<p>I don’t want to harp on this, but no college simply says, “Well, we’d like to have more of [insert group], so let’s just accept more of them no matter what their qualifications are.” Again, you’re assuming that there are qualified Asian applicants that are rejected in favor of less qualified white applicants, but that may or not be the case–especially when you consider that “qualifications” may include things like legacy, athletic recruiting, and likely major. One anecdote doesn’t disprove this, although it does justify questioning it.</p>
<p>Another possibility that just occurred to me is that W&L might practice yield protection by rejecting (or waitlisting) applicants that it thinks are very unlikely to matriculate.</p>
<p>Again, I’m not saying that you don’t have a right to be suspicious. I’m just pointing out that it’s complicated, and that you’d need a lot more data to really understand what’s happening.</p>
<p>@Hunt I agree with you about accepting qualified minority applicants, but not with the rest of your comments. Obviously every qualified applicant to W&L is not accepted. This is the nature of “holistic” admissions. But one would hope that similarly qualified applicants would be accepted at similar acceptance rates. </p>
<p>Although I do not know the exact qualifications of every single applicant, I do know the general qualifications of different ethnicity. Which is why I gave W&L a pass on Black and Hispanic acceptance rates. There are few Blacks and Hispanics with the type of test scores required for admission into W&L. So wrongly or rightly, I am making an educated use of data to formulate my inquiry. I believe my assumptions are correct but I am willing to change my view point upon seeing data that rebuts my assumptions.</p>
<p>As to my use of a female Asian student who had outstanding academic credentials, it was to show there are quality Asian applicants who were rejected. Does one example of such a student mean that W&L is discriminating against Asians? I believe the short answer is “NO”, but when a school claims to embrace diversity and chooses to not accept students like the example AND has an acceptance rate of Asians that is a third of Whites AND has an overall Asian student population of 3% AND has a history of discrimination in the past AND has a White population over 85% AND has never enrolled more than 60 URM students in any freshman class AND each year every change in the number of one ethnic groups enrollment is at the cost of another ethnic group while White enrollment is held steady.</p>
<p>That is when I see the Admission office at W&L as discriminatory/bias against at least Asians. </p>
<p>BTW this year, I know of a male Asian American student who had similar stats as last year’s female applicant who was also denied admission. He ran track (sub 5 mile) and cross country (17:30 5K) had various ECs, took most of his courses in AP and Honors and went to a top state high school where the average student’s SAT is over 1900 and to show interest, he visited the school. </p>
<p>The reality is that W&L is accepting Asian applicants but only of the highest quality so high in fact that they qualify and win the Johnson Scholarship. The other Asian applicants who have the qualification to be admitted if they were White, they are being denied in groves. </p>
<p>If W&L had acceptance rates that were reversed where URM accepted at 35% and Whites at 10% there would be bonfires on its campus with parents of those rejected going to the school in bus loads. I hope you are right that the data can be explained without discriminatory intent but I doubt it. You are a fair minded individual and you are having a difficult time giving reasonable explanations but require that you assume a great deal about the applicant quality that is counter to the general population of students. </p>
<p>If you think that’s the case, WHY do you think that’s the case? Remember, in the days of discrimination against Jews at some schools, the presidents of those schools were very explicit in saying that they didn’t like Jews, too many of them would scare off the WASPs, etc. In other words, the smoking gun was indeed smoking. Do you have any evidence that current adcoms feel that same way about Asians? What quotes tell you that? </p>
<p>I say the college admission process is fine as is. At the top it is a bit too competitive but there is nothing that could possibly change that. I feel as if racial diversity is important in a learning environment. I went from going to school in an all white town with only white friends to a magnet school with a lot of diversity. The diversity was definitely made the experience of high school much better and I assume that would be the same case in college. </p>
<p>@ooohcollege
So what makes you say that 45% white and 20% Asian is more diverse than 30-35% of each? Because compare mit (which uses affirmative action) and caltech and that’s the difference among two peer tech schools </p>
<p>Its more diverse because Asians make up 5% of the US population and Whites make up 70%. Asians already get so many spots compared to their population. You do not see white people complaining that they make up 14 times the population that Asians but only double the top college admissions. That 45% white comes from all over the country from very different places. That consists of different upbringing, values, and ideas. That 20% asian is often times very concentrated. That is not a bad thing but it doesn’t add as much diversity and culture to a campus.</p>
