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<p>Perhaps, but one could wonder how acing the SAT Subject Test in Chinese, Korean, or Japanese (just to name a few) shows any ability to do advanced college work as opposed to show how native speakers perform on a middle school test. </p>
<p>The entire saga of standardized tests at the UC shows how clueless that system is. When it comes to the SAT, the entire country has been paying for their stupidity.</p>
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<p>I agree, and the fact that the Math SATII is so easy means that essentially people only have to take one SAT subject test.</p>
<p>Assimilation is a two way street. We can speak perfect English, eat apple pie, join in and participate in our communities, donate our wealth to our favorite American causes, and yet with our Asian faces, we will always be considered others. It’s whites who participate the most in self segregation. Take note of white flight that has become part of American tradition. The Asian propensity to go after prestigious unis is partly in response to the desire of whites to continue segregation. We figure if whites aren’t going to be willing to be friends, then we will take the opportunities that we do have, work off our butts, and go after achievement and everything that goes along with it. Trust me, many Asian kids who have experienced racism from a young age in schools are all the more driven to prove themselves. They understand they have mountains to climb.</p>
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<p>If they have money (as IP claims) they should be in boarding schools or hire a college consultant.</p>
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<p>Or simply in a family with highly educated parents and lots of books.</p>
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<p>By negative reasoning, I suppose. If whatever they are doing now wasn’t working well, then HYPS wouldn’t be so sought after and ranked higher than every other college that does not use race/subjectivity in admissions.</p>
<p>I suppose one could argue that not using race (or other subjective criteria) would make HYPS even more esteemed and sought after, but on what grounds could you conclude that?</p>
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I don’t think Berkeley is too Asian, I think some people might think it’s too Asian or at least that it’s science departments are too Asian. My son didn’t apply because I didn’t think it was worth the cost for someone from out of state. He ended up a school that also has a huge Asian population (Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon).</p>
<p>BTW Harvard is growing its engineering options (even without the Alston campus), but I don’t think Harvard would be Harvard any more if it were dominated by the STEM types.</p>
<p>sewhappy, I can assure you that Harvard is full of students who did not get an 800 on the Math II subject test. </p>
<p>Math II isn’t “so easy”, only the best math students take it. Far more students take Math 1 hence the differing percentiles for top scores.</p>
<p>"Math II isn’t “so easy”, only the best math students take it. Far more students take Math 1 hence the differing percentiles for top scores. "</p>
<p>I was thinking the same. 12% of a much smaller population who can hack it are getting 800 but it is not because it is easy.</p>
<p>Calculus BC AP has about 47% students scoring a 5. The reasoning is that only people who truly think they know calculus even attempt it.</p>
<p>“Far more students take Math 1 hence the differing percentiles for top scores.” </p>
<p>Actually, more students take the Math Level 2 since it is the MOST popular Subject Test.
Math 1 versus Math 2
Total 85,109 163,713</p>
<p>But more (8-9 to 1) students score above 750 on the Math 2.
*750-800 4,682 41,225 *</p>
<p>Here are some details as well:
Mean 605 649
75th percentile 680 750
50th percentile 620 650</p>
<p>Source: <a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/2010-total-group-profile-report-cbs.pdf[/url]”>http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/2010-total-group-profile-report-cbs.pdf</a></p>
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<p>IndianParent, I was referring to The Return to Attending More Selective College: 1960 to the Present, by Caroline M. Hoxby. I assume you are referring to the same paper.</p>
<p>Hoxby estimates lifetime earning differences from “moving up” across “selectivity levels”. Each “selectivity level” or “rank group” includes many colleges. Rank Group 1, for example, includes 24 schools. HYPSM are in Rank Group 1, but so are Haverford, Harvey Mudd, Smith, and Mount Holyoke College. </p>
<p>Page 28 of the paper shows, for males who entered college in 1982, career incomes of $2,904,332 for graduates of “Rank 1 Colleges” and $2,602,639 for graduates of “Rank 2 Colleges” (1997 dollars). That suggests an advantage of about 12% from “moving up” from Rank 2 Colleges (which in her data included Bennington and St. John’s College) to Rank 1 Colleges. Even a move from Rank 5 colleges to Rank 1 colleges only yields an advantage of about 22% (from $2,380,857 at R5 to $2,904,332 at R1). Rank 5 colleges are described as schools that “consider applicants who have grade point averages of B- at least and who rank in the top 50% of their graduating class”. These were less selective than R4 colleges, which in her data sets included Connecticut College, Pitzer, Coe College, and Hampshire.</p>
