Princeton answers to Jian Li claims

Parents Forum
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<p>
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GIve them an eaxmple of one or two fictious kids that they would reject even having steallar SAT and GPA beacuse they lack other things which contribute to the society. THisw ill start changing a perception in asian community. Maybe they will move from piano and viloin to politics and debate.</p>

<p>But admit that there is a quota for asians if they keep exisitng practices, why not admit if it is true. On other hand college can prove it wrong by putting this suggestion on paper.

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Stockmarket, the admissions websites all are pretty clear that they want variety in their students' activities. They are all clear that they have too many qualified kids to admit & want the ECs, essays, and teacher recs to flesh out the applicant's personality & talents & show what he will contribute to the college. I really don't know why so many parents, many of them Asian, don't believe this.</p>

<p>So, no, the fact that high-stat Asians get rejected in no way proves that there is a quota beyond which no more can be admitted.</p>

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<p>"THisw ill start changing a perception in asian community. Maybe they will move from piano and viloin to politics and debate."</p>

<p>Stockmarket, some things are not easy to say, as they end up hurting people feelings. One of the biggest issues that is often missed is that there is LITTLE benefit to fabricate the PERFECT candidate. A student should not be a paint-by-the-number project, but a real INDIVIDUAL with his or her own passions. You ask for schools to send CLEAR messages ... and they do. I addressed this issue in a previous post in this thread. You ask for Asians to be TOLD to drop the violin and join the debate teams. That is silly; people should do what they are passionate about. Every year, thousands of violin playing mathletes ARE accepted at our most prestigious schools, but not ALL of them. Next to them, are also thousands of Asians who excel at sports, debate, and are pillars of their community. One size fits all does not work well!</p>

<p>The part that is often missed is that adcoms do see many files and have access to something we don't: they can compare the students. Like it or not, the adcoms do develop the ability to segregrate the truly passionate violin players from the student who did because his parents said it looked good on paper. Adcoms also have the experience of witnessing how fast students drop the EC that were mere resume-builders. </p>

<p>Asians, just as every other students, would be best served by being who they want to be, and not be so intently focused on finding the perfect mousetrap for college admissions.</p>

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<p>Stockmarket,</p>

<p>If you live in America, you know that most employers, whether hospitals, investment banks or whatever, DO make an effort to attain a work force somewhat reflective of society as a whole. That is a major goal of our society and actually works to the employer's advantage in the long run.</p>

<p>The philosophy is that there are equally able Black, White, Asian and Latino citizens in this country to do every job needed. If they are not being seen in certain sectors, it is because, for example, they are not admitted to HYP in the same numbers.</p>

<p>You seem to take the viewpoint that only certain races have the "merit" needed to succeed. I, and most universities, do not believe this. It is only because certain racial groups have not been given the opportunity.</p>

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<p>I am an Asian-American and was accepted by Yale and Amherst 30 years ago. At that time, many of the top colleges were not over-represented with Asians. While I do not think there was ever any affirmative action program favoring Asians admitted to top colleges, there was never a feeling of active discrimination by Asian applicants to them at that time. I think the demographics have changed greatly over the last two decades with many highly educated Asians immigrating to the U.S. (particularly China, Korea, and India) who want to send their children to top colleges. This, in turn, has greatly increased the pool of highly qualified Asian-American applicants even though Asians still constitute only a small percentage of the general population. There are only so many total spots at these top schools (regardless of the criteria the college chooses to construct its class and whether it uses the "holistic" approach). Interestingly, when I decided to attend Amherst, I received a questionaire from the minority recruitment officer at the Yale admissions office-so clearly they were looking at admitting Asians as one way to diversify their class at that time.</p>

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<p>To go back a few pages, we're not just focusing on SAT's here. Didn't the kid also have perfect grades too? Also, just to put in 2 cents about affirmative action, when a college representative came to Ds school she was disheartened when the person seemed to fawn all over a girl with SATs 200 points below hers, who came in to the room saying, "X college is my safety". She couldn't understand it but the other girl is South American, at a private school, coming from a family of doctors. So she is entitled to URM status even though I don't think she should deserve a leg up by any standards.</p>

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<p>wustled, for me 2400 0n the SATs, and even 800 on SAT II don't constitute brilliance, sorry. The kid who has all that, plus successfully takes graduate level science courses, plus plays cello quiet well, plus does all sorts of other things, and does it NOT because it will look good on the college apps, and still has time to spend with friends, yep, this is a brilliant kid alright( I am describing a real boy attending S's HS) . Scores say nothing, what the person behind the scores is like will decide things.</p>

