<p>NYU 3/9
Brown 7/10
Berkely 3/10
UCLA 3/16</p>
<p>"The data I posted was for law schools, and I assumed the trend held in undergrad, but obviously, it doesn’t. "</p>
<p>Ooops! Cross posted. Wonder what our assumptions say about us?</p>
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<p>So if I say that Asians are shorter than other races, does that imply that being Asian automatically makes one short? I wonder what Yao Ming would say about that. </p>
<p>The key concept here is the average.</p>
<p>If someone puts down two races, how are they recorded by the college board? For instance, if someone puts down black and white, are they recorded only as “two or more races” or are they also recorded as “black”?</p>
<p>If they aren’t recorded as black, then the college board numbers underestimate the percentage of blacks at elite schools because a large proportion of them are biracial.</p>
<p>I think the key concept is be aware that averages are just averages, and don’t tell you much about the person next to you. I am more fascinated by the outliers than the averages.</p>
<p>“If they aren’t recorded as black, then the college board numbers underestimate the percentage of blacks at elite schools because a large proportion of them are biracial”</p>
<p>So now you have some inside information about how many of us consider ourselves bi racial?</p>
<p>True. But saying that person A is more intelligent than person B is more offensive (not PC) than saying person B is shorter than person A.</p>
<p>^But saying that person B is shorter than person A is still offensive.</p>
<p>If all races are equally intelligent, but Asians are genetically shorter than others, then, well, I guess that sucks for Asians.</p>
<p>Personally, I find law school to be problematic for proving anything. As I recall from recent sorties through the web, the law school community itself has acknowledged a deep issue recruiting among some potential pools of candidates. This is not a simple matter of- or anyone’s proof that- one pool is lesser; there can be many factors.</p>
<p>When I asked for serious references for proof of discriminaton, I didn’t have USA Today and USNWR in mind. The Princeton study mentioned, btw, does not include Princeton itself. From that link, though:</p>
<p>Espenshade warned against concluding that his study proved that colleges improperly discriminated. For one thing, Asians, who make up less than 5 percent of the U.S. population, often make up nearly a third of the applicant pools to elite colleges. And they generally account for at least 10 percent of the student body. Meanwhile, low-income students and minorities make up disproportionately smaller shares of the applicant pools and, often, student populations. Harvard reported last year, for example, that 15 percent of its undergraduates were Asian, but only 7 percent were black, and just 6 percent were Hispanic.</p>
<p>One of the lovely challenges in “critical thinking” is we have to let go of our preconceived notions, for a fair and balanced assessment. It’s really too “easy” to say, yeah, well I found a guy who says… </p>
<p>There is a lot of emotion in some opinions on this matter. I suggest to my kids that we not fall into, “I think it, so it must be true.” Or, I feel it strongly, so I must be right.</p>
<p>To lookingforward and others:</p>
<p>I think almost everyone coming into this discussion knows enough about affirmative action to know that it disproportionately hurts Asians. Asking for proof of this – and then quibbling about the proof provided – makes you appear as if you’re dodging the issue.</p>
<p>“it disproportionately hurts Asians. Asking for proof of this – and then quibbling about the proof provided – makes you appear as if you’re dodging the issue.”</p>
<p>I had not thought of that. Could that be primarily if you think “the issue” is about what it means for Asians? No wait…that might suggest that it’s not just about socioeconomics, or that race matters. Nah.That can’t be.</p>
<p>^No, transfers, I disagree. Some are asking for proof in order to understand what is simply an opinion or a limited read, versus actual detail or data. I could ask, for example, how one “knows” what he or she purports to know about affirmative action. Or discrimination against one group.</p>
<p>So far, no one has named a college that discriminates against Asians.</p>
<p>The federal regulation </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister/other/2007-4/101907c.html[/url]”>http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister/other/2007-4/101907c.html</a> </p>
<p>(referenced at the very beginning of this thread) also defines how colleges are to report out what percentage of students indicate “two or more races,” and how the “Hispanic” ethnicity category trumps other categories. You can read the details at the Web posting of the regulation. Reporting in this manner is but a few years old, and is NOT quite the same as the 2010 Census reporting, although broadly similar and based on the same 1997 OMB category definitions. </p>
<p>In many of the discussions of this issue, unwarranted assumptions are made about applicants to colleges on the basis of enrolled students at colleges, and other unwarranted assumptions are made about colleges in general from limited studies of just a few colleges in particular.</p>
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<p>All due respect, I find it difficult to swallow that given that your posts frequently assume that opponents of racial preferences are either outright racists or wrongly believe that admissions are based on numbers alone.</p>
<p>I’d love to discuss this issue, but I need to read a post clarifying that opponents of racial preferences do NOT believe that so-called “underrepresented minorities” are “uniformly without merit” and do NOT believe that admissions contains no subjective criteria.</p>
<p>For the record, I do not assume people who are against “racial pref” are racists. My comment was not aimed at any individuals, but at a way we have of slipping into stereotypes. It’s human nature to categorize- and I think we should all be mindful of how and when we do that. </p>
<p>In the context of CC, many worry that Asians (who are usually stereotyped as superior, in some way, to some degree) are being kept out of great U’s because they are Asian. And, that Blacks and Hispanics are getting admits while deserving it less. </p>
<p>That’s why there is some call for decent proofs. From higher ed sources or resources. To me, it’s not good enough to snicker and say, yeah, but we all know what reallllly goes on. We don’t. (Again, not targeting a poster, but an attitude. Remember the line from Taxi Driver? You lookin’ at me? You lookin’ at me? Well, I am not looking at any * you,* but at a way of thinking.)</p>
<p>All schools that use the CA agree to holistic reviews.</p>
<p>“It’s human nature to categorize- and I think we should all be mindful of how and when we do that.”</p>
<p>I totally agree!
