<p>“It is excruciatingly obvious in virtually every high school in America that Asian kids, as well as unhooked white kids, must present a much higher level of academic fireworks to get a look, let alone “get in.””</p>
<p>^ Is it excruciatingly obvious at this school? </p>
<p>I don’t think anyone on this thread wants admission to be mostly score-based, especially if you mean by standardized scores and GPA. There IS transparency insofar as colleges tell us that they are trying to build a class made up of different abilities, races, geographical, socioeconomic, and talents. How they weigh these factors is anybody’s guess and there is no way to confirm what they say because most of the statistics are not released, and what goes on behind closed doors (the holistic gestalt) is hidden. In other words, it isn’t transparent.</p>
<p>The UC system had a system where they assigned points to various EC achievements as well as hardships the applicant went through. For instance, making eagle scout could be 100 points, being from single parent family could be 150 points, etc. I don’t know whether they still have that system. While this is not exactly the same as holistic admission, if there is a large discrepancy between the holistic vs. points for EC achievement system, it might suggest how much Asians are docked for their ethnicity. </p>
<p>As Karabel wrote, the so-called “holistic” process of admission was invented so that they could racially discriminate without getting called on it. Whether and how much they still discriminate under the veil of holistic admission is not known. Regardless, I would hardly call the holistic process transparent. It was designed to be otherwise.</p>
<p>I have only asked why Fabrizio believes Asians suffer from discrimination in admission. I know he CANNOT offer anything that comes close to the “proof” that has so far eluded everyone who has tried to establish discrimination against Asians in higher education.</p>
<p>Why is this so hard to state his thesis in simple terms? Or for you to let us know why you believe he has made a cogent argument?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I am have no idea on how anyone could speak about every high school in America; the only thing that is excruciatingly obvious is that this could not be universally true. </p>
<p>The number of colleges that use a holistic review is incredibly small in comparison to the overwhelming majority of schools that rely on nothing else than academic fireworks.</p>
<p>And, there are NO parallels between Asian kids and unhooked white kids.</p>
<p>UCB and UCLA will have a lower ranking simply due to the size of their school size (having incoming classes of 10000 or so vs under 2000) putting them at a real disadvantage to complete. However, their lowered rankings over the years may have more to do with diminishing funding over the years. It can only get worse since faculty are leaving by the droves from UC system because they are concerned about the cuts in research funding. 3 top faculty from UCSD moved to Rice on a single day few weeks ago.</p>
<p>I agree. Another area that I can think of where the academics literally take an official position in contrary to their private opinion is the topic of race and intelligence in psychometry.</p>
<p>Despite my reservations, I think very highly of Karabel and his work, and I hope my last post demonstrate how hard it is to proof anything; all we can do in most cases is to shift the weight of evidence a little.</p>
<p>I was the one that brought up Thomas Sowell. I found his story on the battle for a secret ballet in the University of California highly poignant.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Oh, can I tell you stories about the U of Toronto. Only if you are interested, of course.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>With all due respect, I can see why you hate the SAT.</p>
<p>Do you [Hunt] have any substantive issues with their findings that I did not already acknowledge (viz. that whites may have brought the 34.3% figure “down”)?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Since you ask, yes, there is a glaring issue that you did not acknowledge. It is that you called two posters racist and dishonest for asserting that Asians disproportionately study science, but did not withdraw the accusations after it was demonstrated that typing “STEM majors” into a search engine displays a study that, in your words “proves [their] point”. Do you acknowledge the false accusation, or is playing the race card (and having it backfire) such a regular event in your universe that it’s not worthy of comment?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Try hitting the library before hitting POST REPLY.</p>
<p>Here’s what the National Science Foundation has to say about the trend from 1995 to 2007. </p>
<ul>
<li>the Asian, black and hispanic (that is, the non-white) share of US science and engineering bachelor’s degrees all modestly but continually grew during that period.</li>
<li>The Asian percentage of science and engineering degree went from about 7.7 percent to 9.3 percent in that time, that is, 2-3 times the Asian share of the US population. Most engineering degrees are earned by whites and Asians, so this already indicates that Asians are attaining degrees in these fields at about twice the rate of whites.</li>
</ul>
<p>That’s from Figure 2-7 of the report:</p>
<p>National Science Board. 2010.
