UC Berkeley vs Stanford Asian Americans

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>This is the third time I’ve heard the comment that “Asians are the new Jews”. I think there’s some truth to that, yet there is one big difference I’ll get to in a moment.</p>

<p>There is a major reason why top private universities don’t have as high a percentage of Asians as do top publics. It is not that private college admission is more wholistic, but rather that private colleges try to fill either a deep niche or a multiple niche (via a Venn diagram approach) with each student admission. Top private colleges already have enough top students (as we see from the comment that Princeton rejects half of applicants with perfect SAT scores). These colleges often want to fill a single deep niche (maybe the top high school clarinetist or gymnast in the nation) or more likely, they would look very favorably upon a very good clarinetist who also has sung a cappella semi-professionally who has also had a leading role in an equity-level play.</p>

<p>So here is the part that may anger some. I have noticed that AS A GROUP, most Asian high school students are less involved and more cloistered than students of the other ethnicities. Let’s take my large suburban high school which was about 20% Asian. We would hope to see 20% of all the extra-curriculars filled with Asian students. Nothing could have been further from the truth. 70-man football team – 1 Asian as I remember; Baseball team – zero; Track team – none; Basketball team – zip; Soccer team – not a one; (By the way, I don’t remember seeing Asians at tryouts either.) School play — 1 Asian student as I remember; Orchestra — yes, definitely over-represented by far; Jazz choir – none; various singing groups – close to none; School government – 0 out of 6 officers; political activists — none that I know of.</p>

<p>I would have to ask the question “What are all the Asian students doing with their time?” They seemed almost invisible on my high school campus outside of class where they absolutely excelled. I think some of the elite private colleges are asking the same thing when they see the applications. </p>

<p>Let’s compare the Asian students on my old high school campus to the black students, who comprised no more that 5% of the campus. Black students were everywhere, were doing everything. They were over-represented on all the athletic teams, dance, choir, orchestra, plays, class vice-president, etc., etc… The Jewish students (I can only guess their numbers at <10%) were even more ever-present. Frankly, they practically ran the place and they were the leaders in almost everything I can remember except athletics. I have got to speculate that the applications of the black and Jewish students look much more appealing to the private college adcoms than do the applications of the Asian students.</p>

<p>OK, please spare me the hate. A disparity was noted by the OP. Opinions from population analysis to discrimination were set forth. None was totally satisfying. This is my observation and opinion. If you want to disagree, please disagree with your facts or observations. Please tell me your observation that, AS A GROUP, the Asian students at your old high school were highly involved and were over-represented compared to their numbers at most extra-curriculars!!!</p>

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<p>My daughter is white but many of her friends are Asian. We live in California. Most of my daughter’s Asian friends feel that the system at private colleges is stacked against them, and my daughter and I agree. While part of the reason why UC Berkeley has a much larger Asian population than Stanford is due to Berkeley being a public school in a state with a high Asian population, I think it would be difficult to conclude from this fact that Stanford and other elite private schools that want more geographic diversity do not discriminate against Asians.
What about Stuyvesant High School in NYC, where admission is determined solely by a test? The school is 70% Asian. If the government in NYC required the make-up of the student body at Stuyvesant HS to be representative of the city has a whole, not only would more blacks and Hispanics enroll, more whites would, too.
I know lots of white parents who feel that blacks and Hispanics take up spaces at elite colleges that should “rightfully” go to their children. My argument to them is that the percentage of blacks at these schools is significantly lower than the percentage of blacks in the population. We are talking about a very small number of black students being admitted instead of whites. The reason most qualified students are rejected from elite colleges is because too many qualified students are chasing too few spots. If admission to the elite colleges was race-blind, I bet fewer white students and more Asian students would be admitted. These racist white parents should be careful what they wish for.
That said, I don’t have the answers. I feel for the Asian students who face discrimination, but I also see the need for racial diversity on college campuses. Nevertheless, the percentage of Asian students at many elite schools should be higher than it is, if only to be at all fair. My impression is that most of the elite colleges are about 18% Asian. If discrimination does not play a role, why do they all have pretty much the same percentage of Asians enrolled? If elite colleges are only 18%, while Stuyvesant HS is 70% Asian, elite schools should probably increase the percentage of Asians admitted. Would it be so terrible if the Ivies were about 25% or 30% Asian? Back in the 1970s, many elite colleges were no longer discriminating against Jews and were about 30% Jewish. However, because most Jews are white, secular Jewish students of that generation blended into the white population easily and were not as noticeable as Asians, members of a different race, are today. While diversity is important, the amount of discrimination against Asians that is going on to justify it is staggering and morally wrong.</p>

