<p>Are there any studies out there based on income of Asians vs their college matriculation process?</p>
<p>I am curious if people choose not spend the money applying or sending their kids to Ivies because of the way financial aid is doled out only to people making 80 or 100k with no merit aid whatsoever (whatever the number is at different schools these days). If people live in California, it is very hard for them to make less than 100k as a family if live in the bay area. This income level automatically requires them to be full pays at the Ivies and we are looking at a price tag of 230k if someone needs to start school this year. So you look around and go Berkeley and UCLA are only a few spots down from Cornell and Brown and so what is the big deal when they are saving about 80-100k. The UCs are also happy to accept the AP credits which means the kid may graduate early (I have an Asian colleague who gave his kid half of the tuition saved from finishing an year early at an UC to tour Europe).</p>
Well, since the only real factual evidence that would lead one to be suspicious about discrimination is disparity in stats, it makes sense to ask where those high-stats Asians who are arguably being unfairly shut out of Ivies end up. If you look at that list, you do see very large percentages of Asians at a few schools that are (arguably) a tier or maybe half a tier below the Ivies–places like Emory, for example. But they’re not going to Vanderbilt and they’re not going to a lot of the LACs. One possibility is that they’re not going anywhere, because there really aren’t very many Asian kids at all being bumped from the top tier of schools because of discrimination (or because of anything else). It may be that pretty much all of those who are really competitive at Ivies and similar schools are getting in to at least a couple of them, and that there just aren’t all that many of them in the first place. So, for example, it could be that the big injustice is that somebody like Jian Li gets into Yale but not Harvard or Princeton, while a white kid with slightly lower scores gets into Yale and Princeton but not Harvard. Is that enough of an injustice to bring out the torches and pitchforks? Reasonable minds might disagree about that.</p>
<p>I actually thought they would be much higher! When I read about the %'s of Asian’s at the top UC’s yet know they are a small % of the CA pop, I think I assumed (like others) that the reason is strictly because they are excellent students. The UC’s take the most qualified; enough said! I had no idea that they applied to the top UC’s in such disproportionately high numbers.</p>
<p>I also assumed that the reason they were not as well represented (under 50%) at the “elites” was because they were not as strong in EC’s. I mean how else do you explain almost 50% at top UC’s (who don’t use race preference) and only 15-20% at the Ivy’s? I can honestly say that racism never crossed my mind (I love smart people whoever they are!).</p>
<p>I still believe there is no racism and I now believe that Asian’s are also pretty good with the EC’s; they have an overall excellent package. This is why they are over represented! What I still don’t understand after all the debate on this thread however, is why some people believe that their numbers should be even higher at the “elites” than they already are. Where is the documentation that those at the very top are still overlooked? Even UCB turned down 47% of Asian’s with SAT scores above 2100 (and 49% of whites). </p>
<p>So how many Asian’s apply to HYPSM with scores above 2100? If the admissions is more selective than UCB (which I feel confident it is), then over 50% of the Asians at this level (top 5% of all SAT test takers) will still be rejected! I cannot find any UC information on the more specific numbers that are often cited on CC (like Asian’s need a 2300 while white’s only need a 2100).</p>
<p>As far as URM’s go I don’t agree that the most intelligent URM’s will be able to perform (as a whole) at the same level as Asians and Whites in high school. The reason is not lack of intelligence but lack of good schools! The UC data showed that the mode of students applying to the UC’s for Whites and Asians (no private schools included) was from schools that scored a 9-10 on their academic index (meaning they are the best public’s in CA). The mode of URM’s was from schools with an academic index of 1-2 (the worst). How can we expect these students to have the same academic preparation? How can we expect them to have the same standardized test scores? Seems like that would be a miracle (I am an agnostic so you’d have to prove it to me!).</p>
<p>I’ll be at UCB in the fall so I guess I’ll see first hand if we are all equally qualified to do the work (actually, I’m afraid I will be the dumbest one there). Maybe my opinion will change with more experience but for now I am not seeing the racist thing.</p>
<p>Exactly. Pro-racial preference supporters often defend the policy through such posts; that is, they use sports / music metaphors to argue that since a football team / orchestra can’t be all quarterbacks / violinists, elites can’t be all students with “[just high] GPA and standardized test scores.”</p>
<p>Except no one here is advocating that elites operate that way. Advocating for race-blind admissions ==|== advocating for “numbers only” admissions. No matter how many times one says this, it will never get through because the pro-racial preference side either ignores it or dismisses it as “you don’t really believe that, you’re just saying it because it’s what we want to hear.”</p>
