That’s right–I sort of feel like a guy trying to say that those might be hairs from the neighbor’s Golden Retriever, but the wife just doesn’t want to hear it.</p>
<p>
I think that could be–when you get beyond the Ivies, especially, I think it’s also sensible to wonder if lower number of Asians may in part be because of a weaker desire among Asians to go to certain schools, perhaps for cultural or (as you suggest) curriculum reasons. I don’t recall if it was in this thread or another, but Vanderbilt has a substantially lower percentage of Asians than other schools at about the same point in the selectivity tier, and there was speculation about why that might be. I don’t recall anybody saying that Vanderbilt is more discriminatory towards Asians than other schools, but that’s certainly possible.</p>
It’s my impression from presentations they gave at our school that it’s quite the reverse. They are trying very hard to encourage more applications outside their perceived stereotyped demographics (preppy, Greek, WASP, well-to-do) - to the point where they said some pretty politically incorrect things. :)</p>
<p>Which is why, if I were an intelligent Asian-American student looking for a quality education, I’d go for a Vanderbilt where I might be “courted” a bit more … and in which the quality of the offering is, oh, basically 90% of what HYP offers. I guess there are several different definitions of “smart.” One is - sit back and hope other people notice how smart I am, and the other is actively setting strategic courses to get to your desired end goal (in this case, an elite education at one of the nation’s best schools).</p>
<p>(Disclaimer: I have no dog in the Vanderbilt fight.)</p>
<p>Now, I’m sure there will be a chorus of “but Vanderbilt isn’t HYP!” coming from people who are either all-up-in-investment-banking-opps, but really, the differences are meaningless in any significant way. It’s rather like taking someone who is on the Olympic team for gymnastics and arguing that they aren’t as good as the gold/silver/bronze medal winners on the team. Whatever – they’re still among the most outstanding gymnasts in the world by any means.</p>
<p>With a 2370+ SAT and college math classes (not to mention a super GPA at elite HS!) under your belt, I think you can handle both the Math and the Reading Comprehension aspects of this discussion. As for the length,</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If you see a shorter way of answering NCL’s demands for a statistical analysis, let us know how it could have been done. Just stating the facts, such as NCL’s calculations being garbage, without quoting those calculations and explaining (many) specific errors, would have led only to more postings and endless claims of “gobbledygook”. In the same way, Fabrizio will continue to kick up a dust storm every time unless a comprehensive refutation is produced and spoon-fed to him. When reasonable conversation is impossible, you sometimes have to perform a calculation.</p></li>
<li><p>Your own postings are kept short… by concealing crucial information. Such as presenting the story of 3-4 high scoring Asian friends rejected from top 10 schools and not explaining that “a couple of them are internationals” as you disclosed elsewhere, and refusing to provide data about the high school when asked. Keeping it short and keeping it honest are not always the same thing.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>fab,
I’m a little confused about your objections. </p>
<p>It sounds like you are not disputing that many applicants, Asian or not, both play the violin and are STEM majors. Certainly, seeing this profile repeatedly renders the application “boring” in context. Are you offended only because adcoms noticed that many Asian applicants fall into this category? What if it is true? Are you saying they should not be allowed to say it? Maybe they also notice that plenty of White girls from the suburbs are cheerleaders and want to be teachers, and think they are “boring,” too. What if an Asian male applicant was a cheerleader/teacher. Would it be acceptable to you for them to conclude that the application was now less boring?</p>
<p>I do not agree with Pizzagirl, epiphany, shrinkrap and bay but Id like to read their postings because they are interesting. Also, some long postings from Hunt are very interesting too. I am not sure about yours.</p>
<p>I will just interject one post today, which is turning out to be insanely busy, and that is to state that (1) there can be no proof given the circumstances, and (2) there has been absolutely no proof or even strong argument achieved here arguing that there is no discrimination against Asians.</p>
<p>I find it ironic and very saddening that people who pride themselves on their belief and support for racial equality are clearly so very inconvenienced by this question. I’ve been amazed by some of the tactics employed to beat it down – 1) you don’t understand elite admissions and the SAT isn’t everything, 2) Asians are all math/science geeks and they aren’t useful in assembling the class of many flavors, and 3) My personal fav - you’re just too YOUNG to get it, and finally, 4) where is the ironclad proof? See above paragraph.</p>
<p>The tone and content of the posts arguing that discrimination against Asians is not happening has convinced me, to a large extent, to choose the side asking for more investigation.</p>
<p>How does one express this view in a manner that will have any impact?</p>
<p>^Short of hiding bugs in the admissions offices I don’t think this (proof) is going to happen. I believe admissions officers when they say beyond a certain point grades and SATs don’t make much difference. The decisions get made sitting around a table with people saying things like “I don’t know this kid just doesn’t seem genuine” or “Yeah he’s got all the prizes and awards, but he seems so booooring”, or even “Yet another white cheerleader” and “Yet another Asian violin player”. I think Asians may well be disadvantaged by the process, but my feeling is that it’s really not deliberate except to the extent that colleges don’t want to be too anything. (Too white, too jocky, too preppy, and yes too Asian.). I don’t have proof for any of this, though I do have a cousin-in-law who used to work at Harvard admissions, and I have deliberately never asked her for the scoop. (Don’t see her too often either.)</p>