Science and Engineering Indicators 2010.
Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation (NSB 10-01). Jan 2010</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In other words, all non-Asian groups are similar to each other by this measure, and all of them are dissimilar to Asians, who study science and engineering at twice the rate. As the Department of Education found in 1995-2001, so the NSF reconfirmed in 2007. No major quantitative or qualitative change appears to have occurred over time.</p>
<p>The report is 566 pages long, with appendices containing the 1995-2007 data tables. It is, theoretically, possible that a sifting of the tables would produce conclusions radically different from the statements by the study authors, so if fabrizio finds anything to resurrect the accusations of racism, lies and stereotyping, I’m sure we will hear about it. </p>
<p>Maybe the NSF is covering up the FULL TRUTH about the vast numbers of Asians majoring in Home Economics. Conspiracy! Or, just possibly, this ongoing exercise in reality denial has been an attempt at spin control, where we aren’t allowed to name science as a field where Asians <em>over</em> concentrate (a “half-truth” that only racists could concoct), and are also not allowed to name the fields in which Asians <em>under</em> concentrate (that would be “too much truth”). Not too hot, not too cold; we can only mention the just right amount of Officially Approved truth, fab-ricated from Home Ec enrollment at community colleges and self-reported freshman surveys. Got it!</p>
<p>I never called Hunt “racist [or] dishonest” for asserting that Asians “disproportionately” (relative to what?) study STEM majors. I have called out some of his remarks that I perceived as having anti-Asian biases, but those were for other things: arguing that immigrants and their children have less of a right to criticize racial preferences than he does and asserting that Asians have not “fully assimilated.” With respect to xiggi, he has refused to back down from his assertion that Asians are “overrepresented” because their “culture” condones cheating. Again, it had nothing to do with “disproportionately study[ing] [STEM majors].” And as for you, well, there was that whole thing about your wasting a bunch of pixels arguing with two Asians, neither of whom believed in Asian supremacy, that Asians were inferior when it came to the “highest echelons” of U.S. math competitions. Whaddaya know, that also wasn’t about Asians’ “disproportionately study[ing] [STEM majors].”</p>
<p>And while we’re on it, how about the names of those labor studies? The “Berkeley NMF” data you “will post”? Your 15+ years worth of hand collected data tracking the participants in U.S. math competitions from Mathcounts to the Putnam and beyond? As I said, if you’re attempting to use that data for your thesis, fine–you don’t have to share it. You did all that work, so you deserve to reap the fruit of your labor. And if you don’t want to rewrite your abstract, also fine.</p>
<p>So how about describing, in one sentence, the question you intend to answer with your hand collected data?</p>
<p>I happened to receive this today. Might be at the other end of the CC curve. I would like to suggest that race matters, when it comes to attention to this part of the curve.</p>
<p>The only way I can get the argument to work is if you say that STEM spots require higher SAT scores/academic qualifications, which actually might be true.</p>
<p>Kind of like the Joe McCarthy era, when you had to prove a negative: Prove that you are not a Communist sympathizer. (Because if you cannot prove a negative, we are here ready to smear and label you.)</p>
<p>Unseemly and ironic, coming from those demanding models of “justice” and “fairness.” </p>
<p>It’s unreal. I go out of town for less than 2 days and come back to an additional >250 posts.</p>
<p>Do you not understand how the rules of argument work? How, when one makes a general assertion, or supports a general assertion --very general in this case–facts are cited, along with why those particular facts irrefutably lead to such a general conclusion? </p>
<p>To make an assertion and have it be respected, one has to be willing to be challenged on both the facts (if challenge can be made) and on the conclusions from those facts. So if the facts are wrong or inappropriate to the argument, and/or if the inductive thread of logic or the deductive thread of logic has not been sufficiently established, and opposition to it not convincingly disarmed, then the original statement is spurious and has no intellectual merit.</p>
<p>I plan for this to be my last post on this thread. (siserune obviously isn’t coughing up any information about the labor studies, the “Berkeley NMF” data, or his 15+ years of painstakingly hand collected panel data tracking participants from Mathcounts to the Putnam and beyond. So “haven’t” did in fact turn out to be “can’t or won’t.”) Feel free to have the last word on my post, though.</p>