<p>If you want to pick students by interest to create a well-rounded class, GO AHEAD. I don’t see Ward Connerly pushing for initiatives to restrict that. But you don’t need to consider racial classification to pick students by interest, do you?</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s any reason they should be higher; I do not think Asians are “superior” to whites or any other racial classification. In fact, I see the roughly equal acceptance rates between whites and Asians at the top UCs as a good sign; it’s “supposed” to be that way.</p>
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<p>[In</a> the 1920s](<a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge]In”>Getting In | The New Yorker), Jewish enrollment at Harvard began to exceed a fifth of the incoming freshmen classes. Then President Lowell, an avowed anti-Semite, viewed that as problematic and tried to contain the figure. He devised many schemes–quotas, restricting scholarships, and recruiting from out West–none of which worked. (The quota plan was somehow exposed by Harry Starr.) Perplexed, Lowell suddenly had an epiphany: redefine “merit.” Thus began the birth of holistic admissions, which soon caused Jewish enrollment to decrease to 15% of the incoming freshmen classes and stay there until anti-Semitism was no longer mainstream.</p>
<p>But you see, the Jews could never prove that holistic admissions was responsible for their numbers being limited to no more than 15%. We only know that now, decades after it happened. What’s more, if anyone complained, that Jews were already very much “overrepresented” at 15% meant that the complainer could easily be silenced with a “entitled whiner” response, or whatever the equivalent phrase in the 1930s was.</p>
<p>**But if the college’s goal is to create a racially diverse student body, then it is Constitutional to consider race in order to achieve that goal. **</p>
<p>It is definitely unConstitutional for public schools. It remains to be seen if it is Constitutional for private schools, as, once the Asians get a political voice, challenges will surely come.</p>
<p>Thanks coolweather. Very interesting chart. I guess I should have asked question differently - Parental income level vs where their kids end up in college.</p>
<p>Hunt, Do you believe that everyone in this country deserves a fair shot at anything regardless of their race? This is why I ask. Let’s say that I could show a study (not that I have one, but assume that I did) that even adjusting for the well-roundedness criteria, a Caucasian would have a 3x better odds at getting in than an Asian with the same overall resume at any given school. Would that be OK by you? Note that I am not bringing up URMs here.</p>
<p>Poor analogy. The question was not whether Hunt would then believe that colleges use race to discriminate against Asians. It was whether that would be OK by Hunt. I suspect that he will say, no.</p>
<p>But then the next question is, why, then is that OK if URMs replace Asians though a racial compensation system? That they do is quite clear from the UCB experience post Prop 209. Asians never oppressed any URMs. If anything, large swaths of Asians have been oppressed just as much as URMs.</p>
<p>If anyone has to give up their space, shouldn’t it be Caucasians?</p>
<p>How about this system? Let’s first keep a quota for URMs. So that would take care of some 25% of the seats already. Now let’s make the rest of the applications completely race blind. If Asians end up getting 45% of the seats, so be it - let talent rule. Caucasians would then get the remaining 30% of the seats (of which 20%+ may be Jewish). They should be OK with this, as, after all, URMs have been given a leg up, and no one has been racially discriminated against.</p>
<p>I wonder how people here who call Asians over entitled and such feel about this system.</p>
<p>I think I found the answer to my own question:</p>
<p>When I googled Asian’s being accepted to Harvard I found an Article titled, “Tiger Children: Getting into College Even Harder Because Asian Kids are So Damn Qualified” and the author (?) used the UCB comparison:</p>
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</p>
<p>look at these amazing statistics:
</p>
<p>I think the author is having a difficult time understanding that the populations of students who apply to UCB, UCLA, UCSD, and UCI are not the same as those applying to the Ivy’s. Can you imagine that Asian’s are making up 44% of the applicant pool (like they do at UCI) to Harvard? At the UC’s Asian’s are the biggest group of applicants and thus the most represented at the universities. They are intelligent and well prepared but come on, where is the proof that they should be admitted at 4X their population %? Someone has been drinking the Asian KoolAid!</p>
<p>Anyway, I think the problem the author is having (and the other posters who feel Asian’s are being discriminated based on little to no statistics is what I learned about in my 10th grade AP Statistics class: Simpson’s Paradox.</p>
<p>I looked it up (couldn’t remember all the particulars to explain it quite right and the Wiki version was the simplest to understand:</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, I think Asian’s are extremely well qualified students but the pop of the US is 72.4 % white and only 4.8% Asian. Also keep in mind that UCBerkely (which may be close to the %'s you mention) has more Asian applicants than white. To even suggest that it would be possible for Asians to get 45% of the seats and Caucasions the remaining 30% (in a national pool) is well…there just aren’t enough Asians to make that happen.</p>
