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<p>Seems clear to me that you think non-STEM courses/majors are easier. </p>
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<p>How do you know this?</p>
<p>VOR, I never mentioned Asians. I was talking about numbers not being the be all and end all. They aren’t. </p>
<p>Otherwise my friend’s jewish kid would have gotten into the school. </p>
<p>The school has plenty of applicants with high numbers. </p>
<p>I don’t know why Asians are not more represented. </p>
<p><a href=“College admits 2,029 – Harvard Gazette”>http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/03/college-admits-2029-5-8-percent-of-applicants/</a></p>
<p>Things stand out to me in the article to me…</p>
<ol>
<li><p>There are a lot of white students at the school. </p></li>
<li><p>There are a list of professors on the admissions committee. What do they know about admission policies?</p></li>
<li><p>There is still a shocking amount of students from wealthy families at the school.</p></li>
<li><p>How does taking students from different geographic areas impact the amount of Asians at the school?</p></li>
<li><p>What percentage of the student body are legacies? Athletes? Percentage of athletes who are Asian at the school?</p></li>
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<p>OHMomof2 Read Richard Sander’s Mismatch which refers to many studies about achievement and college majors. Also from personal experience. I have 3 undergraduate degrees, in math, economics, and child developmental psychology. My worst GPA was in math (3.4), then economics (3.6) and best in psychology (3.8). I studied the hardest in math and least in psychology. For every hour I studied in psych, I studied 3 hours in math.</p>
<p>Try to take a math test without studying, it’s impossible. Then try to write a psych paper on any topic without studying, you can do it, you can do it although it will not be the best. That is the difference in getting an “F” and passing the course. </p>
<p>dstark I agree that numbers by themselves are not the end all, but they are a great starting point. My issue has to do with the continual reduction of Asian American accomplishments to being robotic, study drones etc, when the same accomplishments are praised if they are achieved by URM and Whites. </p>
<p>When you are told that an Asian American scored 2300 SAT, what is your immediate impression? Then think about if that same score is achieved by an African American, Hispanic American, or White student. Is there a different view of the same achievement? If so, why do you think?</p>
<p>My immediate impression is not race .</p>
<p>I don’t know the answer to is there a different view. That is a slightly different issue than caps.</p>
<p>The 46 percent number bugs me. Are 46 percent of Asians qualified for all the openings? Then 19 percent looks low. Is it 46 percent of 50 percent of the spots and zero percent chance on the rest? Then 19 percent is a little off.</p>
<p>Somebody just started a legacy thread. Legacies take up about 12 percent of the spots and they are admitted at a 30 percent rates. This is a small inpact, but this cuts spots down for Asians . </p>
<p>Looking at the numbers, I dont think the problem for Asians is too many African Americans or Hispanics students. </p>
<p>I love this timing. Somebody started a legacy thread in the parents forum. </p>
<p>I just posted this…</p>
<p><a href=“Legacy Kids Have an Admissions Advantage”>Legacy Kids Have an Admissions Advantage;
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<p>Your anecdotal evidence is fascinating, of course, but I have a child who is the complete opposite. Math is easy and she breezes through it, writing (especially creative writing, shudder) is an hours-long despised chore. Her grades are always better in math and science, she’ll take AP Calc over Psych any day of the week. She always doubles up on math and science courses. She routinely takes math exams without studying - she learned what she needed to when she heard it the first time, in class.</p>
<p>Which proves about as much as your experience does - nothing. People are different.</p>
<p>Anecdotes aside, I still don’t see how you know the bottom of the Harvard class is made up of URMs. Is there some study comparing Harvard student GPAs out there that I am not aware of?</p>
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<p>Hmm. There are your quotas?</p>
<p>OHMomof2 Is your daughter in college? I doubt that she could take college math without studying especially upper level courses without studying. If you are talking about high school, I was the same way. If you daughter takes that approach in college, she will have a rude awakening.</p>
<p>Everyone knows STEM gets harder in college and humanities and languages get easier…right? Try taking art history or Sanskrit in college and showing up for the exam without studying and let me know how that goes. </p>
<p>Anyway.</p>
<p>I still don’t see how you know the bottom of the Harvard class is made up of URMs. Is there some study comparing Harvard student GPAs out there that I am not aware of? </p>
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<p>DS, do not let the 46 percent bug you. Unless demonstrated to be more complex through access to the data used by Sander and Uppala, it appears to be an estimate of the percentage of Asian-Americans applying to Harvard with a SAT above 2200. Nothing more and nothing less, and absolutely not a proxy for what Harvard considers qualifications or high qualifications. The only misleading part of the 45 percent is what I have described as the elevation in the plaintiff’s claims. </p>
<p>And as far as the SAT range of qualifications, since we HAVE to assume that Harvard accepts students it deems qualified, the range of SAT is not solely above 2200 but ranges from multiples of 800 all the way down to between 400 and 500. Fwiw, three scores of 500 do not indicate a 1500 bottom range as there is a high chance to have angular scores such as 800M 500R 650W or 500M 800R 800W. </p>
<p>OHMom We’ve had this conversation before with you concerning Dartmouth students the same applies to Harvard. Check out Princeton Prof. Espenshade’s research of Asian achievement compared to other ethnicity.</p>
<p>So I take from you example that you were talking about how easy math and sciences were about your high school daughter and not your college daughter.</p>
<p>As to your other comment about art history and Sanskrit, I’ll pass, it’s getting silly.</p>
<p>xiggi There you go again. Please add 800 W+500 M+ 800 R does that equal over 2200?</p>
<p>I still don’t see how you know the bottom of the Harvard class is made up of URMs. Is there some study comparing Harvard student GPAs out there that I am not aware of? </p>
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<p>Yes. She also scored higher on her SAT than the Harvard average we’ve been throwing around, and that is no thanks to her reading score. </p>