<p>Regarding the perception that Asians are discriminated unfairly against whites (i.e. what Jerry Kang and Frank Wu refer to as “negative” action), it really doesn’t help when you read [an</a> article](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/10/asian]an”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/10/asian) stating that “Admissions officers, while defending the overall integrity of the system, admitted that bias is a real problem.” Nor does it help when an admissions officer recounts anecdotes of hearing colleagues say “yet another Asian student who wants to major in math and science and who plays the violin…I don’t want another boring Asian.”</p>
<p>Does that article decisively prove that “negative” action exists? No. It only highlights that many Asian applicants have this concern, and their concern is not unfounded. Going with siserune’s source, sure, Asians are more likely than non-Asians to pursue STEM majors. Yes, a class cannot be all STEM majors. Yes, an Asian applicant should not expect admission at any private elite based on his stats and ECs. But NO, his application should not be read with an attitude of “yet another Asian student who wants to major in math and science and who plays the violin.”</p>
<p>What does his being Asian have anything to do with it? If you already had enough math and science majors in the incoming class, fine. And if you already had enough violinists, fine. Pick humanities and social science majors. Pick jazz pianists. But you don’t need to consider racial classification to do those things.</p>
<p>There are a few comments here about Asians that we should not accept. The statements “a sub-culture obsessed with scoring multiple Ivy League ‘trophies!’” and “…our admission system failed to recognize that it could be gamed and manipulated by subgroups where the cultural definition of cheating is slightly different” are nothing but ugly stereotypes hand waved as truth. </p>
<p>Racial preferences is an explosive issue. We can agree to disagree on many fundamental divides: whether we side with Justice Blackmun or Chief Justice Roberts, whether equality is measured in terms of opportunity or outcomes, and so forth. But we should never delegitimize the other “side” by presuming that they are in a “phase” that they will eventually grow “out” of. Nor should we assume that anyone who opposes racial preferences does so out of “entitlement” or “sour grapes.” (I found it rather amusing when xiggi realized that I didn’t fit his stereotype of a trophy-hunting Asian who didn’t get into his first choice school.) That way, we can have discussions that don’t get as bitter.</p>
<p>That’s dissembling. You explicitly called Hunt’s accurate comments a telling of “a half-truth”, among other insinuations.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Nice backpedaling, but if in addition to falsely portraying him as a racially biased purveyor of “half-truths” you also (rightly or not) called him out on other things it does not remove the fact of false accusations of racism and dishonesty.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The other poster you called dishonest and/or racist in connection with STEM enrollment rates, was not Xiggi but Pizzagirl. Speaking of which, you also invented false claims of racism about her remarks in the recent Tiger mom thread, and will have a much harder time weaseling out of those. The progression in that thread was:</p>
<ol>
<li>you claiming she was racist (or “anti-Asian bias” as you now soften it) for criticizing the Tiger Mom but not the Tiger Dad</li>
<li>she replied that she had, in fact, criticized the Tiger Dad a few days earlier</li>
<li>instead of backing off, you implied she might be lying and inventing that</li>
</ol>
<p>A CC listing of her recent (at the time) comments would have produced those comments on the first page. You never took the few seconds to check, just made the accusations.</p>
<p>That’s fabrizio: false accusations compounded by further insinuations and a refusal to check the facts. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>did Xiggi, in fact, assert that Asians are overrepresented because of cheating, or is that a fab-rication of his actual words (that you don’t quote)?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>did I, in fact, argue that Asians are inferior in any racial sense (whether as individuals or as a group), or is that a fab-rication of some non-racist material that I actually posted?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I described it quite some time ago; let me know if you want a requoting of the original paragraph, which you read and replied to in the old thread.</p>
<p>The assertion (or “question”, if you prefer) was that: race-blind and brutally meritocratic academic selections, such as elite math competitions (USAMO –> IMO –> Putnam data and others), exhibit drops in the Asian/white ratio that are worse than what was claimed as evidence of discrimination from Espenshade’s 2005 statistical study of admissions selections. If you think there is something racist, racially biased, or anti-Asian in confronting the true believers in Asian discrimination with equivalent (or worse) numbers from a clearly non-discriminatory selection, what is it? Does unpleasant math competition data “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people”?</p>