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<p>beebthe1 & beyphy I would post a longer comment but you two literally took the words out of my mouth. Perhaps, the most intelligent responses in this thread. And beebthe1 I would swear you and I went to the same high school because that is almost exactly what my own school was like.</p>

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<p>In answer to Beebthe1, the Asian students at my daughter’s high school are very heavily involved in extra-curricular activities and not only in activities such as orchestra, band, and Science Olympiad. The percentage of Asians on the staff of the award-winning school newspaper is much higher than it is in the student body as a whole. The same is true of the dance team and the drama program. My husband laughed and said it was a little strange to see a play that had an all white cast on Broadway being performed by a group of teens that was at least half Asian, and he was very impressed with the performance. The leading roles were predominantly performed by Asians, too.
However, the Asian students are, by and large, not the athletes, and the Asians also don’t participate in student government, which suffers from a poor reputation anyway. There’s a lot of resentment among the Asians of the white students who get athletic scholarships to top colleges. My daughter says that girls on JV track and field in the spring is comprised of two types of students: Asians who think it will look good on a college application to participate in sports and white girls who simply want to look good in a bikini on the beach during the summer. Judging from Malcom Gladwell’s article that someone else in this threat referenced (and provided a link for), this peculiar (to me) emphasis on athletics in colleges seems to be a throw back to the days when the Ivies were trying to find reasons to reject “unmanly” minorities, particularly Jews.
The most interesting students (as a whole) at my daughter’s high school are the Asian students- no question. Maybe it’s different at Beebthe1’s high school, but to us, the stereotype of nerdy Asian student who studies all day and doesn’t get involved is an ugly, false one.</p>

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<p>Again, more evidence or poor word choice on my part. I meant the statement within the background context of the thread: </p>

<p>"The truth, which many don’t want to hear, is that college admissions [to elite universities] are [unpredictable] and tailored to meet what the college feels will provide its students with a diverse student body.</p>

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<p>A point i’ve made several times is that, at admissions for elite college, serious competition will be within elite students. Although Asians might score higher than whites or other minorities, who knows how high they score when compared to those top students across the country, who are all competing for those same spots? It’s a bit racist to state “Asian got rejected, but a black student got accepted, so there’s discrimination” as if the Asian student was “more qualified” than the black one. We can’t know that prima facie. Both of their stats need to be examined.</p>

<p>Additionally, most examples of discrimination only take into account more objective measures (SAT, GPA) and don’t take into account subjective measures (essays, socio-economic background, etc.) even though colleges take both into account. If colleges ultimately end up with a score for those students, you can’t just take half of their criteria and use it to cite discrimination.</p>

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<p>Your argument doesn’t follow. Some high school in NY isn’t comparable to a university which gets top applicants from all over the U.S and the world. Just because many Asians did well in this high school doesn’t mean that they’d do well in college admissions to elite universities.</p>

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<p>The Ivy League is an NCAA Division I athletic conference (although it is in the Football Championship Subdivision). Being NCAA Division I (as opposed to II or III, or NAIA) indicates that athletic competition between schools is fairly important, presumably enough to recruit athletes and bend the usual admissions criteria quite a bit to admit them. (Actually, even some NCAA Division III schools are that way for some of their more important sports.)</p>

