Asians not good at critical thinking? That’s a new one and laughable.
Isolated incidents do not a trend or generality make.
What isolated incidents are you talking about? I for one don’t think getting high score on SAT means one has a high IQ, or that high IQ necessarily means you will do better in academics. In the real world, EQ or other qualities probably matter more.
The isolated incidents of individuals making generalities about thinking and feeling deeply (or not) – the same generalities for 14 years on CC various students and various parents have said about the superior “qualifications” of Asians versus all other groups, based on test scores.
Have a nice day.
The only question is whether affirmative action, as practiced, is discrimination based on race.
As a matter of law, we do not tolerate race discrimination, even in most private activity. For instance, Starbucks cannot grant a “loitering without buying” preference only to its white customers. A private landlord cannot systematically reduce its credit requirements for Asians only - despite empirical data suggesting this would be wise. Target cannot even use certain criminal activity as an employment screen because it was agreed to have had a disparate impact by race. We should not tolerate race discrimination in private college admissions either.
If there is no discrimination by race in fact being practiced, it should be demonstrable. Every lawsuit, FOIA request, tell-all book by an admissions officer, etc., has confirmed that selective schools use a “scoring” system in which a candidate will be evaluated against the decision criteria (this is also just common sense, once you look at the numbers of applications and the inexperience of many admissions officers, which implies written procedures and scoring rubrics).
Release the scoring numbers from the admissions officers and the tools of elementary statistics will answer the question whether race preferences exist. If yes, then society can decide if they are unconscionably large. No need to violate confidentiality; the numbers will do just fine (as in Hopwood, Grutter, etc.).
Yes, it would be demonstrable, and it is not demonstrable. Just a lot of sour grapes based on less than 100% admissions rates of applying Asians; that’s all, and lots and lots of assumptions and suppositions about (horrors) why that could possibly be true of Asians even though it’s true of every other category of applicant as well.
If you believe some AO, or a group of them, is clueless about your supposedly obvious talent, it is your task and your infinite opportunity in the open, relatively free United States of America to prove the clueless wrong by attending an institution where a superior AO did see your talent.
@epiphany ^That’s what they told the high-achieving Jews when they didn’t want them at Yale or Harvard: “apply somewhere else.”
Of course affirmative action is (a mild form of) discrimination by race. That’s it’s point: taking race into account because, historically, race has always already been taken into account by the entire culture – to the detriment of URM.
Although we’d all prefer a utopian color-blind world where AA wouldn’t be necessary in college admissions, given the realities of contemporary America I support it because I think it helps elite institutions select classes according to the diverse perspectives and talents they want in their student body.
It doesn’t help when one side of the argument denies that scores and grades matter, or says they aren’t part of real life. Tests and grades are very much part of the real life of college & college admissions. If you can’t match another student’s academic achievements, the best answer is to concede defeat (graciously), not to denigrate that student – or their race or ethnicity (!) – or to try to dismiss the entire testing structure. If you’re getting a leg up in that category, you might as well own it.
It also doesn’t help when the other side of the debate reproduces (old) data from law schools and won’t address the deep historical context for AA. The phenomenon of mismatch exists, but it’s only a small part of AA and not enough, in my opinion, to disqualify it.
I think we are trying to make a science out of an art.
I think we would all agree that while some objective measurements are used in college admissions, a lot and I would say MOST of the criteria used is subjective. Other than SATs/ACTs/Subject Tests/AP Exams and distinctions, what other truly objective info is there??? Even GPA is subjective because the schools all have different grading systems and varying levels of rigor in their course offerings, even AP courses.
So that means that most of the material used to assess whether or not someone is admitted to a college or not is for the most part subjective. Yes, they may use a rubric, but that might be a starting point, or even a finishing point. But it’s definitely not the only data point.
So if race, first gen, socio-economic class, geographic diversity, legacy, or WHATEVER is used to help make the decision, so be it.
I agree we need to stop complaining and accept it.
The disgruntled denied applicant issues seem to be mostly at the top schools. So many qualified students of ALL backgrounds are not getting into these top schools. Lehigh sent a waitlist note to someone I know that said “90% of our applicants were qualified to attend”. And that is probably true. BUT THERE JUST AREN’T ENOUGH SPOTS.