<p>Did your post (#40 of that thread) in fact “trash” anything I wrote, that is, display a mistake in any of the calculations in post #38? Or did it only throw trash, such as calling a straightforward permutation test (basic nonparametric statistics) “mumble-jumble”? Previously you had demonstrated equally impressive mathematical refutations such as typing the word “gobbledygook” or alleging that I believe in “Asian inferiority”. Everyone is convinced! Or should we check your calculations first…</p>
<p>Regarding your objections, such as they were.</p>
<ol>
<li>Choice of time period. You claimed that an (always undisclosed) “modern demographic” period with more E.Asian children of immigrant scientists/quants/PhDs/etc, a trend that I am supposedly ignorant of, explain any decline patterns that might be seen in the data. Please tell us, once and for all, what time frame you consider “modern”, and why. The Tiananmen visa recipients were about 40-50K Chinese students who came to the USA in 1985-1990. Relatively few had children more than 4 years old at the end of that time. Again, please indicate what you mean by “modern demographic trends” relevant to the olympiads, and in what years you think lots of Chinese children from one- and two-PhD families started to appear in the 9th-12th grade (age 14-18, approximately) USAMO counts. Also explain when you think the Chinese and Korean olympiad schools started appearing in North American cities, as well as keen awareness of math competitions in the US E.Asian communities.</li>
</ol>
<p>I actually agree with you that there is a modern period. If you go back far enough in time, there is no underperformance (e.g., because there were no Asian math olympiad schools that are useless for the higher level selections, because the competitions were less reliant on training, and because there was little or no head-start for Asians). If you go back even further to the 1960’s or earlier, there were no US competitions, but Asians probably overperformed in most high-level academic selections because they faced discrimination or disadvantage, requiring higher levels of talent to surpass the early stages. But we are dealing with the modern period, where you say that the underperformance trends are nullified by “recent demographic changes”. I claim that the recent changes such as USAMO summer camps that opened in the mid-2000’s, make underperformance stronger and more visible, especially when considering longer trends such as USAMO vs Putnam numbers.</p>
<ol>
<li> Objections to my computations. I performed a permutation test from nonparametric statistics according to standard principles, with the result that Asian declines in the table had a 1-in-1100 chance of appearing at random. Your alternative version of the calculation, supposedly showing equally unlikely increases, was garbage. When performed correctly it does not lead to a 1-in-500 odds but something much, much higher. I did the full calculation privately when you posted this last year and it would take a while to find it or repeat it, but we can already see the problem in what you wrote:</li>
</ol>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, you cannot. There is no “other subgroup” of comparisons showing a statistically significant pattern of increases. The only statistically significant patterns, such as the one with probability 1-in-1100 that I computed last year, are the ones related to declines. In addition to the statistical significance, these decline patterns are consistent with the fact that non-(East)Asian students progressively catch up to the Asian head start as time progresses, and with the decreases from 8th grade (Mathcounts) and continuing into university (Putnam results). Your proposed upward trends are clearly a lot weaker, happening in 3-5 of the seven years instead of 6-7, and have no external correlates or justifications. The probabilities of such trends are quite high, that is, they aren’t trends at all.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It means you did the math wrong, even fixing the probabilities. The events aren’t independent. In my calculation, assuming independence would have lowered the probability to 1-in-millions instead of 1-in-1000. Similarly, in your case the odds are about 1 percent multiplying the probabilities but about 10 percent when computed correctly. I worked out the number last year and remember it as about 1-in-13, which is about what is guaranteed to get by data snooping – there are 16 sets of questions that you could have asked, so looking over the table and picking the best counterexample it is expected that you can get a rarer than 1-in-16 event by looking hard enough. A 1-in-1100 coincidence is harder to engineer without there being a real pattern in the data.</p>
