopped). My point is that arbitrary quotas that are placed on any group are wrong.
Lastly, I nowhere did I “presume” I would have gotten the seat. I haven’t even applied to college yet. I merely said that I should be allowed to be the best version of me that I can be (without worrying about being stereotyped if I did X or Y). If the best version of me results in my being one of the top applicants (not just stat-wise but ECs, recs, essays, etc) at a college then I should not have to worry about being passed over because my race is only 6% of the US population. If I am denied for this reason, I would every reason to “whine”.
Anyway, my impression of these kinds of threads is that they go round and round and really don’t serve much purpose. People on both sides of the issue seem equally intractable and no one makes any effort to understand the counterargument. I have SATs on Saturday so I have spent more time then I should have here. I hope as these lawsuits evolve that we all get a better understanding of how the admissions process truly works. Hopefully, I am wrong about Asians having to jump over higher hurdles. If not, I hope that many of you here, who I believe are intelligent, reasonable people will help to fix whatever needs to be corrected.
It’s often brought us, yes. But c’mon: it’s brought up by people trying to prove that, because Harvard flubbed multiple generations ago, colleges are cheating As-Ams today. Think.
The article that was linked to above says differently. I assume that college counselors who charge $40,000 a year for their services who steer there clients away from those pursuits would have some basis for doing this. I think the market is pretty efficient in that if counselors who charge exorbitant fees did not achieve results they would not be in business very long. (But then again, I also subscribe to PT Barnum’s theory.)
[quote]
“High achieving” for admissions to an elite is NOT high stats. You’re going in circles. What;s the rest of your story? Can you write an effective essay and short answers that bring you to life, reveal the attributes these colleges tel you thy look for? (Habe yu looked for that info on their web sites?) O you just want to moan abut being As-Am?/quote
This is what really upsets me. NOWHERE did I equate high achievement with solely high stats!!! In fact, I went out of my way to consistently highlight ECs, essays, recs and other achievements. Please re-read my posts. Yet, it is the default position of most people on these threads that anyone talking about a possible Asian bias is solely talking about stats. Again, I didn’t do this so please don’t shove me into that box. And, if I didn’t tout high stats please explain how was I possibly going in circles?
No, I don’t want to moan about being Asian-American. That is your way of being condescending or dismissing what I was saying. And yes - I am not unintelligent - I get that the applying to colleges requires that I can express myself well in my essays, that I bring much more to the table than just a ledger of numbers and that I am able to convey both through words, but most importantly, through past actions that I would be an active and impactful person on campus. I understand this so please don’t don’t belabor these points. Being Asian and being interesting are not mutually exclusive.
Honestly, I am moving on because as respectful as I am of the wisdom and experience of some of you here, I am also dismayed at how easily many of you spew platitudes about holistic admissions and diversity without ever really considering the other side of the coin for one moment. I posted on this thread because I felt someone was exaggerating some figures to make a point and that the comment about not whining was a bit callous both in light of the inflated numbers and the faulty logic which I explained. I guess shame on me for thinking this would be a thoughtful “discussion” about these points and not me as a person (moaning or whiny or otherwise).
You and every other person saying an asian bias doesn’t exist have consistently avoided trying to refute the Duke study that found Asian-Americans were rated higher in all but one of these subjective factors you speak of in addition to being rated higher in every single objective factor. I wonder why?
P.S. I’m not too appreciative of your ad hominem against high schoolers.
I asked starfish how he/she knows what “best” is and which sorts are displaced. Multiverse stated an As-Am kid would need 450 addl points. Just see post 137. How do you really know this?
MV do you have a 40k advisor? I’m leery of some who claim more entree than they have. A good one helps a kid manage expectations, find the right matches, and doesn’t write the app for him/her. There is nothing wrong with playing violin or tennis. It’s not a disqualifier.
As for Duke, I’d rather ucbalumnus or Data10 chopped that one up for you. But it’s a study of matriculated students and grade performance over time. The fact that one table shows higher scores for As-Ams…well if that’s your proof…
Oh I understand, the matriculated students must differ that drastically from the admitted students. All cleared up, no empirical proof. Tomorrow the sun will be bright purple btw.
I’m not aware of any other comprehensive study done on affirmative action at elite universities. I wonder why other colleges won’t release similar data to what Duke did. After all, data that shows how Asian enrollment has remained flat at private elites, while it has sky-rocketed at UCB post AA and is higher at Caltech, or data about how Asian-Americans have far higher test scores has been dismissed on the grounds of not taking into account the various factors.
Rather, we should all trust your anecdotal experience in the matter and believe that there is no discrimination against Asians.
You should also know that you can be a racist without believing that you are one. After all, a famous study done 10 years ago found that identical resumes with a black name instead of a white name received call-backs 6 times less often. I don’t think all the job hiring places they contacted believed they were racist. This is subtle, subconscious racism, and I believe that most members of admission committees have a similar bias against Asian-Americans. Will you be so closed-minded to believe that you, or other members of your admission committee, lack any such subconscious bias? I bet that if tested, most of us have many of these biases against various groups (myself included). Some Harvard students created a website that has such association tests, perhaps they should expand it to explore biases against “model minorities” such as Asians, and other unconventional groups such as whites and males. I’ll end my detour into the crux of what basically is third-wave feminism (equality really) here, but suffice to say I think it is a real phenomenon.
If the job markets and college admissions would become name-blind as I advocate, I suspect the unfair discrimination against URMs in getting hired would lessen, and Asian enrollment at some elites would cross 70%, even ones which claim to be race-blind like UCB and Caltech (the big one). Just like how Asian-Americans make up over 70% of Stuyvesant, or well over 70% of the high-performing students in math and science competitions. I also suspect that the gender composition, especially of STEM schools, would probably become even more skewed towards males. Of course, this is pure hypothesis, but I’d like to see a “study” on what would happen if an elite school switched to name-blind admissions.
Why on earth would you want to pay $65,000 a year to attend a college where 70% of the people you meet are just like the people you went to high school with?
That tells you there’s discrimination against As-Ams? At Harvard?
And what’s this implication that if you go to a college different than your hs, you can’t be treated as an individual? Good morning, are we on the same planet?
I already noted in a previous post that the study is for Duke admits, not harvard admits. But it is fair to assume there is a lot of overlap in tbeir applicant pools.
Do we know how many kids applying to H have quantitatively perfect scores of all races? I would presume it is higher than the number of admits x2. So who is to say who should have been admitted.
Without AA, women would not have gotten this far, so let’s not pull the rope up after us…