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<p>In my post, I did not deny the possibility of discrimination; I wrote that it was not a totally satisfying answer so I posited something else from my experience — that the less-involved Asians at my old high school were, as a group, presenting applications to privates that did not fill the criteria that the colleges have. So…</p>

<p>@nosering — 2 good posts. On my issue on “involvement”, let’s assume for the moment that everyone here (you, Yupper, me) is accurate. Why the difference in the very ‘involvement’ that leads to a compelling application? Is it possible that your daughter’s school has some attribute that causes higher Asian student involvement than yupper’s school or mine? Is it possible that your daughter’s school has a much higher percentage of Asians, bringing them to a point where they feel more secure as a group? Is it possible that my old high school had subtle discrimination of which I wasn’t aware?</p>

<p>One more thing. I’m going to compare my high school’s Jewish students to my high school’s Asian students in one relevant regard. The Jewish students I knew generally applied to multiple top privates and 1 or 2 UC’s as safeties. The Asian students I knew rarely applied to top privates, but applied to 5 or 6 UC’s. For many of them, the question was “Will I get into Berkeley or UCLA, or will I go to Irvine or Davis?” (Just my experience, don’t know why) </p>

<p>This, of course, brings up an interesting question for which, unfortunately, there may not be data for an answer. The fact that 18% of Asians (not my figure) are enrolled at top privates does not by itself settle the discussion. For a place like Stanford, or Harvard, or Duke, we need to ask what percentage of of Asian applicants are being accepted? This would be easy for the UC’s using the UC Statfinder, but not so easy for the privates. </p>

<p>Answering this question is important because there MAY NOT EVEN BE A PROBLEM. </p>

<p>If qualified Asians are being accepted at a lower rate than other ethnicities, then there is some kind of problem — either outright discrimination, less involvement on the application, or something else. However, if Asians are being accepted at the SAME RATE, then there is no problem to discuss. Any data on this?</p>

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<p>@beyphy</p>

<p>You may not realize it, but Stuyvesant HS in New York has been one of the two “by invitation or by admission-test” public high schools in New York for maybe a century. Its graduates routinely go the top universities. In fact, if one could get reliable post-college-application data from a place like Stuyvesant, a lot of questions could be answered.</p>

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<p>@everybody, I urge you to read the New Yorker article cited by Lucyan.</p>

<p>It not only discusses the discrimination issue, but the issue of whether going to elite private universities provides any verifiable advantage at all.</p>

<p>[Getting</a> In : The New Yorker](<a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge]Getting”>Getting In | The New Yorker)</p>

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<p>@beebthe1 “Asian students are less involved”.</p>

<p>Please enlighten me with your vast knowledge of all Asians. At my school, they’re very involved.</p>

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<p>@esimp</p>

<p>I never claimed I had vast knowledge about Asians. I took the time to read and respond to other contributors’ ideas about ethnicities, discrimination, and population trends. I followed up on another contributor’s discussion comparing Jewish students to Asian students. I took the time to read Lucyan’s citation and recommended it to others. In fact I pointed out that the New Yorker article did in fact positively discuss the discrimination issue. I commented on the Stuyvesant HS issue and asked if anyone had any data for the private colleges.</p>

<p>I wrote about my specific first-hand observations from my old high school. I invited others to give their particular experiences — observations and facts. Contributor Yupper said her experience at her high school was identical. Contributor Nosering said that her daughter’s experience was just the opposite, that Asian students at that school were very involved. I was happy to hear their considered and respectful viewpoints.</p>

<p>I’m a respectful person but I can be prickly when I feel like it. So here are two semi-rhetorical questions for you, along with somewhat-surly answers from me: </p>