<p>Because the only “proof” has been - well, look how many clearly-qualified Asians get turned down from these schools. Well, big whoops! Many clearly-qualified whites get turned down from these schools. That doesn’t constitute proof of anything other than these are schools which cannot possibly even remotedly admit all “deserving” candidates.</p>
<p>I’d care if I felt that people were being “unfairly” shut out of excellent educations. However, the plight of the person turned down by Yale but having to settle for Brown or Duke or Chicago or (oh noez!) even Vanderbilt or Emory or Tufts or an excellent state flagship isn’t “sad” to me in the least.</p>
<p>I am not certain what it is with the Vanderbilt reputation for being conservative. As a parent I have nothing against it but my kid absolutely refuses to apply. I know at least one Asian kid who got in last year with a major merit scholarship (from what I hear they hand them out like candy at Vandy but I might know all the wrong people) but he chose to go to Yale on a full pay.</p>
<p>woeishe - where do you get this statistic? I am not sure commonapp or harvard supplement requires this information (dont remember seeing a religion question).</p>
<p>That study about how bubbling in your race reduces your score on standardized tests primes bad stereotypes into african american heads and reduces their performance kind of proves the necessity of affirmative action…</p>
Would you please stop insinuating that this objection was made to the claims of anti-Asian bias? I only made this statement with respect to a failure to understand why there is discrimination in favor of URMs.</p>
<p>As for the other three arguments you don’t like, well, they’re pretty good arguments if worded accurately:
(1) The complaints are primarily based on score disparities at schools that consider a lot of things beyond scores;
(3) Asian applicants probably are disproportionately math/science people, and this hurts them in competing for seats at universities with a broad range of majors, and
(4) Where is the evidence of discrimination? </p>
<p>So you want to investigate…how? I maintain that most people who think there is discrimination don’t really want it investigatied–rather, what they want is a more “transparent” (read: stats-based) admissions process. I mean, what if an investigation were done and it showed that adcoms were probably, consciously or unconsciously, discounting the ECs of Asians? What next? Tell them to stop doing it? Make them review apps with names blanked out? Or what? Unless you find that there is a policy of discrimination, the only really effective measure you could take would be to go to more stats-based admissions.</p>
<p>Plus, it stands to reason that only people who think that stats-based is a “better” way of admissions would want elite schools to move in that direction. But really, who are they to tell those schools – private institutions – what their criteria should be? </p>
<p>If a given college wants a primarily athletic student body or a student body uninterested in athletics, a class full of only piano / violin players or a class full of kids who play all different instruments, a class full of angular kids or a class full of well-rounded kids, that’s their prerogative. </p>
<p>These decisions might impact different groups differently – for example, the school that wants a lot of lacrosse and water polo players is likely going to “discriminate” against inner-city blacks and rural midwestern whites who don’t live in areas where lacrosse and water polo are common high school sports. But so what? As long as they aren’t using the actual race factor ITSELF as the basis of discrimination, isn’t that just how the cookie crumbles?</p>
Well, in fairness, schools might use some criteria like those as pretexts, which is pretty much what some of them tried to keep down the number of Jews.</p>
<p>Discrimination, if it existed on the massive scale and with the huge effect claimed (such as Harvard vs Berkeley enrollment rates for Asians), would have some clear statistical signatures. US Asians would be outperforming their numbers in nearly every academic selection that is substantially more difficult than admission: graduate fellowships, academic prizes, valedictorians at the Ivy League, etc etc. These signatures were seen with Jews during the time of control on their numbers at the elite universities. In the same way, just as there was a large population of Jews pushed out of the Ivy League and into City College of New York, who later got incredible numbers of PhD’s and Nobel Prizes, we should be seeing a total academic dominance by Asians (pushed out of the Ivy League into the UC system) at Berkeley, winning graduate fellowships and Putnam contest and so on in big, disproportionate numbers.</p>
<p>None of that appears to have happened in the past 20 years. If anything, the opposite is the case: Asians get fewer awards and fellowships than their numbers in the natural selection pool, the latter judged based on high school credentials. US East Asians are 50+ percent in recent years at the top levels of the high school math, science, and computer olympiads (USAMO/BO/PO/CO qualifiers), 60+ percent of Siemens AP award winners (8 or more science AP’s with highest average score in each state), and similar high percentages of any elite measure you care to name. The white-to-East-Asian ratios are much higher at the selections 1 to 4 years later for graduate fellowships, Putnam math competition prizes and so forth. </p>
<p>This is the exact opposite of the result predicted by a discrimination theory. It is, however the attrition predicted by a “strivers get decimated at later selections” theory. As the most-striving of the large immigrant populations, East Asians are the most visible block of students to which this decimation applies, and the one for which it is easiest to gather data. To the extent they strive more, their underperformance will be stronger than that of other groups. But the same general principle applies to the (statistically or physically less visible) subgroups of striving US-born whites, striving Nigerians, striving Albanians, and all the rest.</p>
<p>Do you think historical discrimination against Hispanics is worse than what Asians encountered? This is a real question. I thought that their experiences were pretty comparable. If so, the historical discrimination argument loses its teeth.</p>