<p>Buttafly13, could you elaborate how URMs are still discriminated against? I have attended a Canadian high school and there were only 4 black students in our grade, mostly from United States who were offered full scholarship to our high school. Scholarship is very often given to U.S students to attract them because it contributes to the fame and ranking of the school to a certain extent. U.S students have no merit to attend our school without scholarship (U.S schools are much more useful and cooperative in preparation for top U.S colleges than Canadian schools). I found absolutely no discrimination against the URM (I had a black roommate and I think I knew his life fairly well). They were treated very equally and two of them became school prefects. </p>
<p>I didn’t go to a high school in U.S, so I have no authority on situations in U.S. But in Canada, I hardly see any discrimination. Rather, there was more discrimination against Asians because there were influx of unintelligent, but only rich Chinese students to our school for past 3 years. Because the majority of those students hardly focus on school academics and mostly lived within their isolated Chinese community, lot of people had some negative images of them.</p>
<p>Some11no: Congratulation for your admission from Stanford! I absolutely agree with you. I do support affirmative action and respect diversity, but the standard of affirmative action isn’t fair for some applicants. If they put race as a standard, they generalize the entire certain ethnic applicants pool, and would overlook those who didn’t have the equal opportunity. In fact, some of them probably had even less chance than other URM applicants did like you. I do think that there should be an alternative solution that doesn’t generalize the entire applicant pool even though I know the solution would be very hard to be devised. Certainly, admission officers derive conjectures of one’s circumstance from one’s family income and high school information. However, those information is simply not enough. </p>
<p>I’m from an affluent family and attended a well respected high school in a small town. There was no tutor or U.S college prep institution available for me while my friends in Boston were trained for SAT/ACT since grade 7. Students from my country literally have private SAT classes all day, all year at their home. Those who study in U.S, also has such opportunity during break. All the major academies located at the capital city of the country and it wasn’t available for me who’s from a relatively small city. I don’t want to sound complaining for my less competitive standardized test scores, but there’s just no way to prove that some ORM applicants didn’t have sufficient opportunities.</p>
<p>HateSMUS-- maybe you can’t understand that discrimination exists because in your area there isn’t racial diversity like in the US. You just said it yourself. 4 black students, big whoop.</p>
<p>If a school admits 4 kids from the same school who look different but have the same academic profile, live in the same community, go to the same church, play the piano, volunteer at the hospital, and have the same tax bracket have you achieved diversity?
If the asian population is 4.5% of the country and 33% of Stanford why do they feel discriminated upon?<br>
Why do selective schools have over representation of certain students and under representation of others students year after year after decade after decade?
If diversity is so important to universities why do they admit so many students from the LEAST diversified private high schools in the country?
Why do they admit students from the same schools year after year and never admit students from other high schools?
While the “need blind” label does help some students it also does a great job of excluding poor students from failing schools.</p>
<p>There’s another piece of the puzzle that isn’t even being discussed here:</p>
<p>Do Asians make up 33% of each class at Stanford, or 33% of the admitted students in each class (and anywhere else)? To how many top schools do they apply, compare to other groups? And does that play a factor in the “admissions game?” If you have a pool of 1,000 Asians, who each apply to 10 highly selective schools (because they’ve been told they have to do this to get accepted at at least one). Assuming these schools are each roughly the same size, so each will end up with 100 of these students. Whether they accept 100, 200 or all 1000 they will end up with 100 in their final class. Now consider the URM students. Are they also each applying to 10 highly selective schools? probably not - whether it’s because of the perception of relative ease of admission, or something else, they’re not applying to 10 schools. They’re applying to 2 or 3. The chance of them attending if accepted is much higher - hence better yield.</p>
<p>So maybe the question isn’t one of discrimination against Asian students, but of them as a group hurting each other’s chances by applying to so many schools. How many of these top Asian students are ending up settling for significantly less selective schools, because they’re locked out of the top schools? </p>
<p>Highly selective schools aren’t highly selective because they only accept 8% of applicants no matter how many apply - they’re highly selective because so many people apply. Yes so many people apply because of the perception that it’s almost impossible to get in. </p>
<p>It might be interesting to see the actual accepted student statistics, as opposed to the admitted students. Highly qualified students complain when they are rejected by top schools, but how many top schools can they enroll in at the same time? If they applied to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, with the expectation of attending Stanford as a top choice, are they ruining someone else’s chance at Harvard and Yale, if they are accepted?</p>
<p>bud123
"If the asian population is 4.5% of the country and 33% of Stanford why do they feel discriminated upon? "</p>
<p>Because many people believe admissions should be meritocratic, and people shouldn’t be treated differently because of skin color. If colleges admitted students in a ratio based on the racial proportions of the United States, it would contradict the meritocratic ideals of the US (even more than they currently are being contradicted through admissions).</p>
<p>For example, what if the only truly qualified applicants were Asian, and there were more than a class size? It would be very morally questionable to reject almost all in favor of unqualified members to keep a set race ratio.</p>
