<p>Asian population within 300 miles of Stanford: ?
Asian population within 300 miles of Princeton: ?
These numbers might not be too far apart </p>
<p>Most of the Asian population in California lives in about 450 mile distance from Stanford (I am using San Diego as the furthest point).</p>
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<p>Yep. It’s a grand conspiracy, having nothing to do with geographical breadth. </p>
<p>(Plenty of CC posters and their sons/daughters, who live outside of CA, did not get into East Coast schools but did get into Stanford; Stanford seeks competitive students from outside the Stanford-aspiring-saturated environs of itself, just as the East Coast schools seek CA students.) </p>
<p>Stanford has no moral, legal, practical, or “common sense” requirement to select especially heavily from its own geographical base, or to match Princeton or any other school – precisely because neither school is seeking a particular absolute number of local residents or ethnic representation. They are seeking the best, from as wide a geography as possible, without sacrificing quality.</p>
<p>So let’s rephrase that quote, to reflect accurately what Stanford admissions wants:</p>
<p>“Stanford doesn’t want ALL of them, just SOME of them, in fact MANY of them.” </p>
<p>They want the ones that stand out, comparatively, in this year’s national applicant pool.</p>
<p>I meant the total numbers, not %.
But I agree that it’s too much work to figure it out.</p>
<p>Also, your Bay Area % must be too high. SF is 33%, Santa Clara County is 32%, and the 7 other counties are all under 30%.
[California</a> QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau](<a href=“http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html]California”>http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html)</p>
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And there might be almost as many Asians living within 450 miles of Princeton.</p>
<p>^ good research mokusatsu. So we have a number - somewhere north of 4.5 million and south of 4.84 million within 450 mile radius?</p>
<p>Your chart also provides numbers for US. I am a bit shocked to figure out Asian population amounts to 14.8 million but 1/3rd lives in California?</p>
<p>Hunt is sounding a little bit more prescient right about now with his geographic diversity digs but hopefully it won’t go to his head!</p>
<p>Remember also that Stanford and the Ivies seem to limit their International admits to about 10%. I would not be surprised if a significant number of the Asian population in the Bay area are recent immigrants and not U.S. citizens. Those applicants do not have a chance to factor into the “Asian” admit pool, they must vie for the smaller “International” pool.</p>
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<p>Most of my Asian friends weren’t born here, but were permanent residents when they applied to college. Permanent residents are in the domestic, not international, pool of applicants.</p>
<p>So my guess is that having a high percentage of recent immigrants cannot be a reason for a low admission rate for Asians.</p>
<p>I think it’s a moot point to argue about whether colleges are racist. It’s not something one can change, and it will only change when the current group of Asians graduating from colleges start to donate big amounts of money to their alma maters and start to get the hooks of legacy and such. In the mean time, I think it is best to focus on our kids and make them stand out within the Asian community.</p>
<p><a href=“Prof101%20:”>quote</a></p>
<p>Here are the percent of Stanford and Princeton:
Asian Student Populations:
Stanford: 16%
Princeton: 18%</p>
<p><a href=“http://collegesearch.collegeboard.co…ollegeId=3387#%5B/url%5D”>http://collegesearch.collegeboard.co…ollegeId=3387#</a>
<a href=“http://collegesearch.collegeboard.co…21&profileId=0%5B/url%5D”>http://collegesearch.collegeboard.co…21&profileId=0</a>
[/quote]
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<p>Try using a better source. The percentages at College Board add up to 92 percent of Stanford and 100 percent of Princeton. The Common Data Sets show Stanford as having more Asians, especially after accounting for the “race not specified” group. You can calculate it for yourself. </p>
<p>The assumptions in your calculations are incorrect, in any case.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Stanford is next door to the equivalent, in terms of Asian enrollment, of 5-6 Ivy League schools. Its name is UC Berkeley. Not to mention other CA schools such as Caltech, USC with its merit scholarships, Harvard Mudd (very high SAT averages, even some USAMO/IMO winners go there), and the UC in general with its preference for in-state students. So it is not true that Stanford “should” absorb the lion’s share of high-performing Asians who stay in California. For example, in 2004-5, the number of National Merit Scholars in the UC system was 908, with 322 of those at Berkeley and 187 of the latter being portable, non-UC-sponsored awards.</p></li>