<p>I don’t know how hard she will find her college courses in math and science vs literature, history or language, I don’t see why they’d suddenly reverse themselves but I’ll refrain from making a judgement until she has some experience.</p>
<p>Which brings me to…I still don’t see how you know the bottom of the Harvard class is made up of URMs. Is there some study comparing Harvard student GPAs out there that I am not aware of? </p>
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<p>I doubt that many here will be interested to dig deep into the research of Sander, but here is a brief summary of the wide ranging critcism his articles have generated. </p>
<p><a href=“http://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/fisher_amicus_final_8-13-12.pdf”>http://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/fisher_amicus_final_8-13-12.pdf</a></p>
<p>And a media analysis of the Stanford Review article:
<a href=“Debunking the debunker of affirmative action.”>http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2005/04/sanding_down_sander.html</a></p>
<p>And of Mismatch
<a href=“A High Target for "Mismatch": Bogus Arguments about Affirmative Action | Los Angeles Review of Books”>A High Target for "Mismatch": Bogus Arguments about Affirmative Action | Los Angeles Review of Books;
<p>And to balance the negative opinion, there is this:
<a href=“Richard D. Kahlenberg Reviews "Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It" | The New Republic”>http://www.newrepublic.com/book/review/mismatch-affirmative-action-fisher-university-texas</a></p>
<p>Richard D. Kahlenberg is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and has contributed to the issues discussed herein. The Century Foundation is, of course, known for the seminal work of Carnevale and Rose on SES inequalities among the top 230 schools in the country. Both voices deserve to be heard!</p>
<p>All in all, this is not unusual in academic research, but there is a relevance to the discussion about the source of the 46 percent and its use in the Harvard lawsuit. As noted earlier, the study/research seems to be an unpublished and unvetted study that probably will suffer a similar fate than the previous work that has been debunked by scholars with extensive knowledge of the issues. </p>
<p>.</p>
<p>I read the Atlantic article about it just now, didn’t see anything about Harvard students having low GPAs. Even if one agrees with his findings, which seems not to be the case, I can’t see how they’d apply to Harvard which is hardly scraping the bottom of the barrel to get any student. I’d say all it accepts of every race are well qualified and its grad rate would seem to bear that out.</p>
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<p>Was it supposed to add to 2200? It was an illustration of the possible 500 scores not meaning that they necessarily add to 1500. </p>
<p>Why make such efforts to find faults in everything without trying to follow an argument as it was … written? By the way, have you been able to find anything that will make the 46 % quoted number verifiable, and found anything that would make such number a proxy for qualified students? </p>
<p>I do not think you --or anyone for that matter-- would be able to, but I just wanted to make sure I did not miss your rebuttal on that simple fact. Or am I confusing you once more with ambiguity? </p>
<p>OHMom and VoR: The implications of STEM v non-STEM majors also spill over to competitive professional school admissions. During medical school interviews, I was asked about every detail of my application. I majored in Biochemistry with a double minor in English (poetry) and History. At my school, at the time, this was a common thing to do–major in a science to fulfill all the requirements but take lots of non-STEM courses to boost the overall GPA. During my med school interviews, I was accused of shying away from the harder courses by taking English and History classes instead of attempting to minor in an engineering degree. I responded that even if I wanted that, this was not possible at Cornell considering that I was in the Arts and Sciences school and there exists a separate Engineering school. My Asian classmates also were accused of similar things and we considered discriminatory treatment like this par for the course. Meanwhile, my URM classmates were lauded for majoring in supposedly unconventional courses like English and Communications because, according to the interviewer, there were too many science majors! So when Asians show English majors and minors, we were accused of taking the easy way out while if URMs showed the same majors, they were praised. </p>
<p>I can’t speak for current practices but during my application cycle, at my school, in the case of every Asian matriculant during my year, being a non-STEM major was a deal-breaker and enough of an excuse to reject Asians. I would say this is a case of Affirmative Action driving Asians towards STEM majors or risk being ridiculed and excluded during medical school admissions time. Do I think times have changed since my application cycle? My nephew (and his classmates) was asked similar questions during his cycle and he went through it last year. Is it possible that this was isolated 39 cases (17 Asians during my cycle and 22 during my nephews)? Sure. I suppose it is theoretically possible to flip a fair coin and land tails 39 times in a row. </p>
<p>Gee I wonder if Law Schools fault students who took too much math and didn’t spend enough time on philosophy or history? </p>
<p>Consider the possibility that your professional school admissions folks looking for more science courses because it was a science-based professional program, not because science classes are so much harder than anything else.</p>
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<p>xiggi really has no sense of shame whatsoever. I don’t know what “strawmen arguments” he is referring to when (1) he acknowledges that I did not straw man him when I “recited” his positions and (2) he frequently accuses me of being a racial supremacist without anything to back it up.</p>
<p>As for “constantly moving the goalposts,” again, the lack of shame here is stunning. xiggi bluffs about being able to easily “recite” my positions, yet when the bluff is called, xiggi can only deflect by (1) saying that he doesn’t want to “copy and paste” my posting history, (2) arrogantly “suggesting” that I change my tone while he keeps his tone unchanged, or (3) praying that no one realizes that the post he points everyone to is the source of the bluff to begin with.</p>
<p>xiggi, you mentioned Richard D. Kahlenberg. His vision of affirmative action is quite different than most. He doesn’t think race-based affirmative action is fair but would concede it as a necessary entity if the only other choice was admissions based on grades and test scores alone. I find it interesting that he finds race-based preferences unfair, doesn’t claim grades/testing is unfair but would still prefer the race-based efforts given a choice of two “evils” for the sole sake of achieving diversity. Accepting unfairness for the sake of diversity…</p>