<p>Here’s something you all need to think about: </p>
<p>Do you really want to go to a university that discriminates in admissions based on race?</p>
<p>Now its discrimination. Lol! This just gets better and better. Here’s an Idea, if you do not want your race to be known, DON"T REPORT IT. You do have that option you know. And they are not allowed to infer race from names. So don’t report it.</p>
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<p>Yes, there are some disadvantages to the system, the most obvious one being the income problem. I personally don’t think URMs with family incomes of $200K+ should get any benefits at all, just me. But give me a break. How many Asian kids from South Dakota or Chinese immigrants from the New York projects apply to Stanford? They probably represent about 1-2% of all Asian applicants to Stanford, and they’ll still get some attention for sticking out of the largely homogeneous Asian crowd. And look, I’m sorry if I sound like I’m stereotyping. Indeed, I am. But the trend I’ve seen is pretty definitive, and if an Asian applicant wasn’t a part of that trend (for example, loved the humanities or came from South Dakota lol), adcoms would still take note. Granted, those very few applicants aren’t treated like URMs, but they’re not treated like your stereotypical Asian applicant either.</p>
<p>I entered this discussion in support of affirmative action, and I believe that there is some merit in trying to select a class that is diverse in multiple regards–so I can understand why an admissions office would not take everyone from any group of applicants who seem somewhat similar.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I would not admit anyone who characterized the 2400/4.0 crowd as “study robots” either, especially in the context of a claim of personal superiority. No living beings are robots (at least, not yet). I think it is really dangerous to dehumanize a group of people, and then claim to have “learned more” than they have, or to be superior in some other way. History is replete with examples where this has truly been dangerous–less so in the college admissions context. But, really! People are not robots. I am reminded of the line from The Merchant of Venice, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” And I’m not even Asian.</p>
<p>Based on experience alone, I don’t think it’s wrong to call these kids machines. 40% of my school is Asian, and most of them spend 12+ hours a week [and a VERY large amount of money] at private tutors. All of them use connections to accumulate 300 hours of community service, two club board positions, excellent overseas internships etc. Few have extracurriculars besides the usual instruments, and nearly all of them use the IB diploma as a badge of suffering/safety blanket for schools. But after a while, something seems wrong when they are so concerned for their grade, that they refuse to share notes with their friends for fear that it will raise a test curve, or that they take the SATs six times because they ONLY got 2360. And there’s a definite lack of empathy among a lot of the kids; it’s like all the time they spend grooming themselves academically gives them a more selfish mentality. I have peers that want nothing more than to become doctors, but openly and regularly harass an autistic boy because he appears less intelligent. I mean, really?</p>
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<p>What sets these kids apart is that these connections and tutoring establishments are Asian run and catered for Asian parents. Many, many Californians are aware of this, so that Stanford knows it is no surprise. Using my school as an example, over the past three years, my school has had about seven students attend Stanford each year; of each batch of seven, I’ve never seen more than two Asians among them.</p>
<p>I understand your strong negative feelings about some of the behavior that you describe, stripedbread. I think there is probably something wrong with a person who refuses to share notes, and there is definitely something wrong with anyone who harasses an autistic young man. Nevertheless, even students in this group are not “machines.” Their limitations are of a different sort.</p>
<p>On CC, I often see the labels “machine” and “robot” applied to totally inoffensive students who study too hard–and even to students who don’t study so hard, but are able to score 2400/4.0, anyway.</p>
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<p>I think a better question is do you really want to go to a university that does not discriminate in admissions based on race?</p>
<p>Look at the Haas Undergraduate Business Program at Berkeley (competitive to get into): 52 percent Asian, 16 percent white, 26 percent chose not to report (I’m guessing Asian or white, maybe not). Do the math: 94 percent of the Business Program is Asian or white. I wouldn’t want to be a part of that.</p>
<p>While I think “robot” or “machine” is too strong a term to describe a hard-working teenager, I do think that some families don’t grasp the idea that schools like Stanford are looking for “interestingness” in forming their incoming class. I would say that an Asian kid from North Dakota who is a champion bowler is *much *more likely to get in than a similar kid from a major city who plays the violin. What surprises me is that this fact hasn’t resulted in a change in strategy for many families.</p>