<li><p>Compared to Ivy League schools it is easier, not harder, for Stanford to manipulate its Asian enrollment without treating whites and Asians differently. Stanford can limit the number of students admitted from any high school, give geographic preferences within California to poor or under-represented areas, and give preference to schools or areas that have not sent students to Stanford in several years. They have reasons to spread the admissions around within California if they wish to be the premier school in that state with political connections etc, of the kind needed to operate a Silicon Valley.</p></li>
<li><p>Stanford computer science and electrical engineering is much harder to get into than other departments, but this field attracts relatively more Asians, so it will drive down the admission rate. (ST*M)</p></li>
<li><p>Stanford has stronger legacy and athletic preferences, to the detriment of Asian acceptance numbers. It is not bound by Ivy League recruiting limits.</p></li>
<li><p>Asians in the Bay Area are the most concentrated in the USA and therefore most disadvantaged by clustering effects. For instance, the effective number of valedictorian spots per Asian student is lowest in this pool, and lower than the equivalent statistic for whites in CA or whites nationally. The disparity may be more extreme in California, but I have not tried to make calculations.</p></li>
<li><p>Stanford can, in the name of being a “national university”, limit the number of spots from California, disproportionately penalizing Asians and making the effective white/Asian ratio in the applicant pool closer to that in the national population. So the CA numbers do not necessarily determine anything. </p></li>
<li><p>The “race not listed” category is much larger for Stanford than Princeton. If this is because Asians think that Stanford discriminates, then relatively more Asians are hidden in that category and to get the correct numbers for Stanford vs Princeton you have to adjust the figures accordingly. There are various ways to do it but all of them will add many more Asians to the Stanford population estimate, than to the equivalent for Princeton.</p></li>
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<p>siserune - not sure how you define number 6. Stanford claims to admit 40% from California. No other school of its caliber has a such a large percentage allocated to one state.</p>
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<p>That’s not necessarily large or an advantage.</p>
<p>If California accounts for 50% of the qualified applicants to Stanford then CA residents are facing a lower admission rate, nominally 4/5 of the rate for equally qualified applicants from outside. Also, to the extent that Stanford has a California preference, it will not be allocated evenly within the state. Some districts (such as rural areas or poor neighborhoods) will be “haves” and others (such as feeder high schools in the Bay Area) the “have nots”. This can be done through objective criteria that do not discriminate, prima facie, against any particular district or race.</p>
<p>Duke, according to the admissions memoir by Rachel Toor, has a 13% quota of North Carolina residents. Relative to US population this is a higher weight on in-state applicants than at Stanford, and it may also be the case compared to North Carolina’s share of academically qualified applicants.</p>
<p>Also, the 40% figure is inflated by legacy preferences. For nonlegacies, California may be quite underrepresented for all that we know.</p>
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<p>Agreed. One of the prevalent themes in college admissions for some time has been the disparity between CA and many other states when it comes to a disbursement of high-level options for the accomplished applicant. Even MA, with its abundant private options, does not have the in-State combo of private and public choices that CA has, which affects student population distributions signficantly. Compare this with NY, NJ, CT. Not to knock Rutgers, SUNY and CUNY, and UConn, but they do have the draw that the UC’s do for in-staters. They can’t compete with Yale, Princeton, and Columbia in the way that UC attracts Stanford applicants as well.</p>
<p>Further, just to be more specific about the science options, CA universities and colleges have significant well-performing science programs outside of Stanford: UCSD, UCLA, USC, UCB, Cal Tech, Harvey Mudd as siserune mentioned – not to mention UC Davis, whose bio-engineering programs have taken off and have become quite competitive for admissions, as well as Cal Poly SLO, whose engineering program is officially impacted. In fact, the demand for differentiated science majors throughout the state has grown recently & I expect it will continue to, and widely geographically, with State schools and even smaller privates picking up some of that slack with possibly earmarked dollars despite state budget squeezes. This is in response to industry needs, and to the supply of students eager to feed into those industries with modern specializations. </p>