I have said before on this thread and others that if so many qualified kids aren’t getting into these top schools, there are a lot of lucky schools out there to get these great (rejected) kids!!! And these schools will be so much stronger because of these amazing students they have! My daughter didn’t get into Harvard but Georgetown is so lucky to have her!!! And she loves it there! (Not that she ever thought she was getting in to Harvard despite having the “stats”, but had she gotten in, it might have been hard to turn down, but I really don’t know what she would have done. She turned down another Ivy.).
We cannot expect things to be perfectly fair if for no other reason, it is impossible to measure fairness. We need to stop trying. If we only relied on SAT or ACT scores, then we could start arguing about the fairness of those tests and who has access to better tutors, and better schools from the age of 2…please there are so many ways to cut this we need to stop trying.
I overall think the colleges do their best to be as fair as possible while trying to manage their institution’s goals.
AGAIN, that’s not the argument, so you’re arguing into a void if you’re arguing with me. I’m not going to rehash my 14 years of CC posts about AA. But just know this: there are two different varieties of complaints that have emanated from Asians on College Confidential and in general on the Internet: One is about traditional AA for URM’s, and the assumption that “unqualified” students are admitted over qualified students. In other words, many Asians (not all of them) outright reject the American ideal of opportunity and how that figures into admissions. The separate complaint is the number of Asians relative to non-URM’s. It’s the second endless whine that I especially object to because it’s based on a whole bunch of prejudices – with regarding to the priorities of test scores, the implication of test scores, the “superiority” of high scorers relative to “lower” scorers (by a whole 10 points), etc.
Know this: Again, the college or U is the decider of a qualification. In the early stages of AA (around 1970, give or take a few years), unprepared students were sometimes admitted to various public and private elites without sufficient support, and the retention rate of those particular students was terrible. But test scores were only one portent of that; more determinate was the overall poor preparation in their under-performing high schools, such as insufficient exposure to reading and insufficient experience writing. But that same series of events is unlikely in the modern era of college admissions. Easily since the beginning of the 21st century (a generation ago, obviously), the elite colleges and universities have publicly announced, unanimously, that in any given year, anywhere between 75% and 95% of their applicants “can do the work well and thrive at our college.” Their final decisions have not been based on whether the URM’s or the ORM’s or the “majority” group are qualified. According to the college, not according to you, not according to me, not according to anonymous complainers on a discussion forum, that 75-95% are all qualified and can all thrive. Other considerations of variety, accomplishment, opportunity, and distribution (academic, geographical, personal, etc.) must further refine those choices among the qualified pool.
I took an ancestry DNA test and it says i’m at least 10% Iberian. I guess now I can put down I’m “Latino”. Since I grew up in Southern California and most of my friends were Mexican I guess my culture is probably more Latino than White.
Thank you for clearly stating what I have struggled to put into words, @epiphany. These accusations of bias and “unfairness” are based solely on test scores, but these private institutions have complete authority to rely on holistic criteria. Therefore test scores and GPA are but a part of the whole application. If you want to attend somewhere based on your grades alone, the UK may be more to your liking.
@picktails and @epiphany if it wasn’t clear from my post, I completely agree with you both. Who are we to determine what is “fair”. We live in a world where applications are views holistically, and that’s just how it is.
Thank you to both @picktails and @collegemomjam
Holistic admission means they can accept or reject applicants based on many factors other than hard stats. Just don’t take rejections from top schools as an indication you were worse students — and then move on. IMO even without AA the holistic admission will yield the same results. I always tell Asian applicants to apply to Honors Colleges and LACs where they will be sought after more and will be given lots of money for great hard stats. Anyway, my kid and I benefited from the holistic admission process, so hard for me to complain about the holistic admission process.
In post #1623 above, I provided links to data for practically all ABA approved law schools for the classes entering 2008 through 2014. (They represent all law schools participating in the LSAC correlation studies.) You cannot get more recent data than those - the 2014 entering class graduated last June.
