<p>
</p>
<p>Personally I’d like to SEE these statistics.</p>
<p>^^^The study of which Bedouin speaks was done by Messers Espenshade and Chung at Princeton. It’s available here: [Office</a> of Population Research, Princeton University](<a href=“http://opr.princeton.edu/faculty/page.asp?id=tje]Office”>http://opr.princeton.edu/faculty/page.asp?id=tje). Though a very interesting study, it’s based on very old info, so it refers to old SAT scores and to Affirmative Action practices that are generally considered to no longer be in use.</p>
<p>ETA: Just realized that Beowulf explained this with his/her link.</p>
<p>Do I have to link to it a third time, or is that enough? :D</p>
<p>Bedouin…the study is old. It uses OLD scores, old data and OLD AA requirements. Surely you have something more current.</p>
<p>That study was from just 5 years ago. What changes have been made to the SAT or to affirmative action since then?</p>
<p>I’m Asian but my last name can pass for Swiss/German, and I have family in Switzerland [my uncle’s Swiss]. But, at the same time, I’d feel terrible for trying to “conceal” my ethnicity. I’m still trying to decide if I want to leave that section blank in the fall. Any thoughts on what I should do?</p>
<p>The SAT has dramatically changed since that study…check it out…Verbal was replaced with CR…different tasks and questions…no more analogies…an additional section, the writing. Please…get your facts straight.</p>
<p>Read the AA “stuff” from UMich…that also happened within the last five years.</p>
<p>Look…putting your ethnicity down on the application is OPTIONAL. Just leave it blank if you don’t want to put it down.</p>
<p>Bedouin, the study was published five years ago but the data used in reaching the conclusions is older than that. Read it yourself.</p>
<p>^^Browniebaker, what else I am supposed to go by? I started reading CC when I was a sophomore, and I got worked up by the constant claim that Asian students are at a disadvantage. I believed that until a few weeks ago. How can I believe it now when I just witnessed all of my Asian friends get into great schools? I’m not saying every Asian will be admitted to every school that they should (MIT accepted none of us this year) but I am willing to say that for every great school that rejected a qualifed Asian, 5 more great schools accepted that person. With the benefit of hindsight, I think it’s time to stop spooking Asian students. If they have great stats, they will get into some great schools, as long as they work hard on their essays and have good recommendations.</p>
<p>Has it not been statistically proven that you have a major disadvantage when applying to a top school if you are asian, simply because there are so many more qualified/“smart” asians applying than other groups?
That is what I always thought. It may be illegal but admission officers are subconsciously doing it all the time, right? </p>
<p>By the way, sorry if this has already been discussed, I did not read the 50 pages of this discussion.</p>
<p>There’s no doubt that there are many Asian students at elite universities. But that does not necessarily mean that they were not disadvantaged during the process. Take the case of the Jews during the early twentieth century. Decades have passed, and we now know that Jews were indeed disadvantaged by the implementation of “holistic admissions” ([Source](<a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/051010crat_atlarge]Source[/url]”>http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/051010crat_atlarge)</a>). Former Harvard President Lowell could live with a Harvard that was 15% Jewish but no more. Yet, considering how few Jews there were and are in the United States, 15% was already “massive overrepresentation.” Hence, it must be understood that the argument “if there’s a lot of them, then there wasn’t any discrimination” is not valid.</p>
<p>Self-identification is optional, and more and more students at elite universities are not self-identifying.</p>
<p>It probably won’t help you too much. If your name is Lee Yang or Lisa Sun, they’re not going to need the mark on the ethnicity section to know where you’re from.</p>
<p>Besides, if you were a College, wouldn’t you just assume anyone who didn’t mark down their ethnicity was Indian or Asian?</p>
<p>my name is Tommy Fang. Is the ethnicity too obvious?</p>
<p>I always thought people could get into college easier, if they were asian, or at least scholarships :)</p>
<p>I don’t consider the point at issue “statistically proven.” I’m curious about what current data might show, and wish that colleges were more transparent about sharing the data that the federal government already requires them to gather. A bit of thoughtful introspection on the part of college admission officers is probably a good thing. </p>
<p>Just seen in my Web searching this evening are these two recent links from Princeton: </p>
<p>[Princeton</a> Alumni Weekly: Yearning for recognition](<a href=“http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2010/01/13/pages/9134/index.xml]Princeton”>Yearning for recognition | Princeton Alumni Weekly) </p>
<p>[The</a> Prox: Princeton Civil Rights review continues under Obama administration](<a href=“http://blogs.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/05/officials-at-education-departments.html]The”>http://blogs.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/05/officials-at-education-departments.html)</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>tokenadult, wow, so Li’s civil rights complaint is still being investigated after four years.</p>
<p>Edit</p>
<p>He should be in his senior year at Harvard now unless I miscounted.</p>
<p>I’m not putting it down, its optional.</p>
<p>My last name is chen though…</p>
<p>Tommy Fang is such a cool name</p>
<p>sounds wolf like</p>
<p>Honestly, a name like Tommy Fang is pretty awesome. </p>
<p>“The name’s Tommy Fang, but my friends just call me Fang.” If you wanted to become a biker, you wouldn’t even have to change anything. Just drop the first name and get a tattoo with a cobra’s fangs on your arm or something.</p>
<p>You could probably cultivate a reputation as a lawless, fearless asskicker without ever saying or doing anything tough.</p>
<p>(“The name’s Fang. Bring. It. On.”)</p>
<p>You don’t have to, but colleges know that most students who don’t put their race down are white or asian.</p>
<p>A question came in an originally separate thread, now merged into this FAQ thread: </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No. That is completely optional. The FAQ posts that make up the first few posts of this FAQ thread give more details, and link out to authoritative sources of information.</p>