@BatesParents2019 said:
Which begs the question why are their applications are being measured against other Asian applicants, and not against non-Asian, non-gifted applicants?
@BatesParents2019 said:
Which begs the question why are their applications being measured against other Asian applicants, and not being measured race-blind against non-Asian, non-gifted applicants?
They’re not. That’s a fiction. The “competition” involved would be things like majors in college, high school courses selected and (sometimes, not always) choices of e.c.'s. For example, most of my students are Asian. They differ as widely in personality, talent, and ability as any other “grouped” segment (if one were to group them). However, they usually do not differ widely in terms of (stated) academic interests and academics already pursued. The great majority of my own students are STEM students, and especially the “E.” Those who are not choose business, economics, or accounting. This year I had two students who were naturally interested in Poli Sci/Internat’l Relations in one case and Literature in the other case. But you should have heard the fights they had with their families, sometimes in my presence. It wasn’t pretty.
When you combine such similarities along with a heavy presence of Asians in a given region it becomes effectively “competing against each other.” Then there’s a glut of similarity within the same region. Not only does an Elite generally not want one region to be terribly overrepresented for a national university, but also possibly the more difficult problem becomes merely distinguishing oneself from others. (This was previously a problem for white students which Rachel Toor documented in her tell-all book.)
ETA: Nevertheless, the same phenomenon occurs across all nationalities and ethnicities, in that about he same (very tiny) percentage of students from any “group” (whether you look at that as origins, as a particular high school, a particular region) receives offers from an Elite University like an Ivy, MIT, Stanford. That’s because there’s a reason these institutions are referred to as Elite. Aside from the Hooked categories (about 1/4 of the admitted pool), the remaining 75% are exceptional, not just high achievers. Being a high achiever does not, in itself, put you in an intellectually high class, even though it may show many other wonderful things about you.
^^ BP also included, “due to the choice of study.” Not that Asians are competing solely against other Asians. You can’t judge the whole just by looking at competition within STEM. Or only among kids from just certain geo areas.
I’m getting deja vu.
Do they actually have an essay topic “Why Harvard?” What can one answer besides, “Because I’m a prestige ho”?
Anything else would be a lie, you know it, I know it, the American people know it.
I don’t know what sickens me more, the fact that colleges are still sorting, judging and selecting people by race, or that one group of people are so obsessed with this one school they act as if there are no other.
Both sides deserve each other. Harvard deserves the lawsuits and the prestige obsessed Asians deserve to get rejected in drove.
I claim credit to coining the phrase “prestige ho”.
I’m going to copyright it, charge usage rights on CC, and retire early. $-)
I want to copyright “Chance me for the Ivies?” and “These schools are a reach for anyone.”
I honestly wouldn’t complain about this and instead complain about the current quality and rigor of higher education that exists at even most elite institutions. The fact is, a wide range of students can handle the workload and rigor of these schools (perhaps many used to actually be tougher, especially those amongst the very elite) and thus these schools can now easily choose students based upon other criteria. To me, that is okay. If these schools were all extremely intensive and had higher grading standards or threw extremely difficult content at students in most courses, then it would make more sense to choose the highest scorers (and Technical schools to some extent are trying to do this. Caltech definitely does it. Places like Georgia Tech do it to a large extent. You’ll notice that the engineering entities of elite schools basically have only people with near perfect scores).
There may be the claim that schools could become more serious in educating if they did not have holistic admissions and just chose based upon academic factors and maybe this is true. However, after some looking around, most places that have seen dramatic increases in SAT scores over the past, say 5-10 years, do not seem to change course work that much for specific courses. Instructors who have been teaching the course for several years (or over a decade) often do not retool their courses with respect to the change in the SAT scores in a student body. Interestingly enough, some will just let their exam averages float upward or stay the same (yes, at some schools where the selectivity has changed dramatically, exam averages in things like science courses taught by the same instructor have stayed flat, so whether or not these students are actually “better” is questionable). Either way, the way elite highered works now makes it mostly a social club with some solid (but for the most part very manageable) academics on the side. I suppose it is kind of like: “Why not invite some people that will either liven this social club up or benefit from it in ways that others won’t necessarily because they are already in a well-off family?” I mean if university education is hardly about the academic experience (due to instructors being researchers and students being “consumers”), shouldn’t you expect most admissions processes to reflect this reality? They can pretty much invite whoever they want so much as it is enough high scorers to keep the rank high, but yet enough “interesting” people with perhaps lower scores who bring intellectual (yes I said intellectual…many high scorers hardly have an intellectual bone in their body. They are very intelligent and often well-resourced and groomed, and perhaps hard working, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate a disposition for something more than “dolphin style” learning where academics is a set of hoops to jump through as gracefully and as unchallenged as possible) and social vitality (maybe by bringing a different perspective) to the campus.
I get the feeling that if these (and other) schools gave out more C’s/D’s/F’s, thus going back to the 50’s, or beefed up the content in their courses to the point where many just can’t handle it, then admissions would be more academically oriented, but again, this is not the case.
