I’m asian. My parents came to America without a penny. My dad, while working working overtime to pay the mortgage and put food on the table when my mom injured her neck as a seamstress, injured his back too. Now he has been disabled from work for over a decade. My mom has since recovered and is working again to support the family alone. My parents can’t speak english. I grew up in a relatively dangerous neighborhood, and attended a dangerous and crappy public middle school/high school. We’re still pretty poor, and must spend our very limited money on what we need and never what we want. How the hell was I given an unfair advantage because of my ethnicity?</p>
<p>And this is not a special case. Most first and second generation asians started from scratch, and grew up in poor and dangerous neighborhoods.</p>
<p>And even if i were white, what advantage would i have over blacks and hispanics in 2013 ( we’re no longer in the 1960’s now)? If I were white and grew up in a poor and dangerous neighborhood, why should blacks have advantages over me in college admissions? </p>
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<p>And why wouldn’t it be true? What advantage do I as an Asian have over blacks and Hispanics? Asians came to this country without a lick of English or pennies in their pockets, and now make up huge percentages at top universities. They also make the highest incomes. So why wouldn’t it be true?</p>
<p>You wouldn’t have to worry about being pulled over for driving in an area police think you shouldn’t be. You’ve probably never been followed around a store because the owner or security thinks you are there to steal. You likely wouldn’t be turned down for a job or housing because your name sounds black or hispanic. You wouldn’t be raised in a culture where 1/3 of the men are in or have been or will go to prison (and all the negatives that come with that in terms of employment, being able to vote or serve on a jury), or have to know that you are far more likely to be arrested, convicted and even put to death for a crime than you would if you were white. If your family were white and here for a couple of generations they might have benefited from some of the huge social welfare programs that gave the previous (largely white) generation a leg up - FHA housing support, the GI Bill, before that New Deal programs like social security, and passed on those benefits to you.</p>
<p>Being Asian you share some of these “unfairnesses” too, though not as many.</p>
<p>black last names= white last names. It’s really hard to take someone whose name is “shanannnaique” or “moniqelephanaitasha” seriously - black or white. </p>
<p>Most of those times that black or hispanics are arrested, they deserved it. I grew up with black and hispanic kids in my crappy middle and high schools, and they were bullies. They are so disrespectful and if someone broke the rules (falsely pulled the fire alarm, lock the teacher out when she left the room, etc) , 9 times out of 10, it was a black person. 1 time out of 10, they were hispanic. If i so much as look at them for over a second, they would get angry and yell at me. They got into fist fights with one another daily. Nonetheless, how do these things have to do with college admission? Why can’t they just pick up a freaking SAT prep book and study hard like the rest of us have to ?</p>
<p>Annoy- You seem angry.
My daughter did pick up the SAT test book and scored 2340 and she is AA and did none of the things you mention in your post. She also attends a top 10 college. Being from California I have seen many Asian kids that fit your stereotype.</p>
<p>I think we need to shut this down. It’s getting non productive. Just the fact that people cannot seem to talk about race in a productive dialogue in this country means we have a long way to go still. Sad.</p>
<p>You are arguing that that because of AA, minorities will have an easier life than you will enjoy. AA can be helpful, but it does not come close to evening the playing field. The hard fact is that non minorities will continue to have a much easier life than any minority, regardless of AA. Recognize that as a non minority, you already have a huge advantage. Asking to do away with AA would make your advantage even greater. That sounds greedy to me.</p>
<p>I think the reason why I used to think AA was unfair and why a lot of people do is because there’s sort of a logical gap when trying to explain what a college is looking for in an applicant. What I mean is, people tend to look at rankings and then at top schools and make the assumption that top schools only want the best “qualified” students because they are the top schools. But the reality is that each school has its own specific mission, and they build a class around that mission. And I think this is reasonable, because a school that only has the best students (however you measure that) would actually be pretty awful (Imagine if the top school literally had the smartest 3,000 people and then the next school had the next however many smartest people, and this continued down the list until the very bottom).</p>
<p>Also I see way too many people making this absurd assumption that if they get into school X, then they will end up being Y. The reality is that the people who got into school X were already Y, and it wasn’t really the school that “made” them Y. If you believe that you are hardworking, smart, etc. - whatever attributes you define as being crucial to success - it doesn’t really matter where you end up going, because it’s those attributes that will make you successful, not the school.</p>
<p>Wait, am I having deja vu? We are back to stereotyping minorities as less competent? And saying they get into colleges on low scores to make the school look good or [some of the things said in recent posts and throughout this thread?]</p>
<p>From IME, working at an elite, I can tell you that they don’t get in “because” they are URM or poor or someone has a social mission, despite low scores and some lackluster record.</p>
<p>These kids you so easily assume are less worthy are taking on challenges in ways that leave more ordinary achievers in.the.dust. Challenging themselves, taking on responsibilities in school and in their communities (not the annoying stereotype that they are limited to babysitting siblings,) achieving, having impact. And it comes through in their apps. Even if you have an anecdote about some kid’s surprising admit, you really don’t know what adcoms look for in an individual and how they react.</p>
<p>Annoyinggirl, if you hope for a competitive college, it may help to think about your words, understand just what they convey, and self-edit. It’s not amusing.</p>
<p>This explains why first- and second-generation African and Caribbean Americans are so vastly “overrepresented” at elites relative to their proportion of all black Americans, right?</p>
<p>Our immigration policies in recent times do favor the educated so it is not surprising that their kids are more likely to do well educationally. Caribbean, African, Asian…any group but political refugees, I’d think.</p>
<p>F’s question rests on an assumption- and a certain style of delivery. I rail against many assumptions. And styles that make it seem just so obvious one is right.