<p>Colleges don’t just accept students for their grades and SATs, those don’t get you anywhere in the real world. Your ability to go beyond yourself and interact with other people, be creative, and do something unique are of more value once you actually graduate from college.</p>
<p>Sure, there are Asians with 2300s and 4.0s that get rejected in favor of URMs with 1900s and 3.6s, but the reason for that isn’t solely based on Affirmative Action. Many of these high-scoring Asians do literally nothing other than study. On the other hand, the low-scoring URMs that get in often have to deal with serious family crises, and at the same time are more involved at school and do way more extra-curriculars.</p>
<p>How many protoypical and stereotypical Asian students do we see apply to these schools? 4.0s, 2300+ SAT, 800 Math SAT, 800 Korean/Chinese SAT, and a boat-load of math awards. What else to many of them bring? Absolutely nothing. Colleges like Stanford don’t just want nerds (for lack of a better word) that sit cramped up in their room studying, and then go on to achieve nothing of significance to the world after graduation.</p>
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<p>What’s funny is that if you say “I don’t want to be a part of that” if the program was full of Hispanic Americans and African Americans you would be instantly castigated as a racist. But since it’s whites and Asian Americans, you are instead applauded for valuing “diversity”. </p>
<p>Yay for diversity!</p>
<p>Englishmen? What century are you from?</p>
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<p>Imagine that - studying hard in the mistaken belief that admission to a selective academic institution is based on academic achievement.</p>
<p>How ironic that the most racist/ignorant posts on this thread are by those in favor of AA.</p>
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Maybe they would call me a racist, although that doesn’t make my point invalid. I don’t want to be part of some supermajority, just like I wouldn’t want to be part of some superminority. </p>
<p>Directly north of my hometown there’s a town with 50% Jewish people. Directly south of my hometown there’s a town with less than 1%. My hometown is around 5 to 10%. Almost no Jews decide to live in the southern town, just because they’d literally be one of a handful of Jewish families. They just don’t do it, even though we’re in an age where religion isn’t as discriminated against. Most Jews either want to live in the northern town or my town. My grandparents and parents decided it would be best to live in a town where there were enough Jews so that they wouldn’t feel so isolated, but they didn’t want to support the massive Jewish ghetto town above them by living there. I agree with that decision. </p>
<p>This kinds of thing is not people being racist or anti-Christian or whatever. They just go where they feel most comfortable. So although I don’t agree with having a town with a 50% Jewish population, I can see why that stuff is still around.</p>
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If you’re saying that this is why Asians study hard then, in my opinion, you’re criticizing Asians. Because by saying this you imply that Asians study hard because they believe doing so will get them into a selective academic institution. Thus you’re just perpetuating the Asian stereotype: study hard, get good grades, get into Harvard…</p>
<p>This thread contains just about every generalization and stereotype one could think of in regard to academics… Wow.</p>
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<p>Do you by any chance have tons of flannel, keffiyehs, skinny jeans, and PBR?</p>
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Is that the best stereotype of a white person you could come up with? C’mon.</p>
<p>I think my issue with Stanford’s AA plan is its grossly disproportionate admissions rate.
Yes, AA is good because of the magnitude of discrimination imposed on African Americans up to the Civil Rights Movement. If you want to dispute just how badly they were discriminated against, work on your US History. Also, it wasn’t really until the 60’s that the Chicano community was even really considered a community to be represented as a race. So yes, the current batch of URM’s certainly deserve some benefit from AA.</p>
<p>However, when LBJ signed Executive Order 11246 (relating to workplace AA) and ordered the Department of Labor to establish a government, system of AA, the intent was to use AA to balance the disproportionate representation of minorities and women qualified to work those jobs. “If women and minorities are not being employed at a rate to be expected
given their availability in the relevant labor pool, the contractor’s affirmative action program includes specific practical steps designed to address this underutilization.” [Government</a> Contractors, Affirmative Action Requirements; Proposed Rule](<a href=“http://www.ogc.doc.gov/ogc/contracts/cld/regs/65fr26087.html]Government”>http://www.ogc.doc.gov/ogc/contracts/cld/regs/65fr26087.html)</p>
<p>Therefore, the proportion of qualified workers should match up to the proportion of actual people taking contracts. Drawing a parallel, this means that the proportion of qualified applicants should match the proportion of qualified enrolled students (or be close). Even accounting for a minor extra “boost” to “right the wrongs” of past discrimination, I have no doubt that Stanford certainly oversteps the intent of Affirmative Action.</p>
<p>Stanford (according to collegeboard) is 3% Native American, 11% African American, 23%Asian, 15% Hispanic, 33% White.</p>
<p>Stanford is also 53% in-state.