<p>A few more comments. </p>
<p>There is a clear pattern in the data of a large jump in the total number of qualifiers between grades 11 and 12. This is expected, because 11-12 have the same qualifying path (AMC12) and 12th graders know more math. However, this jump overwhelmingly favors non(East)Asians; they are catching up to the Asians’ early start and the effect is most visible in the final year when the pool of contestants has crystallized and noise from the double qualification path (AMC10 vs AMC12) is eliminated. For the classes of 2004-2009 seen in NCL’s table (post #38 of old thread):</p>
<p>6 of 7 years had more 12th than 11th grade qualifiers (the other year saw a decrease of the E.Asian percentage from 50% to 45%, so of course supports the 11th-12th decline pattern). In every one of the six years with net increase in number of qualifiers, the advantage was strongly in favor of non-EAsians:</p>
<p>class of:
2004 24/33 (73%) of new qualifers are non-EAsian
2005 18/19 (95%) of new qualifiers non-EAsian
2006 30/51 (59%) of new qualifiers non-EAsian
2007 43/48 (90%) of new qualifiers non-EAsian
2008 6 EAsian qualifiers lost, 11 non-EAsians added
2009 15/20 (75%) of new qualifiers non-EAsian
2010: E.Asian percentage of qualifiers reduced 55% to 45%</p>
<p>I look forward to NCL and fabrizio’s explanations of these numbers in terms of concepts such as random chance or my being a racist who doesn’t understand Chinese-American demographics and its role in the math competitions.</p>
I wonder if Fabrizio read the last paragraphs of the article he posted?</p>
<p>As I suspected, the crux of Fabrizio’s argument is that he knows discrimination when he sees it. That’s essentially what the article says, too.</p>
<p>One point I think I disagree with xiggi on–I think there is a similarity between Asians and unhooked whites–and that’s simply that they are unhooked (although there are some hooked Asians). It is trivially true that unhooked people have to show higher stats to get admitted. The claim that Fabrizio seems to be making is that unhooked Asians are discriminated against in favor of unhooked whites. It is this for which I see very little evidence. I don’t ask for proof, by the way, just enough evidence to support further investigation. Despite several years of discussion of this issue, precious little evidence beyond the basic stats disparity has appeared. You might be suspicious if you find some long blonde hairs on your husband’s coat, but at what point do you hire a private detective to follow him around? That’s what I’m talking about.</p>
<p>As to the STEM major point, this is simply the observation that if Asians identify interest in STEM majors (or just present as “math/science” people) in disproportionate numbers as compared to other groups, this might depress their admission numbers at universities that have a broad range of majors and are looking for more or less fixed numbers of people in those different disciplines. This effect could occur without any consideration of race at all. The same is true for other effects, like a desire for geographical diversity, and for tips given to a broad range of ECs and non-recruited sports. If (and I don’t even know if this is true) very few Asians play brass instruments, and some colleges are looking for brass players, then very few Asians are going to be helped in gain admissions because of playing brass instruments.</p>
<p>And this is before you even talk about hooked applicants, who are (I suspect) predominantly white or URM. I think legacies are still mostly white, and so are a lot of recruited athletes.</p>
<p>But what I’ve found frustrating in this conversation (and others like it) is that people who are convinced of anti-Asian discrimination don’t want to hear about these other possible factors impacting Asian admissions. Just bringing them up results in accusations of anti-Asian bias. Even something so obvious that Asians (like other immigrant striver groups before them) are highly interested in STEM fields is resisted until the evidence for it is irresistable, and then the subject is changed.</p>
<p>But as long-time forum denizens know, that’s how these conversations always go. Maybe one day a true smoking gun will appear, and colleges will admit that they really didn’t want “too many Asians.” But until then, we will continue to have a few people trying to convince smart Asian kids who have been admitted to Brown but not Harvard that they’ve been cheated. That does those kids a disservice, in my opinion.</p>
<p>I am guessing the wife is not a blonde in this test case.</p>
<p>I wonder about the STEM field question and if that is the reason Asians are way low at the popular LACs. OTOH, some of the schools lately are professing an interest in increasing the size of the engineering schools (Harvard is boasting that they now have interest from 400 (?) incoming students compared only a couple of hundred a few years ago).</p>