<p>Do you suppose that denying your kids fun things and subjecting them to thousands of hours of drill and generous helpings of shame is a positive or negative factor in developing “humanity and three-dimensionality” and the ability to “step up beyond the received wisdom of Lady Gaga and actually think about what she says?”</p>
<p>i’m asian. arguing against AA would make me self-prideful, etc. but honestly, if the situation were reversed, say black or hispanic dominating colleges because of their cultural work ethic, etc. i’d be okay with it. and would be against AA for asians.</p>
<p>but since colleges are looking to create “diversity” and host environments friendly to everyone as well as of different cultures, i suppose it’s okay. </p>
<p>i will say it’s unfair. but i think it’s a erroneous to believe college admissions were ever fair.</p>
<p>Nope, not insulting Asian parenting, just commenting that it may not produce the most desirable candidates for highly selective holistic-admissions colleges. The AA argument always comes down to “Asians who got higher test scores didn’t get in, it must be AA that’s taking the Asian spots.” So the kind of parenting that leads to high test scores is the issue.</p>
<ol>
<li>Every Asian American goes to test prep schools</li>
<li>Asian Americans work hard only because of parental pressure</li>
<li>Asian Americans do ECs only for college admissions</li>
<li>Asian Americans are math drones and they have nothing to offer</li>
<li>Every Asian parents are Tiger Parents</li>
<li>No Asian American suffer from hardship or racism</li>
<li>All Asian Americans are prestige obsessed</li>
<li>Asian Americans cannot display anger or frustration. If you do, be prepared to hear Life is not fair or Get over it.</li>
<li>Asian Americans can never be Americans</li>
</ol>
<p>The thread you opened has been merged into the main FAQ and Discussion thread in the same forum. Rational arguments are very welcome. Let’s be civil and follow the terms of service of College Confidential. </p>
<p>P.S. What is the intended implication of the screen name “CCsniper”?</p>
<p>Not for me. I don’t view admissions as “numbers only,” nor do I believe that Asians are entitled to “spots.” All I’m saying is “let the chips fall where they may.” If under a race-blind admissions system, selective university X’s incoming class was “only” 2% Asian, so be it. And if it’s 42% Asian, so be it.</p>
<p>You can replace Asian with any other group identifier you want, and my stance would still hold.</p>
<p>Isn’t affirmative action kind of insulting to minorities in general though? I mean take the national achievement scholarship thing. It is literally the national merit scholarship competition for black people but with lower standards. The entire PC idea of affirmative action is racist. It assumes that black or hispanic people aren’t smart enough to succeed on their own. It has always seemed kind of absurd to me that the people that are against affirmative action are labeled the racists.</p>
<p>Depending on what the nature of the affirmative action program is at a particular college, it might just mean that the college thinks that everyone on the campus is better educated if they have classmates from all different {insert kind of group here}. There can be better or worse ways of bringing about a diverse group of students at a college, and for constitutional reasons race-conscious ways of bringing that about are subject to strict scrutiny, but I by no means think that on-campus diversity is a bad idea. It may be a very good idea–it is certainly something I was looking forward to, and learned from, when I left high school to go to college.</p>
<p>CCsniper is created because I go to Columbia College (CC) and I created account for College confidential. Plus I’ve been hunting in the mountains near my city since I was little with scoped hunting rifles. Hence, sniper.</p>
<p>What about diversity of intellectual ability? Why should elite schools admit only students who are above the 95th percentile in aptitude? Surely, less intelligent students contribute to universities in ways that geniuses cannot.</p>
<p>^ Most colleges actually do admit a class with quite a range of “intellectual ability.” If a college has major courses in art history, physics, computer science, modern Chinese, ancient Greek, economics, and psychology, it has surely admitted students with a diverse set of intellectual abilities and varied points of view on issues.</p>
<p>^Well that’s like saying that because colleges have African-American Studies, they must already be getting enough racial diversity and therefore have no need to practice affirmative action.</p>
<p>But colleges don’t do that; they make explicit their efforts to ensure that blacks make up a substantial portion of their incoming classes.</p>
<p>If colleges are supposed to represent the diversity of their countries (or the world), then shouldn’t they explicitly recruit students with low intellectual means, just as colleges explicitly recruit black students?</p>
<p>What do you consider a substantial portion? How many colleges have a substantial portion of blacks in their incoming class?</p>
<p>I’m guessing there are probably 25 non HBCU four year colleges with more than 7 percent black students in it’s freshman class. Out of thousands. From my search, the vast majority, at least outside of the south, have 3 percent or less.</p>
<p>I get that’s not important to everybody. Just saying.</p>
<p>The problem with admitting people so that they can bring ‘diversity’ to campus, is that it rests on some pretty broad (and frequently wrong) assumptions about the admissions committee about what it means to Be black, female, Hispanic, etc. </p>
<p>For example, not every African-American student is necessarily going to be from the inner city and be able to discourse authoritaritatively in econ class about growing up in a poor, inner city neighborhood. Not every HIspanic student is going to be able to talk with unique insight into the position of illegal immigrants in a sociology class. Instead, it’s possible that the African-American student will have two parents who are married to each other, both of whom are doctors and the Hispanic student will be a third-generation immigrant to the US who doesn’t speak Spanish, doesn’t actually personally know any illegal immigrants and doesn’t particularly like tacos. In other words, it would be like thinking that an Irish-American would have some unique insights into the politics of the IRA, which could be shared during, say, a class discussion on the politics of terrorism.</p>
<p>I fully agree with your post. There is nothing wrong, and in fact there is everything right, with trying to get a diversity of interests and ideas. But racial classification is a poor proxy for interests and ideas.</p>
Your whole post is based on the incorrect assumption that colleges equate “diversity” with “race.” You’re arguing against a system whereby colleges admit students based on their race, but no such system really exists. For the black and hispanic students who do have subpar test scores but still seem to get into the top colleges, I’m willing to bet that their socioeconomic background, not race, played the vital role.</p>
<p>The only thing is that, statistically, those who come from less privileged backgrounds are more likely to be black or hispanic than white or Asian, so you see this correlation, but I don’t think it’s necessarily true.</p>
<p>^ What about the top colleges that are need blind? Affirmative action isn’t typically a socioeconomic thing. It is a race one. A black upper-middle class student is typically going to have an easier time of getting in than a lower middle class asian student with the same stats. I actually live in Texas where racial affirmative action isn’t allowed and they implemented socioeconomic affirmative action instead. It is ridiculous. The rule is that if you are in the top ten percent of your class (or 9% for UT) you get automatic admission into any Texas public school. So if you go to some hick high school in east texas or some inner city school in houston or something it is much easier to get in than if you go to a competitive suburban high school. I’ve heard about people that got rejected from UT but accepted into some ivies.</p>