California Stats: 41% non-white hispanic, 6.6% black, 1.2% NA, 12.7% Asian, 37% hispanic.
US Stats: 65.1%, 12.9, 1.0, 4.6, 15.8
[California</a> QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau](<a href=“http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html]California”>http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html)</p>
<p>Therefore, through a weighted average of purely race and excluding percent by applicants alone, Stanford should be about 52% white, 9.5% black, 1.1% NA, 8.9% Asian, and 27% hispanic.
Furthermore, looking into “qualified” students, lets say everyone with a 600 on every section of the SAT is considered to be “qualified”.
The standard deviation of each section on the SAT is usually considered to be about 100. It varies slightly year by year, but the difference is not significant.
[Fast</a> Facts](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171]Fast”>Fast Facts: SAT scores (171))</p>
<p>So using a standard deviation of 100 and z table, here are the approximate proportion within each race of “qualified” potential applicants.</p>
<p>White: CR-23.58% M-26.11%
Black: CR-4.36% M-4.09%
NA: CR-12.71% M-14.23%
Asian: CR-21.33% M-44.83%
Hispanic (rounded avg of the 3): CR- 7.08% M-7.64%</p>
<p>So assuming that the proportion of students having both roughly matches up with the smaller percentage, then the proportions should play out like this:
White: 73%
Black: 2.4%
NA: 0.8%
Asian: 12%
Hispanic 11% (note percentages do not add up to 100 due to rounding)</p>
<p>Under all these simplifying assumptions, it would appear that white people are getting screwed, while Asians, Blacks and NA are getting AA’d significantly, with Hispanics getting a slight boost.</p>
<p>However, I won’t go further into Stanford’s applicant profile, as admit rates by SAT can be confounded by the fact that AA exists. However, about 70% of admits had scores of 700 or higher, indicating that a 700 is closer to the true “qualification”. This would cause a severe decline in the “expected” percentages for the current URM’s, since the z-score causes percentages to decrease very quickly. Also, on the flip side, Stanford’s admit process is “holistic” and there is no SAT cut off. So obviously, simply having a score below what is considered “qualified” by this analysis does not mean the applicant is unqualified.</p>
<p>Yet, as the law of large numbers in Statistics says: with an increased sample size, the results are closer to the expected. So, in general terms, yes a 700+ is essential to getting in, though some are allowed for the 600-700 range, while very few are allowed for less than 600. With an admitted class of about 2000, this should represent the expected closely. Therefore, the proportion of “qualified” Asians shoots up significantly, due to the disproportionate number of math qualifiers. Whites are reduced slightly, while the URM’s are decreased significantly, with Blacks and NA’s reduced to a near 0% expected.</p>
<p>Therefore, both generally and statistically, the number of URM’s that are admitted (though maybe at a lower rate for hispanics) is extremely disproportional. Obviously Stanford is at liberty to choose who attends their school. However, this is so grossly disproportionate against Whites and mildly against Asians that the AA policy at Stanford has gone far beyond what LBJ had intended. Even “righting past wrongs” does not seem to justify this.</p>
<p>^glad I already crunched the numbers for a paper! this was ridiculous. I considered stopping halfway through but I figured if I made it this far, I should finish.</p>
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That’s my point–that is a mistaken belief, and it’s surprising that there are so many families that still don’t seem to realize this. Sacrificing interesting ECs for nothing but study and oversubscribed ECs (like violin playing) is a poor *strategy *if you really want to get into the most selective schools in the United States. The really smart Asian kid will pick up an accordion.</p>