This is actually data I’d like to see. If Asians are being shut out on the fields that they are not necessarily known for, I think its very strong indication of racial bias.
Asians have to score 140 points higher on SATS than whites for the same chances of admission to selective colleges
along with these personality traits that include “likeability, courage” that I would gather are most often determined by a white interviewer this sets up a system that justifies its racism with “holistic admissions”
as far as hyper-academic focus of the Asian-American community is not helping matters…
no student of any race should be expected to apologize to work less.
other students need to work harder. merit hard work and determination should not be penalized.
and certainly you should not be penalized in admissions based on your skin color which is occuring now.
You, me and everyone else wants transparency but colleges aren’t willing to offer it. Let’s see if these lawsuits help bring some clarity to this process. That would help everyone as this is just a merry go round for discrimination. It was used agaist women, blacks and jews, now it targets Asians, in time it would pick a new group to cap. This obsession with social engineering isn’t going anywhere unless there is enough transparency.
Everyone is raising lots of great points.
I think the Asian discrimination is a problem and I feel badly for everyone that has been treated unfairly because of it. I’m not sure what the solution is. Overall, I feel like the colleges have the right to decide who they accept and who they do not. But I almost feel like these “personality” assessments that they are doing for the applicants (in the Harvard case) is almost like a cover-up. Meaning, they knew they had to have some kind of documentation justifying their decisions so they came up with this personal characteristics criteria. It almost seems like it would be more honest (and useful) if they just admitted to having some kind of, maybe loose, quota system.
With that said, personality is definitely an important issue. Regardless of race, for example, anyone who is too competitive or “driven” to the point that it is obsessive might not be a desirable candidate. Is that what they are trying to weed out? Or are they trying to weed out kids that are too self-centered? Why are Asians scoring lower in these personality assessments? Sounds like there might be some serious stereotyping going on.
I am not a fan of racial quotas. That is why I would love to see all traces of race scrubbed from the application. However, it is possible that those families that are single mindedly focused on one type of achievement may be making a mistake. US Universities do value other traits besides the ability to get high grades and test scores. There are other traits that are well correlated with success in life. They also seek a diverse student body which includes different kinds of experiences. A student who is focused solely on a certain type of academic acheivment may be missing some of those traits. Harvard may believe that they can educate a 33 ACT just as well as a 36. Beyond those raw numbers, they are looking for other things. It may be impressive that a student took BC calc in 10th grade instead of 11th or 12th, but ultimately, is that the determinant of success in any field besides mathmatics or certain types of engineering? Even a bio major doesn’t need that much math.
Some of it is true but stereotyping against Asians is what’s hurting all Asian students. Even in this thread, you can see corruption of broad brushing.
@SatchelSF my JHS is gone, the building has been converted into something else. My elementary doesn’t appear to be a desirable one now according to rankings online, but it wasn’t then either.
It’s possible that letters of recommendation may refer to students of Asian descent in a way that their academic achievements do not come across as flattering (e.g." try hard") while strong academic achievements of white students are often atrributed to being “natural” . No easy solutions to this issue of implicit bias. Increased awareness can help.
@gallentjill, H (as well as YPS) don’t admit by school or major. There are questions that ask what area/major the applicant is currently interested in, but is not binding in any way as opposed to other schools which do admit by subschool/department. If you indicate engineering for Y and P, you have a short supplemental essay to prepare. On the other hand, no question that schools like H(YPS) are trying to balance their classes by academic interests (as well as among other things, gender, geography, socio-economic status, activities/interests and while they won’t admit/broadcast it, race). Students on the school pages on CC are always asking whether or not they can “game” the application process by putting down a “lesser” major. For the top schools like HYPS, the academic cut-off for any student is so high, I doubt “round” sub 1400/3.8 kids get in because they indicated an interest in an “easy” major - they get in because of a serious hook or an amazing personal spike. I also think that applicants that try to “game” the system will end up quickly in the reject pile if their academic record, LoR’s, EC’s and essays scream another interest. So in that respect, it may be that a disproportionate number of Asian applicants indicate a STEM based major to be true to their interests, so I agree that slicing the data by academic interest would be interesting. If a huge number of Asian “rejects” had indicated a limited number of particular areas of interest so that it skewed the overall Asian admissions rate downward it would be one story. If however Asian applicants were more evenly spread across all interests and the admissions rates were all suspiciously close, indicating a de facto quota, that would raise issues for Harvard even under Fisher imo.