<ol>
<li><p>Considering all of the time, thinking, searching, reading, writing, and postulating several of us have contributed to this discussion, what have you contributed other than bait, sarcasm, and a single-sentence proclamation — certainly nothing of substance? You appear to share the observation of Nosering, but that’s all you share with her. Look at the depth, thoughtfulness, and value of her post, and compare it to your post, which has all the length and depth of an sms text message. Even your post #16 evoked no response from anyone else in the discussion because, while stating a correct fact, it draws a conclusion that is not on point and is not supported by the single fact given. You can’t possibly be asking for credit for an incorrectly-formulated syllogism! It does not even appear that you have taken the time to thoroughly read the posts or the New Yorker article. You read a few words here and there and had the knee-jerk reaction of a child. </p></li>
<li><p>If you are looking for some kind of apology or backtracking on my part, that is certainly not going to happen since I have nothing to apologize for or backtrack from. So if you don’t want to actually contribute to the discussion — do work, present some observations, theories, data (ANYTHING, please ANYTHING) from which I can learn, why don’t you just pack it in and turn off your computer? You’re of no use to us here in this forum.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>@nosering, thanks for your excellent posts~! </p>

<p>Implementing a holistic admissions process (also called “race-based”, “subjective”, or “selective” college admissions) gives those elite private universities (MIT Caltech included) a powerful tool to manufacture the overall level of racial makeup on campuses. They don’t want their campuses overrun by one specific group – the Asians. Giving blacks and Mexicans a helping hand in college admissions is an excuse. It’s not that whites give up their spots to blacks and Hispanics. Actually Asians give up their spots to whites. This admissions process definitely gives more opportunity to whites. Nobody will ever openly admit it. </p>

<p>They claim that the goal, in a holistic process, is not to admit the best students to their schools, but rather to admit those applicants who will become the best students, by considering subjective things like teacher letters, personal statements, and backgrounds in addition to test scores. The problem is HOW they can possibly pass judgment on the character of each of the thousands of 17 year old kids just reading their statements and letters or interviewing for a few minutes. Come on, they are still maturing and their characters will change. Besides most of good statements are not even… (I don’t want to go any further on this). Objectively it’s almost impossible to rate the quality of applicants’ personalities of still maturing/growing kids. Then again, life is not fair.</p>

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<p>@beebthe1:</p>

<p>It’s not that 18% of Asians are enrolled at top private colleges, but that about 18% of the students at Ivies and Ivy-equivalent schools are Asian. Just want to make that clear!</p>

<p>Also, many of the parents of the top Asian students at my daughter’s high school have the attitude that if their child is not admitted to an Ivy or Ivy equivalent school, he or she should go to Berkeley or UCLA. Many do not apply to the top LACs, because their parents have never heard of them and won’t allow them to attend. As a fan of LACs, I find this sad. At least one top LAC, Carleton College, would like to increase their Asian population, but I don’t know about the others. </p>

<p>Last year, one Asian student at my daughter’s high school was rejected from all the Ivies and Ivy equivalents except Northwestern, and it took a while for him to convince his parents to allow him to attend. They had wanted him to turn down Northwestern to go to Berkeley. Although they had the money, they did not originally feel Northwestern was worth it. </p>

<p>The Jewish students at my daughter’s school are much more likely to apply to LACs and attend. But in my daughter’s senior class, only one white student (not Jewish) is academically competitive for Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, etc and has already been recruited. (He’s a scholar/athlete who had a chance of being admitted off academics alone.) This is in contrast to probably at least 25 Asian students who are considered his academic equals. The long list of NMSQT semi-finalists from the school each year is nearly entirely composed of Asian names with only a few non-Asian names, often Jewish-sounding ones, listed.</p>

<p>In answer to the question above about demographics, my daughter’s school is probably between 25% and 30% Asian with most of the remainder being white. There are a small number of Hispanic students, and an even smaller number of black students, at least some of whom are upper class and are honors students. I would categorize the area surrounding the school as upper middle class. The school also draws students from a very wealthy area fully of multi-million dollar homes in gated communities that is nearly all white. </p>