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<p>Who decided that someone needs to be a renaissance man to attend college?</p>

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<p>Bay:</p>

<p>Well knowledge, wisdom does not belong to any race. Every race has people who are intellegent, articulate and provide differnt things.</p>

<p>I do not know how can you say that I hold such views. Did I say anywhere. There is a public school in maryland where Afro american are scoring SAT scores which beats even most suburban public school. If a person is given a home where parents give enough time are caring, a black, yellow, brown and white kids will perform on equal level provided any kid choose not to do so. You can bring horse to water but not make it drink. </p>

<p>I am pro education, but that does not make me a person who is racist in views. Otherise I will not eat is the homes and of my friends where people come from African or latin countires and enjoy good time with my friends.</p>

<p>keep debating points and it is good, do not put people down by blaiming them they are racist. Point out my thread where I have said so. We are adults and it is better to debate than go and use arms to discuus.</p>

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<p>koolcrud, not college in general, just certain colleges. :-) such is life.</p>

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<p>It's odd that we have to keep saying the same thing, but here I go. No school (except maybe CalTech) wants a homogeneous group of 2400, 4.6 GPA students. Each school is building a class and will take some of the perfects but not all -- because they need a variety of kids with a variety of interests and talents. I hope my son benefits from this in that, while there are kids with higher SATs and GPAs, he has a less popular intended major (which is supported by his ECs). So many kids want to major in business or engineering, that students with somewhat less conventional intended majors may be picked to give the student body balance (and justify the existence of their departments). I guess if you call it what it is, affirmative action for unusual (or less popular) majors, it would look bad as well.</p>

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<p>Stockmarket,</p>

<p>Sorry, but I did not mean to imply you are racist. Based on your earlier post, I interpreted your position to mean that only certain people have the "merit" necessary to do certain jobs, and therefore if an employer or university has an employee or student population that reflects American society, it cannot be based on "merit."</p>

<p>If that is not what you intended to convey, then I do not know what you meant.</p>

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<p>"It's odd that we have to keep saying the same thing, but here I go. No school (except maybe CalTech) wants a homogeneous group of 2400, 4.6 GPA students."</p>

<p>They also can't get them. Contrary to popular belief, no top school could fill their class with 2400's. Not even close.</p>

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<p>would hope that most people think that the races and classes all have the equal potential to succeed. Once experience and culture are factored in, however, it is obvious that there is a racial anad economic achievement gap. This is deplorable, but it doesn't mean that universities should impose quotas to artificially make up for society as a whole, because that would be patently unfair to certain ethnic groups. If Asians success rate is out of proportion to their numbers, than they should be admitted in numbers higher than the 4 % of the population they represent.</p>

<p>That being said, what Princeton and other elite schools do is not a strict quota system that mandates ethnic balancing. If AA, and other non-academic characteristics, are considered correctly, than what they represent is an acknowledgement that once a student reaches a certain level of achievement, he is qualified to attend, enabling schools to look past imperfect quantitative measures to a larger picture. </p>

<p>I went to high school with Jian Li. He is an excellent student, and I would not presume to judge his qualifications, just as he had the sense not to presume that he was more qualified than his white classmate who got in. I have no evidence, however, that he was better than many other excellent students, some of whom get in, and some of whom don't get in. I know that he was regarded as an excellent math student, but I believe that there were a few other students who were at his level even within our school. Certainly, he was not a nationally recognized math or science star, though he did do well on the regional, and I believe even on the state level of competition. Many of his other ECS were ones extremely common to top LHS students - Future Business Leaders of America, board of National Honor Society, member of a Quiz Bowl team good enough to go to nationals, but not good enough to be really competitive there, math and science teams. I don't want to denigrate these activities, but I don't believe that his accomplishments in them was markedly different or better than those of a lot of excellent students in our town. </p>

<p>I have no idea what his recommendations were like. I have no idea what his essays were like, although if his assertion that he was hoping to be rejected from Princeton is to be believed, I wonder whether or not he spent the time and effort that other applicants do on them. If other applicants from his year had similar stats, even if slightly lower, but had better intangibles, than it was no injustice that he was rejected. That is not to say that it would have been an injustice for him to be accepted and them rejected, but that it was a legitimate judgment call on Princeton's part.</p>