A couple of things. First:
Fisher v. Texas involves a state university, so it involves government action. Harvard is a private university, so it is unlikely that the same standards would be applied. Similarly, you mentioned “disparate impact.” That is a concept that is invoked under certain civil rights laws (such as the Fair Housing Act), but I’m not aware of any law that would implicate that concept in this case. If (to give a simple example) a private university had a written policy to accept, say, one-third of its class from the state in which it was located, that would not be unlawful simply because it resulted in fewer admissions of some particular group. It might, possibly, be unlawful if it could be proven that the intention was to discriminate against that group. This is to explain why statistical arguments will not be enough for the plaintiffs to prevail. Harvard considers too many factors, and too many of them are subjective–without a smoking gun showing intentional discrimination, the case will fail. And judges are smart–they will know the case is going to fail, so they will dismiss it if at all possible in order to avoid a waste of their time.
Also, it’s interesting that Caltech is 40% Asian. Caltech is all STEM. It’s in California, where (apparently) one third of Asians in America live. As somebody else noted, Caltech also apparently doesn’t balance its class by gender. Does this suggest that 40% is about as high as Asian admissions are going to get at a selective college, based on stats alone? And doesn’t it suggest that there are plenty of non-Asian kids who are able to effectively compete for those STEM slots? And if it’s really true that Asians disproportionately select STEM majors, and that Ivies recruit for a wider range of majors, and that Ivies balance their classes by gender, and that Ivies recruit for sports (which Caltech doesn’t do), etc., etc.–then what is the “right” percentage of Asians at an Ivy League school? If you found that 40% of STEM students at Harvard are Asians, would that affect your thinking on this subject? I’m just saying that STEM concentration may be a really large factor in the apparent disparity.
I think most people would agree that the right percentage would be the one that would emerge if all non-hooked applicants were evaluated fairly, independent of their race. Maybe this is already the case, maybe not. I hope this lawsuit sheds light on this, but I am not optimistic in this regard.
Here’s a factoid that I think illuminates what I was saying in the last post:
This is from Yale’s website (or a press release, I’m not sure which).So, what percentage of Asian applicants to Yale identify STEM as their primary area of interest? I have no figures, but my observations here on CC, and in real life, tell me that it’s way north of 40%. If I’m right, do the math, taking into account that at Caltech–which is all STEM and (supposedly) doesn’t consider race, Asians “only” make up 40% of students.
@Hunt Here is one example. What would account for Colgate having an Asian population of just 3.5%.
Well, it could be that Colgate is discriminating against Asians even more than the Ivies are. Or it could be that Asian students aren’t applying there.
Another thing to ponder: we know there are many very high-performing Asian students, because they are represented at all the most selective schools at rates substantially higher than the percentage of Asians in the population. But is the overall curve of achievement among Asian students the same as the curve of achievement among white students? Could it be that enrollment at places like Colgate is lower because higher-achieving Asian students are “used up” at more selective schools? You can’t just make assumptions about any of this.
@hunt. I think you can create a theory. Here is why. Williams is about 11%, still much lower than Ivy but much higher than other LACs.
What’s the difference to a layman between the two schools?
Harvard has 19% Asian students (not counting any non-resident aliens, multi-racial persons, or persons of unknown ethnicity). Brown has 13%. Hmmm. MIT has 25%. Hmmm again.
http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/BMI-FAQ.pdf
@Hunt - Under Title VI, since Harvard and almost all other private universities accept federal funding, they are all held to the strict scrutiny standard applied in Fisher v. Texas.
@hunt. I believe that Brown is the lowest ranked Ivy on US News and least STEMY.
I’ve got rights to my warning about, “I think it, so it must be true” and its sister, “I read it somewhere, so it IS true.” But feel free to borrow them.
Again, Hunt is spot on.
Colgate is likely a safety for many Asian kids. If it’s like other schools, it’s reporting matriculations, not acceptances. (An not just a saftey if HYPSM doesn’t come through, but also CMU and others.) Or maybe someone wants to demand Colgate open up its application stats, parse those to death.
About the class of 2016, many know Harvard is trying to up the number of humanities kids (esp males in some fields.) A little less emphasis there (and a few other Ivies) on stem, stem, stem. Any decline in that drive will affect the hordes who assume stem superiority should be a hook. But you can’t game it. You are either a legit humanities kid or not.
“I think most people would agree that the right percentage would be the one that would emerge if all non-hooked applicants were evaluated fairly, independent of their race.”
Well, again, kids are looked at as individuals, first. And ime, fairly. One app at a time, a fresh look with each new app. As 17 year old individuals, with little life experience, they do not automatically create a solid app. Sure, the transcript, gpa and scores may be there, but not necessarily the sense. Think about the kids you know- not just your own and your belief in yours, but the kids around you. Do you really think all the top stats kids in your local high school are fully formed, think maturely, have a broad perspective, are energized in the right combinations of ways? Maybe you love them for different reasons. And maybe the top colleges need to see their version of “the right stuff” to get excited, too.
What? @lookingforward ? Are you suggesting that basic math skills would be really helpful in analyzing percentages, results, and “discrimination”? As in how many of any particular group applied to a bleepin’ school versus how many of the same group were accepted there, vs. how many enrolled? And (for statistical comparison) how many from “other groups” applied there and were or were not accepted?
(Sigh.) 
And yeah, you’re right. If it’s said often enough, it must be a FACT. ;))