<p>One thing people forget is that the US Asian population is very concentrated geographically - 50% in California. As private colleges seek diversity, they can’t “over pull” from any other state. This affects Jews too but to a more limited extent. </p>
<p>Voiceofreason…why and how can you assume the asian applicant pool is <em>like</em> other asian applicant pools at other selective schools? Since we are assuming, how about the Asian applicant pool at WL is NOT superior and on par with more elite schools? Maybe that is why the admit rate isn’t as high as you think it should be. As. A whole, here on CC, I don’t see a lot of high stat kids itching to get into W L</p>
<p>@GA2012MOM Well my initial assumption was that W&L had a lower quality of Asian applicants to Whites because of many things stated on this thread by @Hunt. However, the tipping point was when I discovered that Asian students represented over 10% of Johnson Scholars which is given to the top 9% of enrolled students and to the top 2% of all applicants. This would indicate that very high achieving Asian students were applying to W&L. And given that any applicant to a competitive scholarship has no idea if they will win, many high stat kids will apply who are not awarded the Johnson scholarship this would include Asian students. The average SAT for Johnson Scholars is about 2300. The average SAT for W&L is about 2100. So it is fair to assume that there were Asian students who applied for the Johnson Scholarship who had at least the average SAT of W&L who did not win the scholarship. </p>
<p>So, the high percentage of Asians winning the Johnson indicates that the Asian applicant pool is of high caliber, but even with such high quality Asian applicants applying, in 2012, only 9.7% of Asian applicants were accepted. Compare this with Black and Hispanic acceptance rates of 6.4% and 7.5%, respectively. Asian and other URM acceptance rates are very similar but the number and percentage of Johnson winners who were Hispanic and Black is no where near the level of the Asian student.</p>
<p>White acceptance rate in 2012 was 34.5%. Being URM applicant is a serious handicap based upon the acceptance rate numbers, but not a handicap for Asian students who are allowed to compete for the Johnson Scholarship.</p>
<p>@scholarme I agree. I would like to see fair assessment in admissions. I would almost go as far as schools should just go to a lottery system if a student meets the schools minimum entry qualifications.</p>
<p>@GMTplus7 your taking that sentence out of context. I was saying that asians are very represented in these schools compared to their population. My conclusion on diversity is that since asians live in very concentrated areas of other asians, accepting more of them will not increase the amount of diversity (culture, upbringing, values) in a school. Diversity is highly sought after by these top schools. A school is diverse when you take people from all different types upbringing and bring them to grow together at college. </p>
<p>@voiceofreason66 Im saying that a bunch of asians who live in the same places will bring less diversity than people from different parts of the country. They are not all the same but they will have a lot of similarities between each other. If they were more spread out throughout the country then you could probably make a case for increasing their percentage in top colleges in a name of increased diversity.</p>
<p>Everything is conjecture unless you know the full stats of the people who applied. And you can’t. You have an anecdote about a highly qualified Asian-American female who got rejected. You have stats indicating that Asian-Americans and other minorities are accepted at much lower rates than whites.</p>
<p>The pool is too small and the information too scant to judge what is happening at W&L.</p>
<p>I’m glad you cleared that up for me, since white people don’t “live in very concentrated areas of other” white people; black people don’t “live in very concentrated areas of other” black people; and hispanic people don’t “live in very concentrated areas of other” hispanic people…</p>
<p>@gmtplus7 The difference is that 50% of the white black, and hispanic population don’t live in california. The problem isn’t that asians are living amongst other asians as many other racial groups tend to do, but that their population is in only certain parts of the country. If all the applicants are from the same place, it will yield less diversity. If all the white people in the US lived in only NY then I would say that their admission percentage should be less in the name of diversity. Colleges want racial diversity as well as geographical diversity. Taking a very high percentage of your applicants from California will not yield very much diversity.</p>
<p>@rhandco I believe the information/evidence is sufficient to show to that there is likely discrimination/bias toward Asian American applicants and places the burden on W&L to produce information to refute the data. </p>
<p>What specific information do you require to convince you? The full stats of every single applicant who applied to W&L? For how many years? One? Two? Thirty??</p>
<p>Do you really believe there are only two types of Asian students who apply to W&L; the super high achievers worthy of the Johnson Scholarship and low achievers who have no chance of getting accepted to W&L because that is the only way to explain the data. So for some mysterious reason Asian students who meet the middle of W&L’s student profile just happened not to apply to W&L. Do you really believe that is the case with a top 20 LAC?</p>
<p>If you do I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.</p>