Its not like asians get no admissions to top colleges. They represent like 20% of the ivy league.
When schools have single digit admission rates, it means that many many very qualified students will be denied. And of course those who don’t meet admissions expectations will be denied. Just because ,for example, 40% of an applicant pool is comprised of ORMs, that does not mean that the entering class should be 40% ORM.
I had initially responded thus to this statement …
“Assuming that each racial group is, on average, equally qualified, you’d expect, say, 20% of all Asian applicants, 20% of all Hispanic applicants, 20% of all White applicants, etc. to be admitted. Even accounting for affirmative action, Asians and whites should be admitted at similar rates, lower than those of URMs. This is NOT the case.”
And i said - "So maybe they’re not equally qualified. So? "
My statement was not that Asians weren’t equally qualified … It was challenging the assumption that “each racial group is, on average, equally qualified.” Maybe some groups aren’t as qualified but the college wants to ensure a certain level of diversity. Private colleges get to do that as they see fit.
“Pizzagirl You realize that any admission system will inevitably exclude one group or individual over another when there is limited space available. So in your hypothetical, the answer is Yes, if you decide to favor Idaho kids in favor of Massachusetts kids, then Massachusetts kids will take the brunt of it.”
Do MA kids have a case that they are “being discriminated against”? Should the college move to correct that? So if a school is trying to be a national school, and 90% of apps come from MA, does that obligate them to make 90% of the admittees from MA? Can they have an institutional goal of, let’s say, we want 30% of our students from out of state?
Yes MA kids do have a case that they are being discriminated, but since being from MA is not a protected class, this sort of discrimination is not against the law. However, if colleges discriminate against people of protected class, then that is against the LAW.
Pizzagirl If these colleges decided to single out Blacks in its admission policy and lower its admission rate of Blacks by discriminating against Blacks in the admission process would that be allowable under the law? Of course not!!! Then why is it OK to discriminate against Asians who are a smaller minority group.
oohcollege That is what the racist Southerners said when they passed “equal but separate laws” in the South.
epiphany stated “One day, perhaps far into the future, Asian American families in this country will begin to understand that they have never had a monopoly on “advancement through education,” not to mention hard work. Plenty of Caucasian American families have always pulled all the stops out for education”
REALLY that is what you understand about the posts talking about Asian discrimination? First no one stated any such thing. Second, the issue is not that ALL Whites don’t work hard, but that when equally qualified Asians are pitted against those from other races, they are not being admitted at similar rates in the college admission process.
Washington and Lee is my example because the one thing that colleges have stated for giving preferential treatment to lower qualified students and the nod over a better qualified student has been the colleges desire to “diversify” its campus. (See Pizzagirl comment above) W&L is over 85%+ White. W&L has no reason to give Whites the preferential treatment over URM and especially better qualified Asians.
Asian Americans seek just fair treatment in the admission process, isn’t that the American Way? Or does it apply only to every other Racial group except Asians?
You could argue that these colleges do this now, since they admit fewer black students than their share of the population in the US.
Yes I know…you will say that the lower # of Black admits means they don’t deserve to be there in large numbers because of SAT scores or GPA or something, and Asian students deserve more places based on these same criteria.
And then someone will say colleges can use whatever criteria they like.
That’s where this thread always spirals into the same-old-same-old jym alluded to.
Spot on, OHmomof2. This thread has been through years and years of multiple iterations of the same thing… even though it started as a thread about self reporting ethnicity.
…^years and years of the same baseless whining which assumes that Asians are ALWAYS the most qualified (=racist assumption) and “therefore” should be admitted in GREATER numbers, proportionally speaking to applications submitted. It also assumes (another racist assumptions) that every other applicant who gets turned away must have been “unqualified” or “less qualified” than every Asian applying, when in fact thousands of superlative Caucasian students get denied every year in those very same applicant pools, for reasons NOT RELATED TO THEIR QUALIFICATIONS but to what the campus perceives as its needs AND ITS CAPACITY in this particular round.
jym626 You are correct that this thread started about the consequences of self reporting ethnicity but since those days, CC policy has now designated this thread to be where all Race issue are to be discussed.
