Princeton is being sued by a rejected applicant

Colleges & Universities A-Z Princeton University
41

<p>Princeton is moving towards socioeconomic aff. action with their no-loan program and guaranteed demonstrated financial need. a lack of merit scholarships which is ivy league-standard is also commendable.</p>

<p>but the racial stuff is still very much in play. coming from an extremely diverse high school i see the merit of a "rainbow" of students, but let's not get all warm and fuzzy here. the kids selected to fill the token spots are often just as privileged as your standard blond wasp from new england. </p>

<p>they do not deserve special treatment. inner-city kids who struggled do. as a white upper middle class student i would be willing to loose my "spot" to a disadvantaged inner city student with equivalent credentials regardless of race. but i am certainly not willing to lose it to a URM with lower scores/credentials who is just as privileged as me, if not more so.</p>

42

<p>totally true. some people don't even know their actual race, and get blood tests before they apply. some find out that they are like 1/8 URM or something. ***?!!?</p>

43

<p>i completely agree with pk12313. if nothing else, this lawsuit suceeds in bringing attention to the issue.</p>

44

<p>Good old American way. Just sue. I hope one day he gets the same treatment. What a narrow minded attitude to think that elite institutions accept students solely based on grades and test scores. How about leadership qualities or other criteria. Do you think alot of the world's leaders and influential people had perfect test scores. Are elite insititutions' directives to foster and instruct only people who make the highest test scores? My gosh, he got into Yale. I feel so sorry for him. Why have admissions comittees? Just tell the director of admissions to accept the students with the top test scores. Life would be much simpler. Right?</p>

45

<p>i'm pretty sure that the goal of the AA practiced by princeton is not to give minorities an advantage in admissions, but to create racial diversity. So the whole argument about whether or not they deserve it is just dumb and irrelevant.</p>

46

<p>"i'm pretty sure that the goal of the AA practiced by princeton is not to give minorities an advantage in admissions, but to create racial diversity. So the whole argument about whether or not they deserve it is just dumb and irrelevant."</p>

<p>But why do we need racial diversity at the expense of fairness? Are students who graduate from Caltech (which typically has only 2% black population) less prepared to function in a multicultural society than students who graduate from Princeton (which has close to 9% black population)?</p>

47

<p>"What a narrow minded attitude to think that elite institutions accept students solely based on grades and test scores. How about leadership qualities or other criteria. Are elite insititutions' directives to foster and instruct only people who make the highest test scores?"</p>

<p>No, of course not. Elite schools can pick candidates on many different kind of critiera. It's just that race is not a legitimate criterion.</p>

<p>The trouble is that Asians are accepted at elite schools at a small fraction of the acceptance rate for blacks, and at something like 80% of the white acceptance rate. This is despite the fact that Asians as a group are a stronger academic pool than any other ethnic group, a little stronger than whites on the average, and certainly much stronger than blacks on the average. Unless you are prepared to argue that Asians as a group are seriously deficient in some way that more that cancels out their academic advantage, it's impossible to justify this glaring discrepancy.</p>

<p>In fact, just comparing to other elite colleges, it's hard not to suspect that something is amiss with the Asian admissions process at Princeton. Why is the Asian representation at Princeton (12-13%) so much lower than those at Stanford (25%) or Harvard (18-20%)? These schools practice affirmative action, too. Is Princeton less popular with Asians than other schools? Not to my knowledge. Princeton is in the metro Tri-state area, which has a large Asian American population, and it's hugely popular with Asian students. </p>

<p>The number of highly qualified Asian students have dramatically increased over the past decade or two, while the Asian percentage at Princeton has remained flat. It's hard not to hypothesize that the admissions officers are engaging in racial stereotyping that is perhaps not racist in spirit but clearly in practice. The numerical patterns that emerge over decades do not lie.</p>

<p>"Do you think alot of the world's leaders and influential people had perfect test scores."
No, and they didn't all go to Princeton or other Ivy League schools, either. So let the future leaders go to second-rate schools that they deserve. They will do just fine.</p>

48

<p>A friend of mine that I went to high school with, who is Asian, had superb credentials (by my criteria, so they were extraordinary) and was an extremely talented and creative mathematician. He was doing graduate-level math in high school. He was rejected from Princeton... apparently he was meeting with some Asian student members of the admissions committee who told him that he was too one-sided and fit the stereotypical Asian math geek mold. I don't know if they were in a position of making decisions or just relaying what some of the higher-ups told them. What the ****? If he had been white, they probably would have bent over backwards to recruit him. And besides, he is not a geek at all. He has multiple talents and has a great sense of humor.</p>

