<p>AA for URMs seems to be a good idea to me, but a topic about which reasonable people can disagree.</p>
<p>Discrimination against Asians, though, seems impossible to defend. I’d like to hear arguments, but the thing that I think we need to do is to test the arguments by substituting the word “Jew” for “Asian” to see if it flies. I.e., if our elite universities can discriminate against Asians, why not against Jews?</p>
<p>beprepn ( Polish German)</p>
<p>I don’t understand your concern. What is AA? In what ways do you see Universities discriminating against Asians?</p>
<p>Unacceptable links deleted by Moderator.</p>
<p>Oh, haha. AA = affirmative action. That is one of my weaker moments of the day. All I could think about was alcoholics anonymous. </p>
<p>Anyway, this isn’t a discussion I really want to involve myself in.</p>
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<p>Ha. I hope the attorney trying to win an Asian-American discrimination case against Swarthmore is working on a contingency fee arrangement. He’d lose his shirt.</p>
<p>For this year’s class, the overall acceptance rate was 22%. The acceptance rate for Asian-American students was 36%.</p>
<p>Asian-Americans accounted for 21% of the acceptances.</p>
<p>Nice try, though.</p>
<p>Are they discriminated against because they are Asian-American (and I don’t understand a category that includes Mongolian-Americans, Pakistani-Americans, Guamians, and Japanese-Americans as a single group), or because they are: 1. Less likely to be legacies; 2. Less likely to provide huge donations, or name a building; 3. Less likely to attend traditional prep feeder schools; 4. Less likely to be recruited athletes? Of course, it would have the same impact regardless. </p>
<p>(Who told you that these same places don’t discriminate against Jews? I’m not saying they do, although with the major exception of Swarthmore, they all used to in a big way, but your premise is without the data that might back it up.)</p>
<p>According to the statistics you cited, many of these schools have had 50% or greater increases in Asian-Americans admitted in the last 12 years; some, like Swarthmore, had 100% increases.</p>
<p>"Victoria Hsiao, who works with Shaw at the admissions strategy firm Ivy Success, said that when she attended Stuyvesant High School in New York , “my Asian friends and I all tried to make ourselves stand out, as we did not want to be stereotyped as Asians with good grades, playing the piano and doing scientific research.” She joined the debate team instead of the math team and got into Cornell. "</p>
<p>When I read the “chances” threads, my mind goes numb reading all the math, math, violin, math, piano stats. I don’t know or care if the posters are Asian, all I know is after about the 200th math, math, violin, math, piano post, they all look like the same kid to me. Colleges want variety. They want kids on unicycles in clown suits juggling bowling pins, they want kids who will use the sand volleyball court, they want kids who raise spiders for a hobby…and they want leagcies and potential donors and athletes and all that stuff too.</p>
<p>1Down is correct: too many Asians (Chinese/Korean/Desi) are, effectively, competing for the same slots in building a class. And too many don’t understand that is a <em>class</em> that’s being built, not some absolute ranking based on grades/scores. I think I’ll add “juggling bowling pins” to my usual “learn the bagpipes.”</p>
<p>I’ll have to go back and check the links to see why they were deleted by the moderator. I posted them for the statistics. I apologize if there is offensivematerial there. One statistic was that Juilliard’s entering class was 30% Asian in 1992 and I think 11% in 2005.</p>
<p>interesteddad: perhaps Swarthmore is in the clear, but the data have to be corrected for test scores, class standing, and so on as part of the analysis. </p>
<p>I think some of the objecters make my point. Favoring jugglers over piano players is such a silly system that one has to wonder if the goal isn’t to maintain a certain white percentage in the freshmen classes.</p>
<p>Discriminating against Jews seems like such an old fashioned prejudice that it is hard for me to believe that it still goes on in our colleges. But mini is right, I don’t know.</p>
<p>beprepn</p>
<p>Beprepn, when it comes to contents and links, we do allow a bit more leeway in the Parents’ forum. However, according to our TOS, here are the rules regarding links:</p>
<p>**Links to Forums, Blogs, and Personal Sites. Please do not post links to other discussion forums, blogs, personal sites, or other non-authoritative sources. In order to fulfill our mission of being the best college discussion forum, we want important topics to be discussed here at College Confidential. Linking to discussions elsewhere defeats this purpose. Links to non-authoritative sites like blogs, personal sites, etc., can’t be researched for validity on an individual basis and hence are not allowed. All such links will be removed. **</p>
<p>The links you posted are not authoritative and have been removed for that reason. In addition, the subject of Affirmative Action has been discussed ad nauseam on College Confidential and has typically led to the most contentious and futile discussions. Most that had to be said has been said. Accordingly, this thread is closed.</p>
<p>Trinity</p>