<p>CTScoutmom</p>
<p>" Now consider the URM students. Are they also each applying to 10 highly selective schools? probably not"</p>
<p>“It might be interesting to see the actual accepted student statistics”</p>
<p>Probably would help to have actual stats, because unless you are an expert (which I don’t know about, so I’m not trying to sound too snarky) your argument seems rather weak based on speculation/stereotypes. I’ve always been told it’s best to avoid sweeping generalizations, so pardon me if I am wrong with this.</p>
<p>Stanford has so many qualified students apply they could have any freshman profile they desire and still NOT change their academic profile. The reason their profile looks they way it does is because they want it to look this way. Some groups are over represented and others under represented year after year after year after year after year…</p>
<p>AustroHungarian, I’m not an expert, and maybe I overgeneralized, but it doesn’t really even matter how many schools the URMs applied to, even if they all apply to 10 schools as well, it doesn’t matter. We don’t have statistics telling us how many schools accepted any of the applicants.</p>
<p>There is a finite number of applicants, of whatever persuasion. If Asians already make up 30+% of the population at Stanford, and are overrepresented at many other top schools, will there really be much of an impact if they were accepted at more schools, or would it simply shift which Asians went to which schools - they can each only attend one!</p>
<p>Instead, I’m suggesting that more acceptances would simply result in lower yield. If as a group the Asian applicants were to each apply to fewer schools, there might still be the same number of acceptances, but the acceptance RATE would increase. Because there is this perception of discrimination against Asian applicants, they apply to more schools to ensure an acceptance, yet that just drives the acceptance rate lower.</p>
<p>My borther lives right near Stanford in Palo Alto. That is a high achieving area in terms of hgh school students and every single one of them that he knows wants to go to Stanford. A higher proportion from there do get accepted and are going there as well as from other parts of CA, but it;s pretty clear that without giving a bit of geographic tilt, Stanford could be the Community University of Palo Alto, something they do not want to be. Not an unusual sitaution. Every Catholic school kid on the norhteast applies to BC it seems, and NYU and Columbia are inundated with those living within an hour or so of NYC. </p>
<p>As with many such schools, legacies, development, celebrity, relationships, recruited athletes, school’s special needs, and URMs will have a definite leg up in admissions. For anyone who doesn’thave such a hook it 's tough going. Geographics are usually more of a tip factor than a hook. Being Asian doesn’t help, nor does being caucasian. First generation to college, and a truly challenging lif are also tip factors.</p>
<p>I think you missed the point. The Asian population at schools like Stanford is overrepresented compared to their population. Given this overrepresentation, an allegation that ‘they’re treated differently because of their skin color’ seems implausible.</p>
<p>Asians make up 5% of the U.S. census. Of that, let’s assume, that college-aged students are 2%. So there are 2% C-A’d Asian students in the U.S. and they make up 18% of the undergraduate body at Stanford. Asians aren’t just overrepresented at Stanford, but heavily so. </p>
<p>Whites, on the other hand, make up 40% at Stanford, the clear dominant majority, but make up nearly two-thirds of the U.S population. So they are actually underrepresented with regard to their race.</p>
<p>Lastly, racial discrimination has never been proven. There are a number of racially neutral policies that universities can, and do, use which indirectly negatively impact Asians students. Asians do poorly in terms of first-generation college students and low SES, since, collectively, they are the most well-educated and highest-earning race in the U.S. ([c.f.](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303379204577474743811707050.html"]c.f.[/url]”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303379204577474743811707050.html)</a>) Other racially neutral policies (which i don’t feel like substantiating) might include geographical diversity (since Asians are localized on the east and west coasts) or legacies (since many legacies, i assume, are white and they’re given ridiculously large boosts in admissions.)</p>
<p>So, Asian discrimination is merely plausible conjecture, but conjecture none the less. It’s easy for entitled Asians to say that some minority ‘stole’ the spot that they ‘deserved’ at Prestigious U rather than face the reality that maybe the university has different values than they do when they determine which applicant is the ‘most qualified.’</p>
<p>“Asians make up 5% of the U.S. census. Of that, let’s assume, that college-aged students are 2%.”</p>
<p>So what are you endeavoring to propose is that most of the Asians in the country are either too old for college or very young? Why on earth would the percentage of college students that are Asian be so much lower than the percentage of Americans that are Asian? If anything, the percent of college students that are Asian could be expected to be a touch higher, maybe 6-7%, as many Asians are immigrants and thus very old generations are likely to have lower Asian percentages.</p>
<p>I do agree with the rest of your post, but I’m just wondering.</p>
<p>@HateSMUS, discrimination and racism exists. A few incidents that have happened to me.</p>
<ol>
<li>Called a n***** by a group of white guys driving by in a truck.</li>
<li>Blonde debate judge sees me walk into the room, looks surprised, looks at me and smirks and then leans back in her chair as of she already knew that the white girl would win, so what was the point of flowing?</li>
<li>White people, especially the girls, talking to me in a “black” accent. Pushing their lips out and saying “hey giirl, how you doin”. This has happened several times with different girls.</li>
<li>A white boy talking about how black people smell like grease and oil.</li>
<li>A white girl in my APUSH class saying that Obama looks like a monkey.</li>
<li>My white teacher looking at me and saying what a shame it is that there are not as many white kids in the gifted program as there used to be.