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<p>People are often surprised to learn that a legacy at Stanford is closer to a hook than a tip. This is long standing, and is different from H, Y, and P. Stanford’s legacy practice is closer to some of the LAC’s such as Wesleyan.</p>
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<p>I remember a Stanford official saying that they had a preference for Californians, but they were considering discontinuing this practice. I don’t know whether they did or not.</p>
<p>^In what year did they say that?</p>
<p>Discontinuing or reducing a pre-existing California preference is functionally the same as introducing a California penalty (item #6), and it would be done for the same reasons, such as becoming a more national institution. One effect would be to reduce the Asian enrollment.</p>
<p>The degree of preference is an “adjustable parameter” that can be used to tune the white/Asian ratio or other enrollment outcomes from year to year, in accordance with projected demographic changes.</p>
<p>Although it would be unusual for Harvard to calibrate its exact level of preference for Idaho applicants, for Stanford admissions, determining the balance between California and national admissions is mission-critical. Being in California gives Stanford more ways of adjusting its Asian enrollment, should it choose to do so. Enrollment management has become fairly sophisticated and it is naive to assume that a growing Asian population in California logically compels a higher Asian enrollment at every CA school, in the absence of discrimination.</p>
<p>"Why guess? The next portion of the sentence in Wikipedia is “Robert Summers and Anita Summers…who are both professors at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the nephew of two Nobel laureates in economics: Paul Samuelson (sibling of Robert Summers, who, following an older brother’s example, changed the family name from Samuelson to Summers).”</p>
<p>Well, there is your smoking gun, fabrizio! A Jewish family Americanized their family name! That proves once and for all that Asians are discriminated against in college admissions. Good job, Sherlock!</p>
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<p>Very true. Psychopaths are born, not made. Their lack of remorse give them the edge in competition for high positions. I think this is where “Nice guys finish last” come from.</p>
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<p>Your idealism is touching.</p>
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<p>When I was in my early teens, people went to the University of Toronto to read history. Now there is a white flight going on because few wants to go head-to-head academically with the large Asian contingent. </p>
<p>Part of the problem is grading, since only about 20% of a large class can be given an A, it would be advantageous for students to attend a school with lower admission standards if they have professional/grad school in mind. I always have the greatest respect for those who can graduate from there with distinction, like a sister of mine. All you need is something like a 3.2 GPA.</p>
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<p>This is baseballs intentional unintentional walk, isnt it? How do you proof something that is intentionally unintentional?</p>
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<p>Well, that was certainly glib. Tell it to Hitler. Tell it to Manson and Mussolini. Tell it to Bernie Madoff. And, what does mental illness have to do with the topic, anyway?</p>
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<p>My goodness, if you aren’t going to read my posts, then why bother having a discussion with me? Let’s try adding back the context behind that paragraph:</p>
<p>Hunt: …I think that the real agenda for some people, at least, is to promote more “transparent” admissions criteria–which really has to mean primarily stats, because nothing else can be all that transparent.</p>
<p>Me: Did you have any objections to assigning each applicant a unique identifier per application cycle and limiting the infamous box to “Are you a ‘URM’? If ‘yes,’ please check one or more of the following:”?</p>
<p>Bay: Anyone can decline to state now.</p>
<p>mokusatsu: And where does that leave Jerry Kang, Frank Wu, and Jian Li?</p>
<p>Bay: I remember fab said he had legally changed his name to “Anglicize” it. That is certainly an option for those whose suspicions rise to an extreme level.</p>
<p>Me: Can you tell me why Larry Summers isn’t Larry Samuelson?</p>
<p>For someone who preaches about the beauty of holisticity, context sure is a foreign concept to you. (Pun intended.)</p>
<p>I looked up ‘holisticity’ and got this:</p>
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[Holisticity</a> - Definition Of Holisticity](<a href=“http://hubpages.com/hub/Holisticity-definition]Holisticity”>http://hubpages.com/hub/Holisticity-definition)</p>
<p>Maybe it really is the perfect word to describe the admissions process.</p>
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I would say that the context is that when you are challenged to come up with facts on anti-Asian discrimination, you oscillate between talking about URMs and talking about Jews.</p>