Old College Try

epiphany,

Let's just be honest, OK.

Fact 1: Top colleges want a diverse student body as measured by skin color.

Fact 2: Using test scores and GPAs alone would not achieve the goal of having a rainbow of students on campus; there would students of all colors, no doubt, but not the percentage of white and yellow students would be higher than the adcoms want.

Fact 3: To compensate for the above two facts, colleges instilled "hollistic" approaches of admission and adopted a number of "qualifiers" for admission.

Fact 4: Hollistic approaches and fuzzy qualifiers hurt Asia students the most.

Fact 5: Asian students don't like Fact 4, and I don't blame them.


I think it's very sad that applicants on this board ask questions like "Do I qualify as Hispanic?" "I was born in Africa but I'm white. Can I still claim to be African American?" Any system that tempts people to pretend to be something they are not is sick. I say make it illegal for colleges to ask you name, race, or any other question that would allow them to know your race. We should all be assigned numbers and then apply completely anonymously, at least from the perspective of race.

It's ironic to me that those people who scream the loudest for a color-blind country are usually the ones who most often want to employ standards of admission/advancement/whatever based on color.

Canuckguy

I don't know about you folks, but I would not trust an admission officer's comment any more than I would trust a politician's campaign speech.

Akrana

People who are from Central/South American are mostly mestizos. In fact, my mom is 1/4 Incan, I believe. They're fairly different from the Spanish from Spain.

tokenadult

Well, it's certainly evident why this issue is so contentious here in the United States. To see some admission officers' views on the subject, see the books recommended in the college admissions reading list prepared for the annual Harvard Summer Institute on College Admissions.

Harvard Summer Institute on College Admissions, June 21-26, 2009, Suggested Reading

fabrizio

Thanks for the very informative link, tokenadult. I'll definitely try to read some of these, contingent on their availability at my library.

Hope Full

I wish the adcoms would just be more honest. Their books are pretty radical and set forth very strong opinions about what colleges should do to attract more diversity. Clearly, the adcoms have very strong opinions on the issue, and these opinions likely shape their decisions. However, when it comes to explaining the admission process to students, they become very vague and misleading, which leads to frustration and anger.

monstor344

Of course if you want to use the idea of the holistic process as a fallback that's fine but you're setting yourself up for multiple pitfalls if you truly believe 1) Standardized qualifications are not important in the holistic process and 2) URMs make up for what they lack through subjective factors (see: News: Testing for 'Mismatch' - Inside Higher Ed).

epiphany

^ Admissions to most Universities and colleges in this country include a heavy component of non-standardized qualifications for every applicant -- hardly just URM's. This is especially true of the most demanding institutions, which will look at how demanding the e.c.'s have been, as well as how demanding the course curricula have been in the high school (in addition to grades in those courses). More of the components of admission are non-standardized than standardized. Has nothing to do with racial, natl'l, ethnic categories, or percentages of representation.

Old College Try

^You make it sound as if every applicant has an equal chance of benefitting from these non-standardized factors, epip. You know that's not true. These non-standardized factors are how colleges admit students they want but who do not merit acceptance based on standarized factors alone.

JAJdude

I love how people are crying 'Oh noes, I'm azn? Will they accept me with my perfect grades????' Even though in like 95% of colleges, Asians just barely touch 10%...

I reeeeealy want to kno where everyone gets this info saying that asians are at a disadvantage in admissions....especially when they are a minority like blacks and hispanics.

And let's not forget the people on here who are shocked and horrified if any URM gets into a school and automatically assumes they have terrible scores and were only accepted because of race.

epiphany

Which colleges, other than possibly CalTech, in the United States of America, admit by "standardized factors alone"?

Not MIT, not even U.C. For ALL students this is true. You need to qualify on a variety of measures. Your statement is meaningless because it almost never applies in this country, whether you have a 2400 or a 1950, whether you are a URM with one of those two scores, whether you an ORM, whether you are white Anglo. I can guarantee that if a top school sees a URM who *barely* qualifies, that URM is unlikely to be admitted, because much more than bare qualification is needed to succeed at a grade-deflated place like Princeton, for example, and at LAC's such as Swarthmore where the student body is so intensely academically ambitious and qualified. The U or the college doesn't need to jeopardize their reputation with "pity" admits who will barely limp along with C- grades. The administration would have to see evidence of great potential to succeed along a number of factors.

fabrizio

It seems like you are new to the issue.

First off, Asians are considered the "over-represented" minority, so as to contrast them with "under-represented" minorities, namely blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. Thus, despite being minorities, Asians generally receive no racial preferences because they are almost always "over-represented," even at many schools that Asians supposedly don't apply to in great numbers (e.g. liberal arts colleges).

Second, that Asians receive a disadvantage in the college admissions process is not actually that controversial among academics. Frank Wu, Jerry Kang, and William Kidder are all staunch supporters of racial preferences, but they also recognize and denounce the practice of negative action, whereby equally qualified Asian candidates are treated worse than equally qualified white candidates.

In 2005, Espenshade and Chung published a study that attempted to quantify the disadvantage Asians face in college admissions. They found that being Asian was worth a penalty equivalent to fifty fewer SAT points and concluded that Asians would be the biggest winners if affirmative action were eliminated.

Wu, Kang, and Kidder all took Espenshade and Chung to task, with Kidder publishing a response to the 2005 paper. But, here's a key point: they did not criticize Espenshade and Chung's methodology or findings. They only criticized the conclusion that Asians are the "winners" from ending affirmative action. They emphasized that Espenshade and Chung conflated affirmative action with negative action and argued that it is the latter that should be ended, not the former.

So, in reality, the case that Asians receive a disadvantage is quite strong. The defenders of the status quo of course don't want you to know that, because it further reveals how poor and corrupt their case is.

epiphany

Then he should have applied to college in another country. Race as a factor in PRIVATE elementary, high school, and college admissions (again, not as a factor of "qualification" but as a factor in variety) is a condition of life in the U.S.A. Yes, H, Y, and P are peer schools. However, there were people applying to P that did not apply either to H or to Y. Thus, these 3 schools do NOT receive exactly the same group of applicants as the others receive, and each school needs to weigh, after they look at all basically qualified applicants such as Jian Li, Who else has applied? If too many with an extremely similar ACADEMIC and E.C. and REGIONAL and FINANCIAL profile (IOW, setting aside race/nat'lity/ethnicity for the moment), he can be easily not admitted (waitlisted or rejected), particulary if on one measure -- in his case, extracurriculars -- the U finds that he comes up wanting for THEIR campus. Doesn't matter what Yale's e.c. standards are. Maybe for Yale, his e.c.'s were particularly desired, needed, etc. Not so for Princeton that particular year. E.C. needs are not static; these, like regional weights, vary from year to year. The extracurricular life on a campus is a significant part of life on many campuses, and one that draws students to it as well. People have been known not to apply to a particular campus because it didn't have a particular kind of club or activity they wanted to continue, or that it did have one they wanted to begin.

chaosakita

Where has race been used as a factor of qualification been used within the last ten years for an elementary or high school? It's hardly a "condition of life."

And obviously, being a "condition of life" doesn't justify anything.

fabrizio

Re #58

Did you seriously just insinuate that racial preferences are as American as apple pie? I mean, seriously?! Please tell me that I've misunderstood you and that you didn't actually just suggest that your preferred policy is American whereas mine is un-American. Please.

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say about Li. On the one hand, you seem to be finally acknowledging that he was, in fact, "basically qualified" for Princeton. Yet, the rest of your paragraph reads like a defense of your earlier misinterpretation of Rapeleye's comments against Li's application.

Was the man qualified or not, epiphany?