Classof08

jw, :P 10 character fill up -.-

Shazilla

they are considered minorities at most colleges just not under represented minorities. also, at a lot of colleges asians are URMS just not the top universities.

there is just a very large asian applicant pool for prestigious national universities and since many of them are qualified and end up getting in they end up being a large part of the student body, so in most cases they are over represented minorities at the top schools

for example at MIT asians compose about 27% of the student body. asians only make up about 4% of America's entire population when the proportion of the asians in the college and the asians in the nation are off by so much Asians are over represented...

Classof08

ok i see, thanks

the.j.shi

Why do other Asians have to be so smart?? Why?

Lori1122

I wrote a whole paper about this Freshman year. Because like Shaz said, we make up less then 4% of the population, we make it up in like 10-15% of colleges, and a whole lot more at like Ivyes, mini-Ivys, the more competitive, the more asians. thank our parents for that....

here's a little bit of my paper:

intro:Oh gosh. The essays, the interviews, the test scores; all leading up to this one moment. Fear, anticipation, excitement. The letter. This thing you’ve waited for has finally come. The acceptance or rejection to your first pick college. You open it. Rejection. Why? Most colleges and universities do not use a class-based system, which is unfair especially to Asian Americans. Under the current system, Asian Americans who are qualified, even over qualified are getting rejected because of the backfire of affirmative action programs, “legacy clauses”, and many other factors.

WHAT YOU SHOULD READ:

A class-based system is a system that chooses a student solely on his or her grades, regardless of sex or race. Using a class-based system, Asian Americans will benefit because, Asian Americans are the ethnic group that score the highest on the SATs and have generally high GPA’s. [Alex] Caucasians are not that far behind, they would also benefit from using a class-based system. At Harvard, an Asian American must score 112 points more on the SATs than a Caucasian to be admitted. [Greenberg] Asians Americans with superior test scores and grades actually lag behind it college admissions. Regular admission into an Ivy League school is about 10% but if you were an Asian American your chances are only about 6%. [Asian Ivies] Although Asian Americans represent about 4% of America’s population [Le], they represent about 14% of Ivy League students. [Alex] In the past 10 years, Asian Americans’ average SAT math score went up 24 points and verbal went up 18 points, the highest of all the minority groups. [SAT Scores]

BeConfident

to answer the.j.shi I think the answer is that its part of the culture to study a lot, atleast for me =P

Earth-dragon

Many Asians are from confucian based societies, where education is almost like the #1 thing after family.

drummerdude_07

They are too smart to be considered a "real" minority. I don't know about you guys (note: I'm white, not Asian), but don't you find the way Asian %s are kept artificially low at some schools is blatant racism?

drummerdude_07

I also agree with Earth-dragon's post. I've also often heard that Asians might be smart because only the best and brightest can get into America immigration wise (be that the fault of us or their home country). Do you all think there's any truth to that? I do know that our immigration policy for highly skilled workers is really Draconian.

johnleemk

We've had the AA discussion a billion times before. Anyway, my two cents: I'd support AA based on economic standing, not race. Having said that, I don't take issue with the American system of AA. If Harvard wanted to, it could fill each class with high school valedictorians with perfect SATs, but it doesn't. To get an education, you need to be exposed to a variety of backgrounds, so it would be logical to accept a number of URMs who can handle the Harvard workload. The main purpose of admission standards is to filter out those who can handle the strenuous workload at places like Harvard. Once you've made it past, intangible factors like race and economic standing can come into play. I don't see anything wrong with trying to ensure there's a class with a variety of people wh can provide different perspectives on things. In intellectual schools, you should be learning just as much or more outside the classroom than inside.

MomOfTwoTeens

URM means Under Represented Minorities at COLLEGES.

Being a minority in the US population (i.e. Asians, Jews, etc) has nothing to do with being URM for colleges.

drummerdude_07

That's true Mom, and we all know this (hopefully). Johnlee, this wasn't exactly an AA discussion, more like an AZN discussion.

wrathofachilles

Asians are ~4-5% of the US population, but they're way more than that at most elite universities

Pavs

One of the problems though, is that "asian" is way too broad. South Asians are, per capita, the most successful and best educated ethnic group in the country. East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans) are only slightly behind them and Middle Easterners are only slightly behind them.
But, Southeast Asians, particularly those from Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Philippenned are not quite so well off. To pile them in with groups that are completely unrelated and better off does them a disservice.

drummerdude_07

Hmm that's interesting. My racial stereotypes would have figured the East Asians above the South Asians. Of course, since Indians are in the Southern group, I do see how it throws the data off for Vietnamese and Cambodians.