<p>My sense from my daughter is that many of the Asian (Chinese, mostly) parents share information with each other about how to help their children succeed in school, whether it’s SAT tutoring or which classes to take. The assistance begins at a very young age. A friend of mine who tutors in English told me that in white families, tutors are hired for students who struggle. In Asian families, tutors are hired to nurture smart children from a young age. At least, that’s her experience. Some classes at my daughter’s school, such as the college level math classes, are nearly all Asian.</p>

<p>One point, in fairness, I should add that I forgot to mention yesterday. My daughter is expecting top recommendations from teachers, much better than you would think given her academic performance, because she speaks up regularly in class and makes a point of getting to know her teachers. The Asian students at her academic level never speak up in class. In her AP English class in 11th grade, about 4 students could be counted on to keep a conversation about the current reading going. Three of them were among the top students in the school. The fourth one was my daughter, who is not in the same league academically as the others. The English teacher kept saying all year that he’ll write college recommendations for anyone who asks him, but the students would make it much easier for him to write recommendations if only they would speak up in class.</p>

<p>To the extent that teacher recommendations are an important consideration in college admissions, many of the Asian students at my daughter’s school might not be getting the recommendations they need, because the teachers don’t really know them. It’s a cultural phenomenon. </p>

<p>I am white, Jewish, and from the east coast. As a California resident, I still feel I am making observations as an outsider. My comments only refer to my daughter’s observations at her school. Yet, I suspect her experiences are common. The question about demographics above is an interesting one. While many of my daughter’s Asian classmates are the children of the best and the brightest who left China to pursue graduate studies in the US, I doubt the same is necessarily true of the majority of Asian students at Stuyvesant High School in NYC. I bet that most of the top Asian students at Stuyvesant are from a different demographic than the students my daughter knows at her high school. They probably travel to Stuyvesant HS from middle class communities in Brooklyn and Queens, particularly places like Flushing, NY. Yet, they still succeed at the highest levels.</p>

<p>I never would have thought a few years ago that I’d write a post like this one. Stereotypes are ugly. While my daughter suspects that very, very few Asian students at her school are in the bottom 25%, not all of them are superstars. Some struggle and get Cs in AP classes. It’s just that you’ll find only an occasional white student among the top 10% at her high school. The Asian students at Stuyvesant and other elite public high schools in NYC are only a small fraction of the Asian student population in NYC.</p>

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<p>@ ucbalumnus: My husband argues that the reason why colleges recruit for sports is because televised sports brings in $$ and athletics also brings in alumni donations. He accepts this as necessary for the financial health of the schools. Maybe he’s right, but I hate this system of athletic recruitment to top schools, and I feel that other students who excel at other extra-curricular activities should be considered just as valuable. </p>

<p>The Malcolm Gladwell article that someone else posted said that the Ivies discriminated against Jews 100 years ago by looking for “manly” athletic traits in its applicants. I was just wondering about a possible connection between the search for “manly” traits and the prominent role of athletics on college campuses that began many years ago. I admit that the answer is “probably not”!</p>

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<p>@nosering</p>

<p>Enjoyed your posts.</p>

<p>Question: In the roughly 25 top 10% students in your D’s HS (and mostly Asians), how many of them usually end up being admitted to the tier-1 schools (my definition is HYPSMC + maybe UChicago and Columbia)? The reason I am asking is that I am curious if these schools do not offer spots to all these 25ish students because they may take only maximal 3 students from the same HS. So it becomes a competition of these 25ish students within themselves. I suspect probably half of the 25ish students admitted by the tier-1 schools and the rest go to schools like Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, Cornell, Dartmouth, LAC’s, Harvey Mudd, etc.?</p>

<p>A related question is if the exact class ranking plays a noticeable role in the admission process assuming the top 10% students have a small spread in their GPA’s.</p>

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<p>@BearFacts</p>

<p>According to this article, Asians give up their spots for Jews. I think many Asians feel that the holistic game played by many top schools (except for Caltech and UCBerkeley) is to take more URM’s. I don’t think URM is a big factor one way or the other because we are talking about an insignificantly small percentage of total admitted students. </p>