OHMom So are you saying that you are for discrimination if it helps you but against it if it hurts you. Because that is what you are saying about the admission practices of W&L, Whites with lower or similar stats as Asians are being admitted over Asians at nearly 4 times the admit rate compared to Asians.
epiphany WOW!!!
“Pizzagirl If these colleges decided to single out Blacks in its admission policy and lower its admission rate of Blacks by discriminating against Blacks in the admission process would that be allowable under the law? Of course not!!! Then why is it OK to discriminate against Asians who are a smaller minority group.”
Is it OK for a college to single out a particular minority group that they wish to get more of? Without saying that their goal is to get less of something else - even though more of one type will, naturally and unintentionally, result in less of something else?
A few years ago, Vanderbilt was explicit in saying that they sought Jewish students, particularly from the NE, as a way to improve their national profile and transform from a southern regional school to a national one. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB102003890421804360
In doing so, it naturally “comes out of the hide” of every other type of religion - Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and atheist / agnostic. How come none of those groups complained that they were being “discriminated against”?
Answer: They were smart enough to understand that Vanderbilt wasn’t trying to “limit Christians”; it was trying to get more Jews. So why aren’t you getting that the goals of elite colleges aren’t “to limit Asians and whites” but to get more of blacks and Hispanics?
The other thing is that you are talking about colleges in America, which have distinctly American values. One of those American values is that it is considered uncharitable not to lend a helping hand to groups who are underrepresented, and that the loss to the community by not having diversity is greater than the loss of missing out on a few very smart students.
I think you keep thinking that this is China, where the goal is to admit the very smartest students, instead of America, where the goal is to create an interesting community of smart people.
Yup. I think they stuck baby in the corner.
“Washington and Lee is my example because the one thing that colleges have stated for giving preferential treatment to lower qualified students and the nod over a better qualified student has been the colleges desire to “diversify” its campus.”
You’re kind of obsessed with W&L, which is kind of odd because as far as I’m concerned, it’s an unknown southern school that holds no keys to any corridors of power anywhere. Who’s even heard of it outside of VA? Let 'em; they are as insignificant to American higher education as is Liberty University.
“I wonder if some people understand what country they’re in” We very much do, because in our native countries we wouldn’t be called slurs, assaulted, murdered, etc. solely based on our race like we are in the US.
Discrimination in college admissions is a racial microaggression.
Equating anti-Asian racism to POC disliking white people is a laughably false equivalence.
Please tell me where I implied that Asians are the only ones who work hard. I EXPLICITLY said that families of all races can have (pro-education, pro-hard work) attitudes and behaviors stereotyped negatively ONLY WHEN Asians do them.
Pizzagirl The more you post, the bigger the hole you dig for yourself. Your true colors are showing.
The CDS (Common Data Set) does not tell a prospective applicant much about what each college values in their admissions decisions. I was surprised to learn that CalTech does not value Standardized Test Scores more. SATs were marked as only “important” rather than “very important” same as W&L. It would help applicants if the colleges answer their IPEDS and CDS questions with less opaqueness. This would help all high scoring applicants - Asians and non-Asians alike.
I don’t know anything about W&L. I didn’t apply there and neither did any of my kids.
What I said was, one could argue that black students are underrepresented in selective colleges, because they are, in fact, underrepresented proportional to their population.
And one could similarly argue that since the percentage of ORMs is higher in many collges/universities than in the comparative national (US) population, they are, hence the name, overrepresented in the academic population.
OHMom We are not talking proportional to the general population, but proportional to the “qualified” academic population. You do not suggest that W&L or any school for that matter should have its proportional number of low STAT kids? If that is the case, then Harvard should be 90% low stats and 10% high stats since that is how the general population is proportioned.
jym The ORM are there because they had the Stats to be there, they were not given preferential treatment in the admission process. Goodness, will the Asian bashing never stop.
The schools being discussed here are not purely stats driven schools. Stats are just one piece of the holistic admissions formula and open/close doors to additional review. Why is this so difficult to understand?
ETA: And the other students are there because they had the stats plus whatever else the schools is looking for to put together an interesting community. Its not “bashing”. You are just trying to make it so.
jym I understand that stats do not drive all schools but what factors would cause a school such as W&L to give White students the nod over URM since diversity is not a reason? Why is it so difficult for you to understand this concern?