HRSMom I wish that students of asian descent in america(the ones who seek IVY validation and their parents) woke up tomorrow and said "no mas"we will cast a much much wider net and not even look at the ivy league as a a measure of our personal success! (probably not going to happen)
but until the discriminatory behavior against asians at ivy league schools is addressed , we can not just stop talking about it.
The smart and independent minded Asian students and parents realized that a long time ago and don’t care about the Ivys. Let the herd followers do their thing.
D recently attended one of those college workshops held at hotels. We knew they are generally a waste of time for people with basic knowledge of college admissions, but there was a special circumstance that made us decide to go to this one. Regardless, at the end of the presentations, the reps spread out to different corners of the room and parents and students could then approach the admissions officers more personally. The four schools were at approximately the same tier of ranking, but two were Ivies and one is super well-known as a destination for pre-meds. However, the 4th is also a great institution with a long history, but it’s, gasp, an LAC. In general, from what I’ve noticed in our diverse town, Asians do not value colleges regardless of ranking. (S’s girlfriend’s parents did not want her to attend Dartmouth because it’s a college!) Therefore, all but 3 students (one of them my D) clamored around the Ivies and the pre-med school repsl. So seriously, as others have said, it would be smart for Asian students to be more open-minded and cast a wider net. Swarthmore, for example, has produced many Nobel Prize winners in scientific and tech fields.
Indeed schools like Swarthmore, Haverford, Williams, Amherst, etc are fine schools. But I think one problem with these LACs that turn off some Asian-American students (and students of other races for that matter) is the over emphasis on athletics. I get the sense that a pretty sizable percentage of each incoming class are either recruited athletes or nearly recruited athletes. The typical Asian-American student who is not a recruited athlete and perhaps not interested in athletics whatsoever is turned off by a school that admits 20% (just an estimate) of its incoming class through athletics.
Since a given sports team is about the same size regardless of school size, a small school with many intercollegiate sports teams may have a large percentage of students participating in sports. At a large school, intercollegiate sports may be more of a spectator activity for most students.
@zobroward not saying stop talking, but new threads pop up a lot, and get regularly closed as repetitive…
but they are ok with an ivy school that accepts 15% through athletics?
Yes, I think that’s my whole point. Some Asian-Americans don’t want to be at a LAC where 1 in 4 or maybe 1 in 5 students are there because of sports.
I remember reading an old thread from an MIT admissions officer about statistics from the class of 2014 - http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/882019-statistics-for-mit-2014-admissions-cycle-p2.html
“As I said, 26% of our applicants were Asian, and 30% of our accepted students were Asian”
I thought that was interesting. I would be very curious about this data at HYPS, but I doubt it will ever be published.
“but they are ok with an ivy school that accepts 15% through athletics?”
The percentage of athletes at Ivies will be lower than at LACs. I am just saying that some Asian-Americans might prefer a lower percentage of athletes and therefore prefer bigger schools to LACs.
I think many Asian families, especially recent immigrants are more into ‘brand name’ recognition and bragging rights than anything else.
My head is going to explode! Just because a student decides to play a sport on the college level does not mean he or she is “there because of sports.” How about s/he is there to get a great education, but would also like to continue with a favorite activity? Is the violinist who wants to play in the college orchestra “there because of music”? Is the high school debate champion who wants to engage in debate in college “there because of debate”? In fact, since many of the top LAC’s are Div. III, those students are really unlikely to be in college simply because they see college athletics as a stepping stone to a pro career. That sort of gung-ho athlete is far more prevalent at the universities like UMich that Asians favor. Also, since Div. III schools value athletics differently than many Div. I schools, they make few or no allowances for lesser academic credentials in their recruited athletes. It gains them nothing to lower standards, unlike at a place like Duke where the basketball team brings money and publicity, or Notre Dame where football is king. So the viewpoint is symptomatic of a very narrow perspective on the part of traditional Asians regarding which extra-curricular activities are worthy of intellectuals and which are not. Clearly, one needs to play the piano, not soccer, right?
There are more Asians who like universities than those who like LACs probably because they are influenced by their immigrant parents who didn’t know about LACs until their kids started applying to college, but that’s not the same as “ranking driven” or “not casting a wider net” because that wide net could contain big state colleges but not top LACs even though the latter are “ranked higher”. After all, still only a small fraction of Asian Americans end up in elite colleges but few end up having nowhere to go to right? So, I don’t understand why " asians are discriminated against by the ivies " is “good for Asians!” and what makes one believe " that they are not smart enough to realize that!"
