@ucbalumnus Good points.
The 2014 admissions stats show that there is a lower acceptance rate for African-Americans and other URMs now than there was in overall admissions a decade ago.
In the case of Harvard’s disproportionate (ie. 7.8%) acceptance rate for African-Americans, couldn’t some of that be explained by other criteria, including varsity athletic promise (remember: THE IVY LEAGUE DOES NOT RECRUIT, SO NEVER REFER TO RECRUITMENT!!!), overcoming unusual personal obstacles, exceptional musical ability, or outstanding performance within a local context (unlike the dozens of qualified applicants from elite private or suburban high schools).
@woogzmama What? Says who? The Ivy League has no problems with recruiting. Are you thinking about the fact that the Ivy League doesn’t offer athletic scholarships?
Pretty sure if you can’t refer to recruiting athletes the following websites wouldn’t exist:
http://brownbears.com/compliance/recruitingforbrown
http://www.gocolumbialions.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=9600&ATCLID=3623827
http://www.cornellbigred.com/sports/2013/8/9/GEN_0809130546.aspx
http://www.dartmouthsports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=11600&ATCLID=587984
http://gocrimson.com/information/recruiting/index
http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/apply/freshman-admission/information-for-athletes
http://www.goprincetontigers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=295013
http://www.yalebulldogs.com/information/recruiting/index
@csdad I do agree with your post #62- there is definitely some intentional reasons as to why candidates of other races are picked over ORM’s with higher stats. However, this is combined with unintentional discrimination as well, which should not be ignored. When a white admission officer reads “another asian immigrant essay”, he is unlikely to care about it. An Asian admission officer reading the same same essay, who likely had similar immigrant experiences as well, will look upon it very differently. The problem with evaluating something as wishy-washy as “personal qualities” is that everyone has different values, and when one race is predominantly overrepresented on the admission committees, they are going to have a bias in these values, and will prefer some qualities over another. Think: if everyone on the admission committees were Asians and decided upon the criterion of who should be admitted (I am not saying it should be), wouldn’t there be a significant change in which students were admitted to these universities? To eliminate this bias, it is very important that there is proportional representation in the admission committees.
As for the intentional reasons as to why candidates of other races are picked over ORM’s with higher stats: yes, I do agree with you that these other candidates add more value to the university, and thats why they are being picked. However, I don’t think the extra value added by these candidates has anything to do with the candidates’ merit. Here is my theory as to why they are being selected:
They get to hide this applicant-hungry strategy in the name of “diversity”.
And the reasons that the UCs can get away with this without seeing a drop in applicants is that they are a state school so most people in the state will apply for the lower costs, and there is only one state flagship. Ivy league schools on the other hand are more easily substituted (there are 8 ives, then there is Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Duke, etc.). If one of these schools took very few candidates of certain races or regions, applicants of these races/regions would just apply to one of their peer schools instead. This is one of the reasons why caltech has a lower USNWR ranking (then its quality imo), and has a higher acceptance rate than peer schools despite having so few spots (yes, i know there are plenty of other reasons for this as well, like its difficulty and only offering tech programs).
Whether or not Universities should be allowed to do this is up for debate, but by no means are they a meritocracy.
I probably shouldn’t have said the Ivies don’t recruit. They don’t have athletic scholarships. Thank you for correcting me. The process is a little different from other athletic conferences, nevertheless. I was using all-caps to express irony. Of course they recruit.
Holy cow, puzzled. What unintentional discrimination? Some of you are really stretching, creating nth degree scenarios. Who the heck thinks a trained reviewer says, “another Asian immigrant essay?” First, ime, most As-Am kids don’t write immigrant essays. Even hypothetically, if a kid did, the reader would be looking for what the college needs to get from it. The reviews are not based on “A” reviewer likes classical violin music and “B” doesn’t. Or anything frivolous like that. It is based on the needs of the U and the abilities of hs kids across the country (and world.)
What can you tell me about racial or ethinic distribution on my admissions team?
An no, URMs are not tipped in because maybe they have better singing voices than some White or Asian kid.
@juicymango’
You understand that the rejection rate for AA and Hispanic students at Harvard is roughly 93-94%, right? What URM in their right mind would think they could slack off and then slide into an Ivy League school? I find your stereotyping of these groups offensive.
What I keep wondering is what, if any, other factors are in play besides race. For instance, according to the 2010 US census, roughly 1/3 of all American Asians live in California, whereas Californians make up only 12% of the US population in general. Does the fact that Harvard gets a lot of applications from California work against bright Asian students the way being from Massachusetts or New York works against bright Caucasian girls? Would an Asian student from Chicago or Atlanta have a better chance at admission than one applying from San Francisco?