<p>What I do know is that one of the students who got in over him was a violin-playing Asian engineer with a math/science background, a marginally higher class rank (she was second to his third or fourth), and a terrific, outgoing personality that might have made more of an impression on teachers than Jian's quieter intelligence. I also know that the other student admitted in my year was an Asian bio major, and that one of the two students in the class above me was another Asian engineer. </p>

<p>I also know that on paper, I was a weaker applicant than Jian Li. My SAT score was a 1540 (plus 800 writing, history, and lit, and 740 bio), and my rank was 12/360, so maybe I wasn't the "perfect" applicant in the way that he was. He doesn't know these statistics, because I wouldn't tell him when he asked. But I also know (and he didn't even ask for these kinds of stats) that I sent in a portfolio of critical essays to back up my interest in literature, and that I chose teachers who really knew and respected me to write my recommendations, and that I wrote essays that reflected who I was and what I was passionate about. He doesn't know that I had excellent recs (I read them) from a Rutgers philosophy professor and a Brown classics lecturer with whom I had taken summer courses. Again, would it have been an injustice for him to get in and for me not to have? No. But I don't think what happened is an injustice, either.</p>

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<p>"...once a student reaches a certain level of achievement, he is qualified to attend, enabling schools to look past imperfect quantitative measures to a larger picture."</p>

<p>If this is truly the way universities look at applicants, then Li has no case.</p>

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<p>Thanks for sharing that, ICarGirl. While no one here is truly qualified to analyze Li's application, you gave a good picture of where he stood in relation to his classmates. Your snapshots of those who <em>did</em> get into Princeton show that. indeed, there is no Asian bias against your/his high school.</p>

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<p>Who said that? That could only be considered true if Jian Li was names Austin Stokley. If that was his name, there is almost no doubt he would have been admitted. And I don't even need to bring up if his name was Sergio Rodriguez, or DeShaun Jones.</p>

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<p>I have stated this on other threads but will do so here again. </p>

<p>When a system offers a success rate of 9% for a pool of applicants from which 30-40% are euqally qualified (I mean EC, academic and other factors together), the system will not work well, no matter how well tuned is the selection process. We see many kids being accepted into a school like Yale but failed to again admission to other top schools and vice versa. What is troubling to me is the argument that a college will not do well if the percentage of a certain race is increased. That argument led to the exclusion of Jews many years ago, and Asian-americans are facing the same issue of too many asains is bad for a university. Why is it that posters here, as shown through many posts, that Asian-american students lack EC's or are involved only in EC's such as violin etc rather than debate and politics. Whereas in fact, most asain-american applicants are from third or fourth generation immigrants who are just as diverse as any other subgroups. Sure that they may retain some cultural characteristics, but no different from Jewish-americans still going to synagogues. I see posters here decrying the lack of athletes, political advocates among asian american applicants. That is just a deplorable misconception. </p>

<p>The system is far from perfect. Harvard rejected Joey Cheeks in ED last year. It was just one of the many mistakes of the system.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
That could only be considered true if Jian Li was names Austin Stokley. If that was his name, there is almost no doubt he would have been admitted.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Um, last time I checked, you weren't an admissions officer. Rapelye made the rare confession that his application wasn't that astounding--his being Asian wasn't the flaw that got him his waitlist.
I won't even begin to address the rest of that post. That's been argued so many times over, with no result, that it doesn't even deserve a response.</p>

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<p>Xiggi,
Not a problem at all. Please let me know if there's anything else that's unclear, I'm always glad to be of service.</p>

<p>Now, I don't have any access to court documents, so I'm only going by what he told the Daily Princetonian. I'm not interpretting anything, I'm just restating the facts instead of jumping to hasty conclusions.</p>

<p>The Daily Princetonian quotes him as saying:

[quote]
Currently, Li said, colleges discriminate against Asian-Americans on the basis of their ethnicity or race. "I'm not saying that people with the highest SAT scores should be admitted to universities," he said. "Lots of things should be considered beyond that, but I don't think race should be one of them."

[/quote]

<a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/11/13/news/16544.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/11/13/news/16544.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I think it would do you some good to reread the last part of your quote. I've pasted it below just for your convenience.
"This merely serves as kind of a tool, a means by which the case could start," he said. *"It's not the basis of my actual opinion."*</p>

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<p>quirkily,
Are you an admissions officer to say otherwise? </p>

<p>And a rare confession? It's more like an attempt to cover their backs! </p>

<p>What did you expect them to do? Admit that he was well-qualified and that he WAS rejected because of his race?</p>