I don’t think my post was a referendum on college athletes. It was not my intention to make any judgement or blanket statement about athletics as an extracurricular. I was merely stating that one possible reason Asian Americans might not prefer LACs is due to the large percentage of recruited athletes at those schools. Asian Americans might feel more comfortable around non athletes to athletes. Thus this is probably more of a referendum on Asian Americans than athletes. Whether you agree or disagree with the premise, I still think this is probably one of the reasons AAs avoid LACs.
Some other possible reasons:
Seems many Asians are athletes themselves, though perhaps more often found in sports like tennis or track than football or basketball.
I think it’s because LACs are simply less well known in general - certainly in Asia - and most do not offer straight-to-career quantitative majors like engineering or accounting, and those seem to be popular with Asian immigrants (Asian second-gen and on notsomuch).
I’d also question that since LACs are just about all D3 schools so super serious athletes are not there, they’re at D1 schools - the big state schools, the Ivies if they have the stats and don’t need the scholarship, etc. I can guarantee that sports influence the culture at Ohio State much more than they do they at Vassar.
Zobo,
I never said it was a final say. I said it was a federal ruling. Time, perhaps, for a new set of reading glasses for you. And regardless of which administrations appointees are in the DOE it is not relevant to this discussion.
As someone who is an alum of an LAC and is familiar with the ones named above from having many HS classmates/colleagues attending…the explanation that Asian-Americans avoid LACs because of emphasis of athletics makes so little sense it’s laughable.
First, almost all such schools’ official athletic teams are run on a Div III basis so they’re not going to be handing out athletic scholarships or be as willing to bend admissions standards for an athletic admit.
Secondly, the prevailing campus culture at most such schools with a few exceptions is that most LAC students are either indifferent to the official school athletic teams or chose to attend their college precisely because they wanted to avoid the big sports/party atmosphere commonly associated with Div I universities…especially schools like UMich, BC, UCLA, Notre Dame, or Duke. That was certainly one reason why so many LAC classmates chose to apply and attend our LAC.
The bigger factor is lack of name recognition among Asian-American immigrant families who don’t have family members or close friends who are in academia or who are otherwise aware of the US college landscape. My Asian-American family had some family members who were in academia and/or were otherwise familiar with US LACs and were quite supportive of my choosing to attend the one I graduated from. Only reasons why more didn’t opt for LACs is the older cousins preferred the “big party/sports” of the larger Div. I universities, desire to study pre-professional fields like engineering, or not being able to gain admission to the LACs in question*.
To be fair, there are many native-born Americans who have the same perceptions of LACs including some posters who posted about the perceived deficiencies of LACs compared to their university counterparts.
During my time at Oberlin, one common complaint I kept hearing from classmates who were on official athletic teams was how they felt the campus community either ignores athletes/athletics or worse, views them suspiciously as many Oberlin students tend to have negative impressions of athletes from having been bullied or otherwise marginalized by HS communities which prioritized athletics over academics/nerdy co-curricular pursuits.
To some extent, this was similar to how one older HS classmate who was on the football team likely felt as in the words of one older HS alum, “Unlike many US high schools where athletes/athletics are idolized, we MADE FUN OF OUR ATHLETES!!”
Asian Americans do well in the USA because most recent Asian American immigrants are highly educated and hence have better paying jobs in a knowledge economy. Their kids do well in academics because they are expected to do well in academics by their parents plus they benefit from a self-selected gene pool. If USA allowed mass immigration from Asian countries like it did from European countries in the centuries past, Asian Americans would no longer be the model minority. They would instead be the average majority.
People are also not getting the point of Kristoff’s article. The point he was trying to make is this: just because one immigrant group who came into the USA under one set of immigration criteria did well doesn’t mean there is no racism in the USA, and it is wrong to suggest that African Americans and Hispanics who came into the USA under a different set of immigration rules (if you can call slavery and serfhood that) should be able to pull themselves up by their shoestrings. It is also wrong to suggest that Asians didn’t/don’t suffer from racism. They did and they do.
Racism is well and alive in the USA. That was Kristoff’s point. Ironically, the barbs about how Asians do it all wrong (not apply to LACs, focus on professional careers, prioritize music over sports etc.) prove Kristoff’s point.
Schools seem to want diversity in their student body. The elite schools could probably fill their classes twice over with excellent students from the NE, including NY, NJ, MD, PA, Conn, MA etc. A kid from a rural area in a flyover state or other under-represented rural area with equally good stats, is likely to get the acceptance over just another smart kid with great ECs from the NYC suburbs, regardless of race. While not racial discrimination, it is not a completely level playing field. Doesn’t it make for a richer educational experience to have students with a variety of backgrounds, interests, and interests? Or should it just be based on numbers? How then to distinguish the 2400, 4.0 kids from each other? Many of them get rejected from Ivys or other elites every year.