I think an examination of the factors that hurt high-scoring Asian-American students when they apply to elite colleges is much more useful than (to my mind silly) charges that Ivy League schools are filled with racist admissions officers who just don’t like or understand Asian-American applicants. Perhaps there is pressure on admissions staffs to admit a “racially balanced” class. Perhaps not. I think much of what we’re discussing here is speculation based on incomplete information.
These “trained reviewers” are people too, and likewise make human mistakes. I obviously have no idea what they say behind closed doors, but some have said interesting things publicly on facebook:
But I don’t think the majority of admission officers should be judged by this at all. Most of them seem to be well-intentioned people looking to help their University admit the best class possible.
I don’t know the University that you work for, so I have no idea about the racial or ethnic distribution of your admission team. Here is Stanford for example:
https://admission.stanford.edu/counselors/officers.html
Asians seem to be underrepresented on the committee (when considering the amount of asians studying at the University) and other races are over represented.
While I certainly do believe that everyone on the team aims to admit the best class possible, they are humans, and natural biases will come into play, especially when things get cutthroat and there are a lot of stellar applicants. This becomes even more prevalent when subjective things like “personal qualities” are brought into the picture. Can you tell me with complete confidence that if everyone on your admission team was asian, the exact same class would be admitted? Of course not. It is subjective, and that is why proportional representation on the admission committee is very important.
Of course, my theory may be completely wrong- there may be Universities where there is even racial diversity across the committee, and the Universities aren’t telling us the entire makeup of the admission team- in the case I am wrong, I offer my apologies of course. But because the Universities are so secretive and not transparent about their policies, I have the right to assume the worst.
You have the right to assume the worst, but you aren’t necessarily right to do so.
Honestly, if you do really assume the worst, why the hell would you even WANT to attend one of these horrible colleges? Or care what their policies are?
Sometimes, I wonder if this certainty among some As-Am kids that they will be discriminated against, is really a pressure valve, of sorts. The more kids tell each other it will be an unfair process, maybe that eleases some stress. I don’t know.
Did you notice that one of those Stanford counsellors is named Rick Shaw?
I try hard not to offend any kid publicly by suggesting his or her golden activity or prized thought is ridiculous. But what the heck was the kid thinking when he applied to Penn with words about a fear of peeing outside? How in heck is that a)relevant to an Ivy and b) not going to leave questions about his judgment? (And unless it was in response to a supp question, it went out to all his Common App schools.)
“After quoting from an essay by a student explaining his fear of relieving himself outdoors…” “An applicant claimed to have a connection with Penn because he was circumcised there.”
Old advice says: don’t assume your wit or cleverness will resonate with adult adcoms who are complete strangers.
@Bored1997 Asian students are pigeonholed into majors by what or whom?
@NickFlynn I want to attend a lot of these universities because they offer world-class educations, faculty members who are giants in their fields, and lots of resources- not because I believe the politics of their administration and policies or their admission committees are fair or great. I care about their admission policies because I believe they could be improved in a way thats a win-win: a way that would help their University and applicants.
I don’t think these admission committees are all bad either- they do a pretty stellar job of admitting great classes, preserving the prestige of their university, and attracting a lot of applicants. I think there is room for improvement by taking common sense steps such as being more transparent and making their admission committee as diverse as the diverse class they are so committed to having. If their policies are really as right/just as they say there are, why not be more transparent about them?
@puzzled123, Asian-American admissions officers seem to make up just over 20% of the admissions staff at Stanford, where the percentage of Asian-American students is just under 20%. How is that out of whack?
@batesparents2019 Into STEM majors sometimes parents, peer pressure, it is complex but doctor engineer are the ideal jobs for Indian-asian parents.
Perhaps to bring this discussion back to reality, the Civil rights act of 1964 specifically prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Holistic admissions are a direct violation of that law as they are practiced by most of the elite colleges in the US. If anything, Asians (esp. Chinese and Japanese origin) were discriminated against in the west, and Asian Indians were treated like blacks in the deep south. So why don’t they get a bump instead of a cut in scores? Colleges should drop the racial component entirely during their ‘holistic’ admission process - they seem to be living in 1965 not 2015. In a few years most people will be multiracial anyway. About 20% of my son’s class is already mixed.
The real questions is, why are Asians performing disproportionally highly and why are blacks and ‘hispanics’ performing poorly, even from the same schools? In any kind of rational world untainted by race baiters and PC, the rest of America would be applauding and emulating and certainly not discouraging these high performing kids.
At least Caltech, California, Texas, Michigan and a few other states have it right. I am sick of activists and politicians using these artificial divisions to promote their own agenda.
@Bored1997: Exactly, non-Asians seem to not get it, but I totally understand their confusion. For most Asians, any job other than a doctor, engineer, or lawyer is a disgrace and shame to their family. Sometimes Asian kids are interested in other jobs, but they are pressured into these ‘ideal’ jobs by their family and friends.
I counted 4/25 asian, and 0 were indian.