Some here should claim when they’re just dishing out opinions.</p>
<p>I review for an elite. F hasn’t ever believed what I say about their apps. Or that we don’t take kids who don’t stand a chance of thriving here.</p>
<p>Exactly. It isn’t surprising that they are more likely to do well educationally. But it would be very surprising if these children of well-educated professional immigrants “are taking on challenges in ways that leave more ordinary achievers in.the.dust.”</p>
<p>I made it clear in the former thread that I refer to US kids. And that I actually read these apps, that we look for far more than stats and race/ethnicity. The whole issue of African continent kids has its own set of considerations. And Caribbeans and Puerto Ricans can face an additional hurdle. </p>
<p>The link refers to a study, not facts about how adcoms work. That’s my last comment to Fabrizio, for another couple of years.</p>
<p>And I clearly referred to these students as “first- and second-generation African or Caribbean Americans.”</p>
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<p>The fact is that in 1999, first- and second-generation African or Caribbean Americans were “overrepresented,” relative to their proportion of black Americans aged eighteen or nineteen, by nearly 300% at the “ten most selective” universities and by over 300% at the Ivy Leagues. If you don’t want to explain why that is, that’s your right. It’s my right to call you out when you try to pass boilerplate as inside knowledge.</p>
<p>Whites and Asians are over represented relative to their population too.</p>
<p>Perhaps that is because like Caribbean and African 1st gen immigrants, they also enjoy an advantage that makes them more competitive applicants with higher scores, grades, rigor, etc etc?</p>
<p>Have you ever heard of Coursera, that company that offers online courses through some of the US’s top universities (MIT, Stanford, Duke, etc.)? They have online courses (with lectures, tests, etc.) on subjects ranging from computer science to engineering to history and more. There are no hurdles to jump over to take a course through Coursera: The classes are free and you just sign up and do the work. Recently, a friend heard one of the founders of this company speak and she gave some statistics and some anecdotes about the people who have taken these courses. And guess what? Some of the people taking these classes (again, offered by some of the country’s most elite and most difficult-to-get-into institutions) were people who, because of life circumstance, barely graduated high school. Yet they can do the work. In this country we make so much out of how selective a college is. But there are likely plenty of people who, if given the chance to study and do the work, could flourish and do well at those schools, too. Trouble is, life circumstance, poverty, etc. gets in the way.</p>
<p>Asians are “overrepresented,” but whites are “underrepresented.”</p>
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<p>That’s what I think, and so I would be very skeptical that these students “are taking on challenges in ways that leave more ordinary achievers in.the.dust.”</p>
Your daughter would have ended up in the same place with or without AA. She would have gotten there with a 2340 even if she were white. </p>
<p>Umm to all the people who say I’m racist blah blah blah, and that im angry because i think minorities would have a better life because AA is not true. I think it’s INEFFECTIVE. For example, to the guy whose daughter got a 2340 SAT and attends a top 10, she would have gotten there anyway with that score. But because of AA, people would think that she got in only because of AA. It actually works against minorities, while being unfair to asians and whites. So how is AA not reverse discrimination? </p>
<p>I actually have many hispanic friends and a few black friends, so no i’m not racist. I actually would like to see them get up there with the whites and the asians, so that their culture could transform. But i don’t think AA is the way to do it. AA was supposed to be a band aid to get more minorities to universities that were once opened to only whites. Now it’s used as an ineffective permanent solution.</p>