<p>Now it gets a little tricky to try to map current USNWR rankings to the 1880 Barron’s selectivity index. But as I read the Hoxby paper, together with the Krueger Dale studies, I don’t see clear and convincing evidence for choosing, say, the USNWR #9 LAC (Haverford, a Hoxby “Rank 1”) over the USNWR #54 LAC (Reed College, a Hoxby “Rank 2”), based on projected earnings differences alone. </p>
<p>Maybe you have come up with a better mapping based on more current Barron’s data. If the projected earnings from attending school A is indeed 30% higher than the projected earnings from attending school B, then I could be persuaded that it makes sense to recommend A over B to someone who cares strongly about projected earnings. Personally, I’m not persuaded that projected earnings is the best or most reliable indicator of educational quality (some well-educated Americans find some careers attractive despite relatively low compensation). But if that’s what an applicant cares about, fine.</p>
<p>(Anyway …to tie this back into the thread … I think IP is trying to demonstrate that ambitious, high-stats Asian college applicants have good, rational reasons for preferring certain schools; their ambition and achievement should be rewarded, not ridiculed. That’s a compelling argument … but I think there may still be a disconnect here about what really sets these schools apart, what doesn’t, and what the adcoms want to see.)</p>
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<p>On that point I agree. I wasn’t thinking of the language Subject Tests for native speakers.</p>
<p>xiggi, I stand corrected on the number of students who take Math 2, I don’t think that was always true. In any event it’s definitely a self-selected group!</p>
<p>Andrew Abbott (occupational sociologist, UChicago) wrote that within top schools, college GPA means little in terms of future income as well. A GPA of 2.8 vs. 3.8 seems to make little difference on future owned income. It appears that acceptance and not performance is what is important.</p>
<p>Interesting numbers xiggi. Why is the perception different and why do they like giving 25% of test takers 750 or more when they seem to have the highest SAT II test takers?</p>
<p>Is the population skewed because of multiple attempts for Math II?</p>
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<p>Evidence? Or is this another “everybody just knows” judgment?</p>
<p>I’m not sure what geographical world you live in, but it can’t be anything like what my children have grown up in, which translates to: if you’re anywhere in competitive academics and extracurriculars, you will have a lot of Asian peers as companions. 
There’s zero segregation. I don’t see it initiated from either side. In fact, regarding e.c.'s, I once joked with one of my daughter’s music teachers that I was so proud of her performance award because she even beat the Asians – which both the teacher and I laughed about and understood as a high compliment of my daughter’s Asian peers.</p>
<p>Both of my daughters are in full academic and social integration with Asian peers, and I don’t know any of their Caucasian friends who practice informal 'segregation." This is a non-issue in my region.</p>
<p>I’ve wondered if it would help the “perpetual foreigner” problem if Asian-Americans were not called “Asians.” It never made sense to me for an American to identify him/herself by reference to another country or continent. White, Caucasian, Latino, Hispanic and Black are not associated with any particular geographic location, (I know Af-Am is, but that terminology was not used throughout most of my life and I don’t like it for the same reason). Even Asian-Americans on this site regularly refer to themselves as “Asians” and not “Asian-Americans.” How would an average person know you were American if you refer to yourself as “Asian?” I think it would aid some ignorant non-Asian people in their understanding by ridding their minds of the false idea that Asians in America are not from America.</p>
<p>Sorry this was a bit off-topic.</p>
<p>Great post epiphany!</p>
<p>I also the perception of self-segration also comes a bit from not thinking through the math of the situation. Let’s assume we have a group of people of whom 80% are white and 20% are Asian … and then a group of 2 people break off … if these folks are totally race neutral and we randomly pick a group of 2 people then …
<p>Bay, no, you post was NOT off topic.
It is very much a reason why I think that racial identity boxes should NOT be used. At All.
If any group of people want to preserve their heritage or somehow feel bonded into a group, they are free to do so in the USA.
And not just according to these or any “mandated” labels. </p>
<p>The labels couse much consternation: what is an Asian? An Asian-American?
A Latino? A Hispanic?
An African? An African American?</p>
<p>I think that “members” of these groups question what they really mean all the time…</p>
<p>I, too, am somewhat perplexed by the Math II subject test. DD did not get an 800 on first try but did well on her two other subject tests. That is the one she is being counseled to re-take and told that, of course, she should be able to get an 800 on it. Oddly, this kid who always hedges her bets, tells me that yes, she should get an 800 on it. Math is certainly not her strong suit. </p>
<p>Then there’s the subject test in Literature. All seem to quake in fear of that one. Go figure.</p>
<p>I think maybe this long exhausting frustrating thread has stayed alive for a reason after all. Maybe we’re getting somewhere, if only virtually over the internet. It’s hard to truly put oneself in another’s skin. Maybe impossible. I think it’s been good for that.</p>
<p>xiggi, Bay, others seem to be survivors of past threads on the topic. Is this one excruciatingly generic or perhaps coming in for a somewhat softer landing?</p>