<p>ive read in many books, and also many people have told me, that asians sometimes are expected to have higher standards than others, and being asian works against you</p>
<p>therefore, i have decided that i will leave the ethnicity section blank. Although, my essay is about India, so will they consider me as an Asian officially, or only if I mark down Asian on the ethnicity section?</p>
<p>if colleges really did that, that would be racist.</p>
<p>on the other hand, if you're applying to an affirmative action college, putting down your racial minority could work in your influence.</p>
<p>well its not really racist, I mean they have quotas to meet with minorities and asians are over-represented, so essentially we are competing with each other, who happen to be really smart</p>
<p>It's a myth.</p>
<p>i dont think its a myth</p>
<p>how come top colleges usually have no more than 18% of asians in their student body? top college is the east, not in the west</p>
<p>well asians are GODLY in every way so yeah they should be held to higher standards...i wish i was as godly as asians</p>
<p>not really, everyone's fine the way they are</p>
<p>Ummm... minority status can only be taken into consideration if all other things are equal, legally. The University of Michigan has been fined for treating admissions otherwise, and so has the UC system...</p>
<p>You aren't held to higher standards, not really. Top colleges obviously aren't TOO prejudiced if asians make up a fifth of their students.</p>
<p>actually I remember reading that, prior to proposition 206, Asians needed over 100 points better on the old SAT to get into UC-B and UCLA (and that's compared to whites).</p>
<p>The gap would be even larger if Asians were pitted against other ethnic minorities. Kinda makes you think, doesn't it? Throughout the 19th and the first 60 years of the 20th century, Asians were treated every bit as badly as blacks under Jim Crow (Railroad work assignments with death percentages in the double digits in slave-like conditions for pittance, forced internment and selling everything they owned for pennies on the dollar, immediatly come to mind).</p>
<p>Do they not deserve their compensation simply because they score better on SATs?</p>
<p>What they do behind closed doors in admissions offices is very scary stuff.</p>
<p>i guess there goes a disadvantage for some at being asian.</p>
<p>Ummm... blacks weren't allowed to learn to read... and hundreds of years of psychological warfare (Whites published books on how to turn slaves against each other... offered doctored religions to discourage education...) turned them away from education...</p>
<p>I think that, because asians were not subjected to some of these things the societal pressures against education do not exist in their societies, and they were able to recover from such abuses in a shorter timeframe.</p>
<p>Blacks are suffering from times before the south needed Jim Crow legislation.</p>
<p>Obviously they are simply not suffering from the problem regarding education, so why would they need compensation? </p>
<p>That is, at least, how I understand the colleges' rationalization.</p>
<p>That having been said, I believe that where a top college would accept the top 15% of whites, scoring, say, 1400-1600... they should only accept the top 5% of blacks, scoring 1350-1600. A slight admission would not really lessen the quality of education or a class of students (The SAT is... subject to greatly varied scores, which is what that range under your actual score is telling you. A difference of 100 points could mean the world, or it could mean nothing at all). </p>
<p>I have to question the validity of the SAT at all, really. Studies show that it is a poor benchmark in comparison to GPA, by itself, even without anything to mark grade inflation .etc.</p>
<p>Point 1: Universities DO use the SAT to measure students so what you say is tangential at best, irrelevant at worst.</p>
<p>As to the rest, I'll take the bait. </p>
<p>I agree there's a long standing cultural indifference in regard to education in Black Communities (please note, however, that I'm fairly certain they're allowed to learn to read today).</p>
<p>How, then, does putting by-definition less qualified students (with distinguishing physical characteristics so people know who they are no less) in a room where they are behind the eight ball from day one helping them?</p>
<p>Also, make no mistake, if you beleive that race is only a small factor in admissions (you suggest a 50 point SAT bump), you're only lying to yourself. You might want to reexamine some stats.</p>
<p>So I ask: if affirmative action is cutting Black indifference to education, why is it still required in the exact same dosage 30 years after its initial implementation to get get the same ratio of minority students? If affirmative action is cutting indifference to learning in the students it accepts, why is it still required in grad school. Why is it required in post grad-school fellowships? Why is required in public contracts?</p>
<p>Suggesting a change is irrelevant?</p>
<p>I was only pointing out where the difference came from. Societies do not change overnight and whether you believe it or not the forces behind Jim Crow laws could be said to have had a negative effect on blacks possibly up to the 1960s, a very short while ago (Only a few generations).</p>