<p>He did get into Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, but I thought what happened to him was pretty outrageous, and it was one of the reasons I turned down Princeton when I got in.</p>

49

<p>"My gosh, he got into Yale. I feel so sorry for him."</p>

<p>Of course!! All Yalies richly deserve your sympathy.</p>

50

<p>Another thing about my friend was that he was from a low-income family in Manhattan's Chinatown. I once walked to his house with him after school but didn't go in because it looked so awful from outside. His parents spoke little English and had menial jobs in Chinatown. </p>

<p>Can you imagine what would've happened if he had been a black kid from Harlem? They probably would've done a special feature on him in their official newspaper.</p>

<p>Of course, he doesn't have to be poor. Princeton would still rather pick a black kid with lawyer parents who has mediocre SATs and grades but is popular in school and is the class president. Because he has "leadership qualities". Because that is "social justice" in a very twisted form.</p>

51

<p>You clearly have several misconceptions about how affirmative action works.</p>

<ol>
<li>Race is only a part of the application consideration, and it is by far not the big part.</li>
<li>I don't know where "mediocre" comes from, because AA clearly does not let in underqualified students. That's one of the biggest myths about how AA works.</li>
<li>Do you know how many applicants Princeton gets? I was a poor Asian kid from Manhattan. So was my buddy. Sometimes admissions is a gamble. He goes to Harvard now, I'm at Princeton. We both got into different schools... that's just how it works.</li>
<li>The "Asian student members" committee part of the admissions crew doesn't exist. It's sad that a mere rumor became the deciding factor for you to not go to Princeton.</li>
</ol>

52

<p>It's all fine and good, but at the end of the day you still need to explain two things.....</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Why is the acceptance rate for Asians consistently lower than whites when academically they are better (on the average)? If there is no bias, Asians should be getting in at a higher rate, not lower.</p></li>
<li><p>Why is the percentage of Asians at Princeton consistently lower than those of other elite schools?</p></li>
</ol>

53

<ol>
<li>Because College Admissions in America aren't driven purely by Merit. I agree there is discrimination against Asians but in my few years in the US I've noticed that Caucasians are more sociable than asians are (no offense - I'm an Asian with poor social skills myself). Of course there are outliers every where.</li>
</ol>

54

<p>i agree with medha that asians are sometimes not very good social creatures (I'm an asian myself).</p>

55

<p>Now Ske, these multi-post rants are full of exaggerations and distortions at least as they relate to Princeton. Let’s start at the top. </p>

<p>The percentage Princeton students who are Asian-American is currently between 13% and 14% (for the Class of 2011 it’s 15%) and is nearly identical to the percentage at Yale (which you, not surprisingly, left out of your comparison), Brown and Dartmouth. </p>

<p>Stanford has a much higher percentage at 24% but then so does Berkeley at 41%, UCLA at 38% and USC at 21%. In fact, California, which nearly half of Stanford’s students call home, has an Asian-American population approximately three times the national average. Stanford and all the other California schools receive a much higher percentage of Asian-American applicants than the schools in the northeast so it’s not surprising that they make up a higher percentage of the total student body at each of those schools.</p>

<p>Harvard (your alma mater isn’t it?) is about 18% Asian-American, similar to Penn. Columbia and Cornell are in the middle at about 16% each. All of the Ivies are rather close in this figure and far below the percentages of the California schools both public and private.</p>

<p>Your fabricated story about comments from student members of an Asian-American admissions committee is just ridiculous. As Mzhang23 has pointed out, there is no such group. </p>

<p>Finally, your sneering statements about a “black kid from Harlem” are very inappropriate and verge on displaying the kind of attitude in the writer that you claim to be decrying at Princeton. They certainly are not attitudes found at the Princeton admission office. </p>

<p>Admissions decisions are complex and involve multiple factors. Some are quantifiable while others are not. There will always be disagreements about balancing these many considerations. </p>

<p>While I think that the larger issue is worth discussing, I’ll predict that Li’s complaint will be dismissed if it hasn’t already. (A similar complaint against Harvard a number of years ago was also dismissed.) I also find it ironic that Li decided to attend a university (Yale) that has an ethnic makeup that is almost identical to the one against which he filed his complaint.</p>

