The Plantiff already did the analysis where Black and Hispanic were kept steady and only the “Asian penality” was removed. It found the following percentage changes. Asians increased from 22% to 23%, and that 1% increase was primarily from White students, rather than URMs. Asians do gain proportionally more from Whites than URMs, but the gains are small. In contrast URMs have a much stronger preference, so if you eliminate all racial preferences, then URMs have a sharp decline, and both White and Asian applicants gain in a ratio not far from the unhooked ratio for those group combined with the ~1% change from the “Asian penalty” listed below.
and yet Asians are the ONLY racial group penalized by Harvard’s personality ratings… whites, and other groups get a boost.
and to reiterate an analysis that keeps blacks and hispanic quotas level and only considers Asians and Whites would canablize white enrollment since Asians as a whole have higher SATs and GPAs than whites.
this is the real crux of what’s going on at Harvard and why these selective schools want to steer these conversations towards affirm action as a deflection.
Yes, the problem of " having 1% of black students would make them feel too isolated" would be a major concern. Along with that is the tendency to reinforce stereotypes: employers doing recruiting aren't seeing or interviewing African-American candidates; students who attend 4 years of undergrad aren't working with or socializing with African-Americans.
To solve the problem requires (a) a desire to improve in that area, and (b) research to discern the source of the problem. So maybe it's an outreach issue, maybe its an opportunity problem, maybe it's a yield problem. You have to figure out the cause(s) of a problem before you can fix the problem.
I find it interesting that people seem to assume that the reason for those numbers is that African-American applicants aren’t smart enough to attend or keep up at the CalTech. (As opposed to the possibility that many talented and capable students might prefer a more diverse educational environment).
I believe that Caltech does not have racial preferences and has far less preference for athletes and legacies than HYPS… type colleges. However, I am more skeptical about certain other groups. For example, Caltech’s 2017-18 CDS (http://finance.caltech.edu/documents/528-cds2018.pdf ) mentions the following applicant stats:
~3x more men applied to Caltech than women, and the acceptance rate for women was ~3x higher than men, which produces a good gender balance between men and women. It’s possible that the top applicants to Caltech are far more likely to women than men, but this seems inconsistent with tech majors at other highly selective colleges. I think the more likely explanation is Caltech tries to maintain a good gender balance by applying a preference.
Asians make up 43% of the student body at Caltech
Asians make up 30% of the student body at MIT and MIT does consider race in admissions more so than Caltech
Stanford’s student body (considers race) is 23% Asians while Berkeley is 33% Asians (no affirm action)
Caltech realized it had a problem with the paucity of females on campus.
Theoretical physicist Steve Hsu talks about how the 5:1 ratio of males to females in the bad old days forced him to contemplate either transferring or graduating in three years (he chose the latter): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mUiJx_9W6g&feature=youtu.be&t=800
All engineering schools have this gender issue (as do most LACs). This issue came up recently in the MIT forum: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/2118178-odds-of-getting-into-mit-differ-based-on-gender.html#latest
There’re all sorts of explanations, including some official ones. One of them is that female applicants are a more self-selected group, and on average are more qualified and even more passionate about STEM. My guess is that yield for female admits is also lower so these schools have to accept more female applicants to offset the lower yield.
Additionally Stanford’s student body (considers race)
white 36%
asian 21%
Berkeley Student body (no affirm action)
white 29%
asian 40%
Caltech Student body
white 27%
asian 40%
MIT Student body (considers race)
white 49%
asian 37%
when race is not considered Asians represent a greater proportion of the student body and Whites lose spots.
additionally, studies have shown that Asians have to score 140 points higher on SAT for the same changes of admission as white students. another study at U of Wisconsin came to similar conclusions. the impact would be similar at Harvard.
@calmom My assumption after getting a small taste of the CalTech culture is that the small number of African Americans comes from a small number of truly statistically qualified candidates and a culture that revels in math and science on a level that very few students overall choose.
I have seen lots of data on African American achievement on standardized tests over the years and I can confidently say there are less than 100 African Americans nationally each year who hit the 25th percentile for CalTech on the SAT (1520)/SAT Math (790) or ACT (35) along with those same scores on the Math 2 subject test (800) and a Science Subject test (770-780). There maybe a few more who could achieve all of those scores (like my son) but chose a different path (don’t take Math 2/Science based Subject Tests for example). African Americans have consistently had about 1-2 percent of the highest test scorers on standardized tests without fail over a 30 year period before they stopped publishing data on the subject and CalTech is getting about those percentages of African Americans yearly.
I see nothing wrong with the CalTech model, as I don’t believe that African Americans have to infiltrate every elite school at a critical mass (around 5-6%) as long as the criteria is fair, and CalTech may be the fairest school (No athletes, legacy, or buying students in) of them all.
As has been stated many times by many posters in many ways, there are various difference in admission policies and applicant pools in the colleges you listed besides just race, which dramatically changes the demographic percentages and gives such comparisons little meaning.
The numbers below avoid this issue by looking at the same college – comparing the freshmen enrollment in the last year that they considered race with the first year in which race not considered in admission decisions. When racial considerations were removed from admission criteria, White enrollment increased at all colleges., but the increase was distorted somewhat at Berkeley by the large increase in portion of students not reporting race (perhaps as a signal of protest). Asian enrollment also increased at 2 of the 3 schools. This pattern is similar to the change in enrollment predicted by the Harvard lawsuit analyses – both the Plantiff analysis and the Harvard internal analysis.
Also note how dramatically higher Asian enrollment is in California than the other states, both with and without racial consideration. This reflects how much larger a portion of HS students are Asian in California than in Michigan, Florida, or the US as a whole; as well as other differences between the schools.