I also think that the AA rules and laws attempt to help with this. </p>
<p>HOWEVER, in doing so, the AA laws actually reinforce the non-critical “typing” and categorizing" thinking… “Who am I? Which category do belong to? Where do I fit? Who am I like? Who am I not like?”
“Is one category more represented than the others?”
“If you are x, y, z, then you belong here…” </p>
<p>So let us be honest that the AA laws are actually in place in effort to social re-engineer based on one (not absolute, as we agreed) set of categories.</p>
<p>General reminder to the thread: it is always helpful to a factual discussion to point to evidence for a factual statement. Posts along the lines of “I think [statement] because of [citation for evidence],” in which a participant takes responsibility for his or her own statement, are very much more helpful to all readers here than posts like “[Category of people] know that [statement]” without any citation to a source. Already in this thread there have been several helpful examples of statements being narrowed or refined as other participants have requested evidence. Evidence is a good thing for gaining better understanding of controversial policies.</p>
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<p>Clarification accepted.</p>
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<p>True. But holistic simply means the consideration of subjective criteria. Racial classification NEED NOT BE considered.</p>
<p>I acknowledge the lack of a “smoking gun” regarding discrimination against Asians in undergraduate admissions at selective universities. If we consider the history of Jewish applicants in the early twentieth century, we see that they could never prove that the holistic admissions policy began by Harvard was designed explicitly to reduce their enrollment from >20% to 15%. Thus, it isn’t surprising that there is no “smoking gun,” but nevertheless I acknowledge its lack of existence.</p>
<p>In addition, it can be difficult to use seemingly natural experiments to demonstrate discrimination. On the one hand, the admission rates of whites and Asians were identical at Berkeley in the first year Proposition 209 entered into effect. That seems to disprove the notion that Asians were discriminated against in the *ancien r</p>
<p>Yes, I think it is factually correct that United States colleges and universities will, for the most part, continue to claim to admit students “holistically” rather than “by the numbers,” and I can think of several good reasons for such an admission policy, not least of which is the recognition of how difficult it is to rack up good numbers for students from low-income families. That said, it is certainly possible for a college admission process to be holistic, and not number-driven, and even especially sensitive to the plight of low-income applicants (as many colleges claim to be but just a few actually are) without the college admission process distinguishing applicants by race or ethnicity categories. Recently, some state university systems claim to be doing all of that, both giving a leg up to the poor and looking at the whole person in making admission decisions, all the while not considering student race or ethnicity in the process.</p>
<p>When Asians make up the largest percentage of kids applying to elite schools, OF COURSE they are going to have a lower acceptance rate. If 500 Blacks apply and 50% get in, and then 25,000 Asians apply and only 10% get in, it’s the same amount of both, but so many Asian kids I know complain about it as if this is some cosmic unfairness. It is common sense that if dozens of thousands of applicants are from one race compared to a smaller number of others from another race, the race with more applicants is bound to have more kids being rejected. So… not trying to sound harsh here, but… just deal with it, and don’t act as if your world is falling apart because you don’t get into a top school. </p>
<p>One Asian kid I know said last week that he would want to die if he doesn’t get into a certain Ivy, his top choice school. I know he was exajerating, but he still sounded like he was perpetuating the stereotype that Asians only care about top schools. Also, he sounded spoiled and dumb. Let’s just say I lost a lot of respect for him. This is the same Asian kid claims that it is common knowledge that Asians are smarter than other races.</p>
<p>As mentioned above:
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<p>born2dance94,</p>
<p>Your reasoning is flawed. </p>
<p>The fact that more Asians apply to elite schools does not imply that they will have a lower acceptance rate than blacks. In fact, given that Asians are far more qualified than blacks, one would expect them to have a higher acceptance rate than blacks (assuming race-neutral admission).</p>
<p>So you cannot argue that the low acceptance rate for Asians is a matter of numbers. It is a direct result of affirmative action.</p>
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<em>Facepalm</em> Did you seriously just say that? I’m gonna take a wild guess and say you’re Asian.</p>