56

<p>"Harvard (your alma mater isn’t it?) is about 18% Asian-American, similar to Penn. Columbia and Cornell are in the middle at about 16% each. All of the Ivies are rather close in this figure and far below the percentages of the California schools both public and private."</p>

<p>I'm not sure if I would call it very close. To repeat, Harvard's Asian percentage has been 18-19% while Princeton's has been around 12-13% for a very long time. That's a 50% difference, which I would say is huge.</p>

<p>19.6% of those admitted to the Class of 2011 at Harvard are Asian, and the percentage in the actual class will undoubtedly be over 20% as Asian yields are higher than the general yield.<br>
<a href="http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/04.05/99-admissions.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/04.05/99-admissions.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I'm glad that the percentage at Princeton for the Class of 2011 has risen to 15% but that's still a 5% differential. Or 33% of the percentage itself.</p>

<p>"Admissions decisions are complex and involve multiple factors. Some are quantifiable while others are not. There will always be disagreements about balancing these many considerations."</p>

<p>Very nice handwaiving as usual but it still doesn't explain why Asian acceptance rate at Princeton is just 74% of white acceptance rate and 50% of black acceptance rate when in terms of credentials, it's in the exact opposite order. Nor does it explain why when racial preferences are removed, Asian percentage is projected to increase by 40% while the white percentage will remain virtually unchanged.<br>
<a href="http://misc.vassar.edu/archives/2007/02/daily_princeton.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://misc.vassar.edu/archives/2007/02/daily_princeton.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The Princeton study that Li's lawsuit is based on shows very convincingly that Asians are bearing the brunt of affirmative action at Princeton. You have not been able to come up with a benign explanation for this.</p>

<p>"Your fabricated story about comments from student members of an Asian-American admissions committee is just ridiculous. As Mzhang23 has pointed out, there is no such group."</p>

<p>Maybe you should read what I wrote again. I didn't say that there was a separate committee for Asian Americans, although maybe that's how Mzhang23 understood it to mean. I said some student members of the admissions committee, who were ethnically Asian, told him that he had brains but wasn't cool enough to be at Princeton. Apparently they felt that first-generation immigrant kids from low-income families in Chinatown should've been able to play lacrosse and volunteer at the homeless shelter in their spare time in addition to being a math genius and helping out his parents after school. Very little empathy from your own kind. Actually, I do remember some Asian kids from my college days who claimed that they had never been subject to any kind of disadvantage or discrimination because of their race. Those kinds of people usually think that Asians are just as privileged as whites and expect first-generation Asian immigrants to make room for the "less privileged", ie. African-American kids from upper middle class backgrounds.</p>

57

<p>Ok, let's go over a few basic misconceptions that you still have.</p>

<p>1) There is no student involvement with admissions decisions. I don't know how students could have told him exactly what he was rejected for. It simply doesn't work that way. The only student participation with admissions is either a paper-filing job or becoming an admissions rep and giving info sessions. Thus everything your friend was told seems to be untrue. Admissions officers, not students, make the decisions at Princeton. All decisions are kept confidential from students and undergraduates.</p>

<p>2) Please understand the basics of affirmative action. AA policy is crafted to help universities admit a diverse class, and to help correct past injustices as well as address future societal concerns. AA thus helps under represented minorities the most in college admissions. A lot of Asians don't need help - a combination of family values, self motivation, and good performance means most Asians do just as well as or above average than white students. Don't look at the admissions percentages - look at how many asians out of the general population are making it into top colleges. That's why AA doesn't need to help Asians much. </p>

<p>That said, it's important to note that AA does not discriminate against Asians, or take their spots and give them to "underqualified" blacks. While it certainly doesn't help us, it doesn't hurt us per se. Why so? AA is applied to more than just college - it works for hiring, jobs, etc too. It's also for the greater good - women of all color are actually the group helped most by AA, not URMs as many people think.</p>

<p>Lastly, Li's suit is not likely to hold up because AA only values ethnicity as a small, undetermined component of admissions. There is no percentage score assigned to this factor.</p>