There are many ways that criteria can be “fair” and have a discriminatory outcome or effect, and there are adjustments that can be made that are still “fair” but have the effect of shifting the dynamics of who gets selected, and who doesn’t. Colleges make choices as to which metrics they value the most in admissions and how to measure them.
Here’s an article I found interesting:-- it’s from 1998, but here it is 20 years down the line and the numbers haven’t changed.
A school where white students are less than 30% of undergraduate student body (27% of the most recent class) is called “the whitest”? One cannot measure “whiteness” by its “blackness” alone. There are other “colors” or shades in between. The authors cannot be more ignorant.
That “whiteness” article is disappointing. Not up to the usual standards of JBHE when Theodore Cross was there.
But it does hint at one of the issues that Caltech is likely to face as regards the very most elite black students. The article notes that in 1995, 30 black students applied, nine were offered admission but only two enrolled. There is really nothing Caltech can do about this yield problem, short I guess of offering full ride scholarships (and they actually do offer a few full ride scholarships and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the black students who are there have one).
Black students at that level have many choices of college. Those standardized scores (>34ACT / >1550SAT + strong GPA and 800 SAT M2) essentially implies auto-admit at multiple T20 schools, to say nothing of real shots at full rides at many others. @ChangeTheGame I think could add some insight here and agree or disagree with me.
If you want to increase the pipeline of talented black students who could apply to Caltech with a realistic shot of being able to thrive there, I am all for it. But it starts with identifying those students early, and that means aggressive and widespread testing early in elementary school. There is simply not enough money - and there never will be - to “get to know” all kids and figure out which ones have high innate ability, and so testing is the only thing we’ve got. And I don’t mean the silly year end NAEP tests that have no relevance for these purposes.
I have no doubt that many potential admits of all races are being missed because the current system of elementary education is designed to hide the nail that sticks up, and if that fails for some reason, then to hammer it down.
As I noted, the article was from 1998-- I just copied the title. That year, Asian enrollment was 19%.
But the point is that the African-American enrollment hasn’t changed since then. 1% in 1998, 1% in 2018. In some years the number of African-American admits is -0-.
How could you possibly know this? Maybe the yield was zero.
At my kid’s high school, in the last cycle there was a female classmate who chose CalTech (same math class of fewer than 12 kids although mine was in 9th grade and she was in 12th, so we knew her reasonably well). She was a cross admit to Harvard and MIT and a number of other tippy tops. She was partially URM (though not black). Yield is a big deal at this level.
@calmom I have read both of those articles before (the one on CalTech many years ago and again when my son was looking into the school). I have seen the data showing that African Americans are underrepresented and I have talked on this thread about it, especially as it relates to state flagship schools. But part of why we are showing as underrepresented is not just because of historical barriers but the choices that African American students choose for themselves. I have talked about my high stats daughter’s choice to attend a HBCU. A large number of her scholarship cohort got into multiple top 25 schools and a large number of her class got into many fine schools across America, but those students chose Howard University (still a top 100 USNWR school). I still remember reading an article in the last 2-3 years of an African American male from Louisiana who got a 36 on the ACT and chose to go to the University of Louisiana Lafayette (which would probably overwhelm the average CC’ers sensibilities). I have seen an African American cultural divide where African Americans that are a part 1st or 2nd generation immigrant households will push for top 25 schools in much higher numbers than African Americans with a multi-generational connection to the US (I have heard estimates as high as 2/3rd’s of the Ivy League Black population being part of recent immigrant families despite making up only a much smaller portion of the African American diaspora in America).
The problem is that you think that schools are holding African Americans back while I can see up close that large numbers of African Americans with top standardized testing potential are not even attempting to reach for top 25 schools (prestige in majority black communities I come into contact with means Spelman, Morehouse, Howard, Hampton, NCA&T, FAMU, etc.). It is only when I come back to my diverse enclave of America that HYPSM means anything to the African American students I am in contact with. Just to give you an idea of how this is much bigger than the schools themselves, I recently met a student, top of her class at one of the best public schools in the city of Atlanta. This student only took the ACT 1 time (made a 29 with only 1 week of prep) and just stopped because her goal (top HBCUs) was already in reach when a higher score may have made attending a top 25 institution or at least being eligible for larger merit scholarships at all of the top HBCUs possible. This happens all of the time. We (African Americans) prepare less for standardized testing, and we don’t keep taking the test over and over (a generalization but it is what I am seeing the most). There are students in the black community that could reach top 25 schools (especially with AA preferences), but those schools do not mean anything to them. They don’t understand the financial advantages (most only see the sticker price and run) and they don’t care about the prestige (I don’t care about prestige either but I do care about costs and final outcomes for students which tend to be great at top schools).
My family has visited at least 20 colleges and universities over the last 3 years and has been to more college fairs and informational sessions than I can count and I can say with certainty that the CalTech representative was easily the most honest (if you are not within our 25/75 range your chances are slim was actually communicated) and had the clearest presentation of what they were looking for in a student and what a student needed to do to attend such a prestigious school. That honesty was was much appreciated by my son.
@SatchelSF You are spot on in your assessment. Once an African American student reaches CalTech level academic stats, they have many options because the sheer lack of students at that level. Every African American student that I have ever seen personally get up to a 1540 SAT score or corresponding ACT score (I call it the golden number and I have seen 4 such African American students not counting my son who will go through the process next year) have gotten into every single school that they have applied to, every single one, including one last year who got into multiple top Ivy’s in RD cycle which is pretty much a lottery for anyone else. And we all have seen what the student from Houston TX was able to do last year going 20 for 20. I am impressed that CalTech is getting those 2-3 students every year because every school is wanting those students.