<p>This article reveals something counterintuitive if it’s indeed true:
[The</a> Myth of American Meritocracy | The American Conservative](<a href=“http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/]The”>http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/)</p>

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<p>Agree that it is much tougher for Asians at top colleges, but am not sure this is because of discrimination as opposed to institutional priorities. The bottom line is that most top schools do not use academic achievement as a proxy for merit in most cases. </p>

<p>Instead, I believe that a class of admittees can be divided into roughly three categories – one for pure academic merit, one for status (URM, athlete, first generation), and one more general category encompassing legacy/development/institutional priorities like professors child etc. </p>

<p>I suspect the reason for Asians relatively low percentage of admittances to top schools compared to their acadmeic achievement is that they do not fall into the latter two categories as much as other groups.</p>

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<p>Nosering</p>

<p>"I was just wondering about a possible connection between the search for “manly” traits and the prominent role of athletics on college campuses that began many years ago. I admit that the answer is “probably not”!</p>

<p>Actually probably yes, as detailed in The Chosen by Jerome Karabel about the history of admissions at HYP. All of these schools patterned their admissions policies after the criteria for the Rhodes Scholarship as a way to place rugged men (read athletes) and men of character (read rich WASPs) ahead of Jews. </p>

<p>Interestingly, Karabel contends that the opaque holistic process had its genesis in the 1920s to limit Jewish enrollment, which had skyrocketed at H and Y (not as much at P, which even then had more of the country club reputation) when the admissions policies were based more on tests and had started to move away from mostly St. Grottlesex students (although students from those schools were still well represented; indeed, to show the preference for such students, according to Karabel, H used to brag to alums about how the St Grottlesex students were typically at the bottom of the class as a way to show their preference in admissions).</p>

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<p>Perhaps this is a cynical viewpoint, but is it possible that most of the elite colleges’ idea of “diversity” includes an unspoken criterion: white students must be about half or more of the students?</p>

<p>The recent election seems to point to the idea that some older white people are uncomfortable with the idea of the US trending toward a situation where white people are no longer the majority of the population (e.g. extreme hostility toward non-white immigration among some of the candidates). Is it possible that most of the elite colleges may not want to rub it in their potential large wealthy donors’ (older, whiter, and probably more conservative than the general population) faces by having student bodies that are clearly majority non-white?</p>

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<p>Guys, trust me, it’s all about how your parents raised you, regardless of race.</p>

<p>Back in high school, when asked about careers, I knew a lot of kids who were thinking along the lines of:</p>

<p>a) Hmm, I want to know what I enjoy in life. It has to be my passion.
b) I want to do something fun in life.
c) I don’t know what I want to do, but I won’t have to worry about that for a long time!</p>

<p>Meanwhile, there were other kids who were thinking along the lines of:</p>

<p>a) Okay, I need to find a secure job that I don’t totally hate, but also don’t necessarily have to have a crazy passion for, that pays well and offers me benefits like medical insurance and retirement funds. What kind of jobs are there like that and how do I get there?</p>

<p>Oh, and if you think there’s no way a 16 year old kid could possibly be thinking of things like 401k and insurance…you are so, so wrong. Again, this goes back to parenting. Just because your 16 year old is playing Call of Duty all day long doesn’t mean the neighbor’s 16 year old is doing the same thing. A 16 year old is probably not sitting thinking, “Hm, what % of my prospective income should I invest in Fidelity?” but he or she is probably thinking of the requisites of getting there. In other words, that teenager is thinking about universities and majors required to secure such benefits and jobs. And before one can even get into the university level, one has to focus on high school first. It works one little step at a time. Some kids just see the big picture. Others don’t. Good parents will teach their kids this. Others won’t.</p>

<p>The parents that failed are the ones who decide to blame others for their mistakes.</p>

<p>“There’s not enough funding! We need more resources!”
“Standardized testing is unfair and prejudiced!”
“That school’s admission committee is racist!!”
“I am a victim of somebody else’s hard work ethic!!”</p>