Seems like if Harvard and other elites really want to make their admission process fair and the campus more diverse, they should immediately get rid of the legacy bump. According to @OHMomof2 's article, it is a stronger bump than low income.
Harvard’s legacy rate is about 12% and it counts alums of all its schools. Given that Harvard College is only about 1/3 of the student population you can estimate that having a Harvard parent gets you about 4% chance, hardly a boost considering the 4.6% average acceptance rate.
The legacy admits I have seen are either alums who donated very generously or they have been very active in local chapters who volunteered as interviewer for the college for years and knew regional AOs personally.
But price discrimination and customer loyalty programs are in all kinds of private businesses, never pose any legal problems.
“If however Asian applicants were more evenly spread across all interests and the admissions rates were all suspiciously close, indicating a de facto quota, that would raise issues for Harvard even under Fisher imo.”
Agree, these schools are already using a soft quota, which is legal, on Asians, so it becomes do they actually have hard quotas, which are illegal, do they compare Asians with other Asians and by extension URMs to other URMs, and are Asians held to a higher standard. I think they do all these, btw, and again, unless it’s a hard quota, is within their right. They should just say this is what they’re doing instead of hiding behind a vague term like holistic.
'Agree, these schools are already using a soft quota, which is legal, on Asians…"
Legal? nooo, they just deny there is a quota.
Anyway, I am surprised Harvard had to resort to applicant’s “likability” to achieve their unstated goal. After all Harvard can have its pick of 300 best kids of any demographics. I can only imagine if similar lawsuit is filed against other top schools the issue is even more glaring.
Poster of post #1911 made a great point, most teachers, guidance counselors, coaches, admission officers, interviewers etc can’t tell how much bias due to cultural diffrence is at play in their assessments. They can’t relate to struggles of first generation Asians, see them using stereotype lense and doesn’t find them likeable.
From the article linked in post #1913:
And:
It’s so great that this sort of information is slowly coming out. Harvard is simply adding or subtracting points based on race, no matter what it says. So is every other major selective university practicing affirmative action.
Harvard is not hiding this. It is very clearly stated in the CDS that they take ethnicity into account. So it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that higher-income black applicants get a bump in admissions. The college is expressly trying to increase the percentage of URM students. Not low-income URM. URM is not a proxy for low-income. It is its own category. Just as “athlete” and “legacy” are separate categories.
The real question will be whether Asian applicants are disadvantaged in comparison to other unhooked groups.
If would seem that if it is LEGAL to discriminate in favor of any group for the sake of diversity then it is, ipso facto, legal to discriminate against any group in order to do achieve a certain holistic-well balanced class. IF schools want diverse classes then they may have to limit various races in order to accomplish this. One thing I never see mentioned is percentage as representative of a population. Why does any class necessarily need to have more of any one racial group than exists in (US) society in order to be well balanced?
Why does the NBA need any more of one racial group than exists in US society in order to be well balanced?
The specific percentages are below, using US government defined race groups, comparing the 2016 US student demographics with the 2016 Harvard IPEDS undergraduate totals for non-international students. By this measure, only the percentage of White students at Harvard is “well-balanced” compared to US student totals. All other races are off by at least a factor of 2x from the US student totals.
White – 50% Harvard, 49% US students
Asian – 20% Harvard, 5.4% US students
Hispanic – 12% Harvard, 26% US students
Black – 7.6% Harvard, 16% US students
Native American – 0.4% Harvard, 1.0% US students
Two or More Races – 6.7% Harvard, 2.9% US students
Other – 3.8% Harvard, NA% US students