This is a meaningless statistic because it says nothing about the strength of the asian applicant pool compared to the strength of the other applicant pools.
“The ivies can do whatever they want. But if they accept federal money, then they better be fair.”
Oh please, religious schools accept federal money and they’re not required to be “fair” either.
Look, there are some brilliant kids in my extended family, a few of whom applied to the Ivies. But only one got in: the least intellectual of them, actually. Had to retake the SATs to raise it to Princeton’s requirement, in fact. But she’s an extraordinary athlete and highly accomplished in her sport. Two other Ivies wanted her for that sport too. Was that “fair”? Well, depends on who’s asking, isn’t it?
If Asian students aren’t getting in to the Ivies they’re no different than other students who aren’t getting in: what they’re offering ISN’T IN SHORT SUPPLY at these schools. If Princeton needs a French horn player for the school orchestra, the perfect scores/piano playing kid will lose out to the French horn player with lower scores. That’s what happens when you’re building a class.
My opinion is irrelevant. But SCOTUS’ opinion next June won’t be.
Some states report bar passage rates by race; California is one. http://admissions.calbar.ca.gov/portals/4/documents/gbx/JULY2014STATS121814_R.pdf
You will notice that the bar passage rate for Asian students is not as high as the passage rate for white students. It could be that (in the aggregate) the inclusion of math in test score comparison influences the perception of overall test performance.
The Ivies are not technical colleges. Performance on math exams is not weighted as strongly for the Ivies (non-engineering departments) as it is at MIT and CalTech.
You know, Asia is a big place, and “Asians” are big group. The kid got into an Ivy, so it’s hard to feel too sorry for him. I also can’t help but wonder, in the effort to diversify a class, if this student would have had different outcomes had his background been Cambodian, Hmong, or Laotian? If belonging to one of those groups would have earned him admission, hard to say the discrimination is against “Asians.”
People of Hmong, Cambodian and Laotian descent, by the way, hold bachelor’s degree at a low rate than Native Americans.
@katliamom, this is true, life’s not fair, but if the Ivies still had a Jewish quota, would you shrug your shoulders and say “life’s not fair; anti-Semitism is a fact of life; deal with it”?
But they don’t have a Jewish quota. And as far as I know they don’t have an Asian quota either.
BTW, the Jewish quotas went away around the time members of the Jewish community started gaining not just political power, but major financial wealth as well. It’s unclear which mattered more in removing discriminatory biases towards them.
@katliamom, they did have a Jewish quota. So if you won’t dodge the question, what would your reaction be if they still had one? Would you shrug it off and just say that anti-Semitism is just a fact of life?
As for whether there is an Asian quota now, unlike the Jewish quota back in the day, no school dares say openly that they have an Asian-American quota now, yet the numbers speak for themselves. The Asian-American percentage of the HS population has gone up significantly over the past 2 decades. Yet the Asian-American percentage at Ivies has not budged (while they have also increased a lot at race-blind Caltech and the race-blind UC’s). Can you or anyone else offer a convincing explanation for why that is the case other than the existence of either an Asian quota or increased anti-Asian biases at Ivy adcoms?
It would be explained by a relative weakening of Asian high school achievement relative to the population as a whole as well.
@Vladenschlutte, that certainly could explain it. However, if by achievement you mean academic achievement, the data I have seen don’t really support that hypothesis. By any academic benchmark you look at (National Merit, those all-star math teams, whatever), the Asian-American percentage has increased by a lot over the past few decades.
Now granted, the Ivies could be emphasizing areas where Asian-Americans are traditionally weaker (various sports that most Asian-Americans don’t excel at or other areas like that) more. But the question then is why are they doing so?
They were doing so for 100+ years. They invented college sports. Ivy League is an Athletic League after all. They do not emphasize sports to intentionally do not admit Asian-American applicants. They also emphasize humanities because they are mostly liberal arts schools.
“But the question then is why are they doing so?”
Because it’s part of their identity and tradition? Just like at Oxbridge – the model for Harvard/Yale – which has been holding cricket and boating competitions for more than a hundred years? And today encourages athletic engagement?
In another thread, @Hanna mentioned that most white students would not want to attend a college where they are in the minority. So perhaps some of the highly selective colleges are trying to hold the line to have at least about 50% white students to ensure their marketability to white students. If true, this becomes a limiting quota on everyone else.
Since I have not seen any concrete evidence of quotas for Asians at the Ivies, I fail to equate this situation to the fact of Ivies’ quotas for Jews almost a hundred years ago.
In fact, the Ivies are now MORE INCLUSIVE of everyone. That said, it’s still an artificially created environment meant to perpetuate values based on money, status, culture and academics. The academic component is only part of the equasion, which is why they call it “hollistic” admissions and not a meritocracy. It never was. That’s why people such as JFK and George Bush got into their respective universities. That’s why so many grads from Andover or Choate get in every single year. They ticked off a lot of boxes that had nothing to do with academic achievements or potential.
This kid applied to all the Ivies. Perhaps the admissions officers correctly deduced that he was just interested in the prestige and they felt they liked other candidates who really wanted to attend that particular University better. The kid then went on to demonstrate his lack of understanding of admissions at these schools by asking what he did wrong. The schools say that the vast majority of their applicants are well qualified. There is nothing wrong with the kids they reject.
Also, he should be happy. He got his Ivy admittance. That’s clearly what he was after and what difference does it make, he seemed happy enough to apply to all of them so should be happy enough to attend one and collect his prestige-laden diploma.
@GMTplus7, kindly refrain from making personal insults toward people who don’t agree with you.
“This is a meaningless statistic because it says nothing about the strength of the asian applicant pool compared to the strength of the other applicant pools.” Yes. And it also says nothing about how those students fit into the overall mission of a liberal arts University, which is different from a technical school. All of which is why you can’t draw the conclusions you would clearly like to from the data you show.
@Ucbalumnus, according to the College Scorecard, all the Ivies’s undergraduate student bodies are less than 50% white.
But it actually DOES have to do with academic achievement and potential. Elite colleges take many students from elite prep schools because that’s where they tend to be able to “freely” choose whoever they want without worrying about their academic readiness (or lack of). On a flip side, they can also freely choose the smart but non-connected/non-athletic kids from there without worrying that they’d be bad cultural fit to their institutions.
This debate is going in circles because while everyone sees the same thing, they have very different assumptions. The colleges are stingy in providing relevant info such as applicant pool data vs the admissions data and rightfully as it might open up a whole big can of worms. The result is that everyone involved in the debate can only “guess”! I agree it’s not a meritocracy but why do people keep thinking academics are THE most important factor? Because the colleges promote themselves as the most elite academic institutions. You see them boasting test scores of the entering class, but do you ever see them boasting how much money they get the new families pledge to donate, how many celebrity kids they have won over, and how many league champion level athletes they have recruited for the year?
Why do we keep discussing this? This dude got into an Ivy! I’m sorry it wasn’t the one he wanted, or that he can’t say he got into multiples, but come on! He won the jackpot! How many 4.0/2400 kids got rejected from all the ivies they applied to? Geez! Who applies to 8 Ivies anyway? I’m convinced the Ivies can smell the Ivy shotgunners!
@panpacific
They call themselves among the most elite academic institutions because they can rightly do so. They have academic superstars up the wazoo. It’s just that not all of them are in the undergraduate pool.