<p>Princeton's asian population is increasing, and while it may still be lower than Harvard's, it's also not that much lower. Harvard has over a 75% admissions yield rate for dual admits to Harvard-Princeton. Ever think that might play a role too? Also, the stories you cite all have Asian kids getting into one good college. You need to remember college admissions is ultimately a crapshoot - having a "perfect" app does not guarantee admission, and applying to a range of good schools and getting into Yale (with about the same population percentage) but not Princeton is a clear sign that AA does not broadly discriminate, Asians are really "hurt" by this policy, and everything you rant about is over-exaggerated.</p>

<p>No, Asians do not bear the brunt of affirmative action at Princeton. Understand how AA works before you throw such accusations around, or maybe you might want to join Mr. Li in his lawsuit and watch your case get thrown out. The bottom line is simply this: AA doesn't help Asians, but the claim that it discriminates against Asians is dubious.</p>

58

<p>1) Perhaps it was not a student but an Asian member of the admissions staff? This was several years ago obviously but I'm pretty sure I have the main story correct. And I would have no difficulty believing it even if he had not been my friend.</p>

<p>2) I don't see how you can in good conscience claim that AA does not hurt Asians when the total number of slots is fixed. If this isn't a zero-sum game, I don't know what is. In fact, didn't the Princeton study explicitly state that Asian percentage would shoot up by 40% if AA is eliminated? Didn't the Asian percentages shoot through the roof at UC campuses when AA was eliminated?</p>

<p>We are talking about AA in college admissions so jobs and hiring, etc. is totally irrelevant here. Even then, federally sponsored AA programs generally target "underrepresented minorities" and in practice do not benefit Asians. I just read about an Asian couple who tried to get a low-interest loan for "minorities" in a southern state, and the loan officer kept on making all kinds of excuses and kept delaying it, until finally he told them that the loans were really meant for blacks. Every advertisement for assistant professorships that appear in academic journals includes a statement about AA and equal opportunity but Asians do not benefit from it. In academia, Asians are well-overrepresented at the lowest levels, but as you go higher, their numbers shrink markedly so that very few Asians are tenured professors or chairs of departments. AA in its present form helps white women immensely, helps blacks and hispanics quite a bit, but it does not help Asians win jobs and promotions in the academia.</p>

<p>3) You don't have to be gathered around the table wearing white hoods with a burning cross in the background to be practicing racial discrmination. When the Department of Education investigated Harvard in the 80s and eventually cleared it of overt discrimination against Asian applicants (rationalizing that the discrepancy could be attributed to smaller percentages of Asians among athletes and legacies), they nevertheless found plenty of evidence of crude stereotypes and unflattering generalizations about Asian applicants written all over application folders and interview notes. Harvard has made an effort to eliminate such problems and since then the Asian percentage has gone from 11% to 20%. Stanford admissions office also conducted an internal review and found subconscious bias against Asians. When two folders containing identical credentials were given Asian or white ethnicity, the admissions officers were more likely to give higher ratings to the white folder, giving higher marks in leadership potential, extracurricular activities, etc. Since then Stanford has conducted an internal assessment periodically. The Asian percentage at Stanford shot up from 15% to 25% in that period. Why are you so sure that Princeton admissions office is not plagued by similar kinds of subtle biases against Asians? Because you are all nice people?</p>

<p>4) Asians do bear the brunt of AA at Princeton. The Princeton study proves it very clearly and I don't see how you can deny what is so plainly obvious.</p>

59

<p>"Your sneering statements about a “black kid from Harlem” are very inappropriate and verge on displaying the kind of attitude in the writer that you claim to be decrying at Princeton. They certainly are not attitudes found at the Princeton admission office."</p>

<p>I was trying to point out the obvious double standard. Chinatown and Harlem are both low-income ethnic ghettos. An Asian kid who succeeds in that kind of suboptimal environment can be brushed aside as an undesirable one-dimentional nerd. A black kid who succeeds in that kind of environment would be showered with praises and will be treated like a small celebrity. Of course, we all know that the vast majority of minority students at Princeton who benefit from AA ("who need help" as you say) are from the middle and upper classes. How many kids from Harlem do you have in your Princeton class of 2011?</p>

60

<p>"maybe you might want to join Mr. Li in his lawsuit and watch your case get thrown out."</p>

<p>Well, I'm too busy to do that but I do wish Mr. Li the best of luck. For the sake of true justice, I hope it doesn't get thrown out but makes it all the way to the Supreme Court. I think the Roberts Court could crush AA for once and for all.</p>