<p>Since we’re all about straight answers to questions now, sure I had to face teasing due to my ethnicity. Both whites and blacks have mocked my Chinese ancestry.</p>
<p>But I’ve already told you that such teasing is hardly unique to the south."</p>
<p>Way to miss the point. It doesn’t need to be unique to the south for it to be an obstacle you had that your white classmates didn’t – therefore giving you a different set of life experiences than your white classmates on that dimension – therefore proving the point that racial experiences in this country can and do shape what you bring to the party – and therefore make you of interest to a college. Wow, just like blacks!</p>
<p>Which is why I’m never fully convinced by the “but they benefit the son of two black physicians in Greenwich” argument. as privileged as the black kid from Greenwich might be, it’s still a different experience from being white in Greenwich. I would have no problem if preferences moved to socioeconomic instead, but I’d also like my kids to meet the black kid from Greenwich as well as the Asian kid from Georgia.</p>
<p>We can not be more different. I thought you would be impressed by the access to the FBIs behavioral analysis unit for data, as few of us can. All is not lost, however, as he is simply confirming research from the other side of the pond:</p>
<p>If books are your thing, then I would suggest Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work and Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths among Us.</p>
<p>If you prefer an American writer, then Harvard psychologist Marta Stouts *The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless vs. the Rest of Us *is also an excellent read. </p>
No, it wouldn’t, which you would already know if you had read all my posts on this thread. But I’ve been asking for that study–or any other evidence–for a long time, and I’ve been offering some factors that might explain disparities that don’t involve racial discrimination at all.</p>
<p>But since you mention well-roundedness, here’s a thought experiment:
You are on the admission committee at an Ivy League school. You have already dealt with all the hooks, tips, geographical diversity, filled all the majors, etc. You have one seat left to fill. Here are the candidates:</p>
<p>Candidate X: 2300 SAT I, 740 Latin SAT 2, 750 Biology SAT 2. GPA 4.0. ECs: Model Rocketry Club, Poetry Club, Editor school literary magazine. Collects rubbings of manhole covers.
Essay: Was about raising goats. Sample quote from teacher rec: “Has a quick and unpredicatable mind. You never know what he will come up with next.”</p>
<p>Candidate Y: 2380 SAT I, 800 Math Level 2 SAT 2, 770 US History Math Level 2, 4.0 GPA. ECs: Violin (All-State 10, 11, 12), Tennis team, President Science Club, tutoring. Essay was about summer research internship. Sample quote from teacher rec: “One of the brightest students I’ve ever taught. Works very hard and is always well-prepared. Excellent writer.”</p>
<p>Which of these students is the committee most likely to take? Is it obvious which one they will take? Do you think their thought process would be different if they didn’t know the ethnic backgrounds of the two students?</p>
<p>I vowed to stay out of this thread but things have gotten more interesting to me.</p>
<p>The recent posts on the UC Asian population since Prop 209 led me to do a little research.</p>
<p>CA Asian Population = 12.5% (2008 numbers)
UC Asian Population = 20%-50%
Overrepresentation Ratio = 2-4x</p>
<p>USA Asian Population = 4.5 (2008 numbers)
Top 20 School Asian Population = 15%-25%
Overrepresentation Ratio = 3-5x</p>
<p>I do not have information at a lower level however this seems to argue against discrimiation against Asian applicants at the top schools. The UC admissions process is much more numbers driven than most top 20 schools. In addtion I’d think as a % of their population the affect of legacies, developmental admits, athletes, and URMs would be greater at the top 20 schools. So I would have expected the ratio of Asians compared to the general population to be lower at the top 20 schools compared to the UCs. </p>
<p>This certainly does not prove there is no discrimination … but having Asians more overrepresented at the top 20 schools certainly does not provide any evidence of it either.</p>
<p>(The out would be if the qualified applicant pool at the top 20 schools was even more Asian heavy than the UCs … but since the UCs have 40+% Asian applicants I find it unfathomable that the top 20 schools have 50+% Asian applican pools (for that to happen Asian would have to apply to top 20 schools at rate more than 10 times that of whites)).</p>
<p>It is common that people won’t agree with the conclusion when presented with the same set of facts (e.g. the O.J. Simpson verdict), let alone when facts are not known.</p>
<p>But does this really constitutes as evidence that discrimination against asians does not exist?
</p>
<p>At least to me, it sounds awfully like channeling Marilee Jones (“yet another textureless math grind”) .</p>
I thought you would be impressed by the access to the FBIs behavioral analysis unit for data, as few of us can. All is not lost, however, as he is simply confirming research from the other side of the pond:</p>