<p>I was arguing that the SAT cannot sort students by quality very well, not even in the first year of college, as it says it can. The UC system rated the SAT's accuracy at only 12%, as compared to 20% for HS GPA. Neither figure is accurate, by itself, but what is more surprising that the addition of the SAT only raises the second figure to 20.01%, a neglible difference. I suggested that a bump might not affect quality at all because of how the SAT basically read the same within certain ranges, even if you consider it to be accurate (Other studies have marked it as low as 4%). I also mentioned that GPAs should be weighed more, because they are more telling (They are the most accurate indicator of success, despite their own weak accuracy).</p>
<p>SAT differences often do not signify much, if anything, in cases where GPAs are similar.</p>
<p>I think the politics behind the AA are interesting, and the ineffectiveness of it is even more intriguing. I think that it would be effective, if some other things were addressed before its implementation.</p>
<p>I believe the problem lies in the lack of true integration in our society. White societies and black societies are mostly isolated. Blacks and whites seldom mix in neighborhoods because of the policies of private realtors, or in any significant ratio in schools due to longstanding practices of gerrymandering. Schools are more likely to be underfunded and overcrowded when they are majority black. There is a lack of opportunity that cannot be argued. Of course, the case can be made that these conditions sometimes exist for other races, in similar percentages in some cases, but when you cite members of those races that still prosper you have to realize that some blacks prosper under this adversity as well. I think colleges simply recognize this as a soft quality, when applicable. I doubt that you will be forgiven a 50-point difference if you come from a private institution, but, if you came from Crispus Attucks High then you probably worked a lot harder for it, and have no reason to stop working in college (These considerations exist for all races, but are more common for blacks, which may be why it looks a tad more disproportionate than it is). Of course, I am not an admissions officer and can only hypothesize.</p>
<p>The media plays an interesting role as well, I think. Too often blacks on TV are manifestations of a modern day minstrel show.</p>
<p>they should only accept the top 5% of blacks, scoring 1350-1600. </p>
<p>This is less than the top 1% of blacks. If you check some of my back posts, I've posted stats from the College Board (which unfortunately no longer keeps these stats on their boards) indicating the very low numbers of African Americans who get scores as high as you listed.</p>
<p>About 2 years ago, for instance, only about 72 blacks scored above 1500 on the SAT in the US in an entire year. Tens of thousands of whites did this.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, places like Harvard say that students who score at least 1200 on the old SAT have the capability of graduating from Harvard. That's why Harvard's bottom level score for (old) SAT acceptance was about 1200. Few students get in with scores that low, and probably most of those are highly recruited students like stellar athletes, large donors' kids, and some some URMs and students of all races who have risen above major disadvantages.</p>
<p>I agree with Aeggie's points.</p>
<p>haha, no ones really answered my question...</p>
<p>if you're indian, leave the box blank. Unfortunately, you are at a disadvantage if you are asian. Let's face it, colleges hold Asian's to a higher standard than any other race (except for caucasians in some places). Although its pretty much a giveaway if you write your essay about india.</p>
<p>Indians are considered Asians by colleges that practice that sort of thing. If you want to hide your race, change your essay, because they're smart enough to figure it out. They might not consider it "officially" but they might act on it all the same.</p>
<p>However, I do not think the problem is that severe at this point... enough schools have been hit with lawsuits and lost for those practices to have been seriously reduced. It might hurt your chances, but I doubt it'd be anything more than a slight change. That having been said (<--- catchphrase!), I am not an admissions officer and can't tell you for sure. My aunt is on admissions for Notre Dame, so I'll ask her the next time I talk to her.</p>
<p>That stat is sad, Northstar, but it makes me feel a little better about my score at least... I have the serious problem of a GPA gap (Now isn't that ironic... 4.0 so far, this semester, 5/7 AP, so at least I CAN do it, even if I haven't and should've) in relation to my score though.</p>
<p>
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Indians are considered Asians by colleges that practice that sort of thing.
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<p>That's because Indians are Asians. India is in the southern part of Asia.</p>
<p>Subcontinent.</p>
<p>I know some Indian kids and not all of them consider themselves asian. I don't know what India, as a country, has to say about it, however.</p>