Professor Sander has been trying to update his more comprehensive analysis, which he published in 2004. He has been stymied for almost ten years but it looks like the tide may be turning in his favor. For people interested, here is a very good essay on his efforts and the array of forces against him:
Fact: Black students are seldom qualified for the Ivy League so they are given inflated grades in useless majors.
I don’t understand why you keep having to bring up “14 years” in multiple posts. If you have a good point, you don’t need to mention that. And if you have don’t have a good point, bringing up 14 years doesn’t help.
You have vastly over-simplified the issue by arguing against what is essentially a strawman. The situation is considerably more complex than both the advocates and opponents of AA make it out to be. So let’s start from the beginning:
- [] There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of groups being considered in terms of creating a college class. Athletes are a group. Whites, URMs, and ORMs are all separate groups. Those interested in Classics are a group, as are those interested in Computer Science. Musicians are a group, with sub-groups for every position in an orchestra. Legacies are a special group, which we will discuss a bit more of below. Obviously these groups overlap, but the point is that colleges have target ranges of students for each group.
[] Ideally, the top applicants for each group would be equally talented overall. It’s fine for Classics majors to have less math ability than Computer Science majors, but hopefully the Classics majors will have better critical reading ability to make up for it.
[] When the applicants for a group are more talented than average, admission penalties come into play. Suppose you have 100 spots available for CS and 1000 applicants. If the math abilities of the top 100 kids are much higher than that other students admitted into other groups, then it could actually be harder to get admitted into CS. Because many Asians self-select into these types of majors, this is where much of the “Asian penalty” appears to take effect. It is not an Asian penalty—it is a penalty for anyone applying to that major.
[] When the applicants for a group are less talented, admission preferences come into play. If you need to fill a football team with talented players, and the applicants don’t have the same academic chops as the rest of the applicant pool, you have to reduce standards to fill the team. There is no getting around this. Admission preferences automatically mean a reduction in standards (with a possible exception for Legacy as noted below). If you didn’t need to reduce standards, you wouldn’t need the admission preference in the first place. Someone who doesn’t understand this cannot participate in a meaningful discussion on AA.
[] A reduction in standards doesn’t mean that everyone in the preference group is worse than average. It is completely possible that the star football player is one of the best math minds around (see John Urschel). Rather it means that standards have to be reduced as you get towards the end of filling that group.
[] There are many types of admission preferences with athletes, URMs, SES (first in family) and Legacies being the most often noted. Less noted is preference given to boys to maintain a 50:50 gender mix (because more girls perform at high levels than boys). Depending upon the college, there may also be preferences given to fill less popular humanities majors. And in every case, standards suffer. It could be a little bit, to fill a major that is less desired, or it could be a lot, to get a star athlete.
[] Legacies are a special admission preference. The primary benefit of a legacy preference is financial. By adding a legacy preference, a college can maintain the illusion of “need-blind” while knowing that most legacies are considerably more likely to be full-pay and generous donors. I actually expect relatively little reduction in standards due to legacy.
Much of the useless chatter on AA has to do with two things:
- [li] Refusal to acknowledge that self-selection mitigates much of the Asian penalty.[/li][] Refusal to acknowledge that an admission preference means a reduction in standards.
In essence, these two groups are talking past each other. It is only when we acknowledge both of these situations that we can actually talk about AA in a meaningful way. So then the remaining questions are:
[ol]
[] Should an admission preference based upon race be allowed?
[] If allowed, what reduction of standards is reasonable?
[li] How much of a reduction in standards are colleges actually practicing?[/li][/ol]
Note that this framework also allows us to talk about other preference groups, but those are topics for other threads.
If this were a law school admissions site this stuff might be relevant.
“The only question is whether affirmative action, as practiced, is discrimination based on race.”
Your only question maybe. Not THE only question.
Comments like this are disingenuous. Race/Ethnicity/Gender/Sex are legally protected classes. No one seriously believes discrimination against non-athletic or non-legacies or non-Oboe players is the same as discrimination against a legally protected class.
I am simply not going to rehash my support of AA for which I have a 14-year history on CC. People possessed of curiosity and lacking in laziness can search my posts. They’re all there. To my knowledge, none have been deleted. If other people want to rehash the same old arguments against AA, they can do so, but I’m not going to indulge them.