It goes on and on. I am not saying that everyone is racist, I have friends who are not. But a lot of them are.</li>
</ol>
<p>I was just making an assumption. That 5% of the U.S. that are Asian includes both infants and the elderly, as well as the middle aged. I think it’s a fair assumption to make that most college students are either in their late to to mid twenties (that’s been my experience at least.)</p>
<p>My argument above had some flaws though. I didn’t make the C-A’d argument to whites (although my point was that whites are underrepresented with regard to their percentage of the U.S. census, as opposed to Asians, who are overrepresented.) </p>
<p>C-A’d whites probably comprise maybe 20-30% of the U.S population out of the 60. However, that’s still around 60 to 90 million people. In terms of pure numbers, and given that whites perform the second best after Asians in standardized tests (and i think grades) it isn’t too surprising that they comprise the dominant majority at Stanford.</p>
<p>EDIT: as long as i’m here, i guess i’ll substantiate another one of my comments that i have evidence for, which, ironically enough, is from Stanford’s newspaper:</p>
<p>If Asians really wanted to increase their numbers at elite schools, the smarter thing to do would be to try to lobby to get rid of legacy admits instead of getting rid of affirmative action.</p>
<p>The thing is though legacy admits have a place at whatever college. There should be special consideration if your family has ties to the school. Wouldn’t you want your kids to have something like this to your alum mater? However, I have a yet to see a reasonable argument for affirmative action based on race. Economic status, maybe. That could make sense, but purely based on the color of your skin is kind of absurd.</p>
<p>“There should be special consideration if your family has ties to the school.”</p>
<p>Why? It’s a school, not a country club. If AA is racism, then special consideration for children of alums is nepotism. It’s simply unfair, especially because they might be under qualified and “take spots away” from more deserving/hardworking applicants. I don’t fully agree with race-based AA but how are things like legacy status or being an athletic recruit any different? If you aren’t qualified based on academics, ECs, and quality of essays, you don’t deserve an acceptance to a certain college. They should take background (like living in a disadvantaged neighborhood) into account, but only to a certain extent. how does the fact that you happened to be born into a certain family make you more worthy of attending a school? I understand why it’s good from the college’s standpoint, but it is just as discriminatory as giving someone an advantage for being an URM.</p>
What’s also absurd is that blacks and minorities were explicitly banned from many schools up until the 1960s, so those who benefit from legacy admissions are largely white.</p>
<p>Legacy admits are good for the school’s finances, which in turn is good for financial aid. I wouldn’t call that something I’d like to lobby against. I’m all for developmental admits, if only because it makes my bill smaller (admittedly, I’m not getting any aid, so… not me PERSONALLY, but you get my drift)</p>
<p>Similarly, racial diversity is good for the school’s image, if nothing else. Berkeley gets a TON of flak for being about half asian from people I know.</p>
<p>Admitting based on personality and essays also makes sense, to an extent - personality is a great indicator of success, as is the ability to communicate well etc etc</p>
<p>And athletes contribute to school spirit and of course, especially in Stanford’s case, are a huge source of pride.</p>
<p>Let’s be honest guys: College admissions officers aren’t self destructive. Their “biases” and “unfair” aspects are self-serving and rational. If they admit students that don’t “deserve” to get in, they are hurting their own school. They have a good reason for every person they admit - they have to defend their decisions to each other, after all.</p>
<p>And finally, I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but there are SO many qualified applicants that nobody can truly claim to DESERVE to be accepted. Nobody is entitled to a Stanford education. If you don’t get in, don’t blame it on AA. Everybody’s got something going for them.</p>
<p>“What’s also absurd is that blacks and minorities were explicitly banned from many schools up until the 1960s, so those who benefit from legacy admissions are largely white.”</p>
<p>Why do you want to go to a school that doesn’t welcome people of your race?</p>
<p>Actually, for Stanford-Asians are over represented (as compared to the American population as a whole) so really the only conclusion that one can derive is that Asians are given a preference. To say the same about other minorities whom are not over represented is illogical. As far as Englishmen go, I have no idea, but if you were denied entry I sense that your grasp of America and the English language had something to do with it.</p>
<p>sosomenza, your claim has already been denied with an explanation from AustroHungarian’s post 406. It’s ridiculous Asians are given a preference. That is an obvious phenomenon caused by massive number of Asian applicants with qualified scores and activities. It is not about how overrepresented Asians are but how meritocratic the admission process is. Especially if skin color and heritage which applicants have no control over have a significant influence on the admission, those who do not have URM status would obviously feel disenfranchised. What you just wrote is nothing different from claims that Black applicants are discriminated against in admission process just deriving from higher number of Asian matriculations than Black’s which contradicts the U.S racial population composition.</p>