are colleges racist?

Pizzagirl · June 23, 2011, 1:35pm

Sure, but that was driven by an explicit “we don’t want those Jews in here.” Is there ANY evidence whatsoever that a similar attitude towards Asians exists at high levels at elite universities? “I don’t want a class full of students who look similarly to one another in terms of STEM majors, piano, violin and tennis” is completely different from “I don’t want Asians in here.” The first says “Show me your uniqueness, stand out from the crowd.” The second says, “Don’t bother applying in the first place.”

BTW, I don’t know that it’s such a good thing for a white student to be all about math-science-piano-violin-and-tennis either. It’s just become such a cliche.

Hunt · June 23, 2011, 1:38pm

I don’t know that much about discrimination against Hispanics, as I’ve suggested a number of times. I certainly think historical discrimination against blacks in this country was much, much worse, and affected a lot of people. I also think that there have been an awful lot of Asian immigrants who came after the worst periods of anti-Asian discrimination, something which is much less true for blacks. (Again, for Hispanics, it’s a lot more complicated.)

Remember, there have been two intertwined discussions here. One is about whether Asians are being discriminated against just because they are Asian. The other is whether URMs should get special treatment. It is this latter that I think some people just don’t “get” if they don’t have enough experience living in this country, especially in parts of the country where the impacts are more obvious.

Pizzagirl, I agree with you that there is no evidence that colleges dislike Asians. However, I do think that it is possible that there is a flipside to the “critical mass” point for URMs, and that colleges could think that there is some point at which a college might become “too Asian” such that it would discourage non-Asians from applying. I seem to remember that there are perceptions of that kind about some specific colleges in California and in Canada. But I don’t see much evidence of that, either, in the behaviour of the top privates, which is what I’ve been harping on for a zillion pages. It *could *be happening, but you have to have some decent evidence to get a broader group of people concerned about it.

epiphany · June 23, 2011, 1:59pm

^It is how the cookie crumbles, and that’s exactly the kind of dynamic that was going on at Duke when Rachel Toor wrote the (depressing) book, College Confidential. “Bright and well-rounded” coincided with “white upper-middle-class suburban” – students with such similar academic+e.c. profiles as to be interchangeable for admission purposes. In addition, if they had the problem of clustering (large numbers of them applying from the same region or regions to the same single university), she was unable to admit large numbers of them, despite their “qualifications.” Without something compelling in their essays, their letters of recommendation, or something else, she was unable to distinguish among them. So she began to look for those distinguishers. Thus, someone of that group who wrote an original or risky essay would be given a longer look by her and more consideration. That white student would be “preferred” over the other, more similar white students. Was she ‘discriminating’? Not against whites for being white – especially if she chose a different white.

This is another problem with not having the data. There’s nothing to compare against, including positively. All you have is guesses, or knowledge, about particulars who have been rejected. You do not know who from that same racial/ethnic group has been accepted from that ‘overly rejected’ region/school, etc.

However (back to Duke), it was undeniably clear that if there were a number of points of similarity between yourself as an applicant and the large number of BWRK’s from your area, you would be, in the larger scheme of things, “disadvantaged,” “discriminated against,” etc., due to the proportionality (math) operative in admissions sorting. Unless your achievement was in a distinctly different category of achievement from your local peers – you were a historian, creative writer, budding international relations expert – whereas they were mostly mathematicians, scientists, and economists – then it was going to be difficult for you to stand out, due also to the short time admissions officers have to read these app materials.

Every category of college applicant competes more within its own category than with any different category, due (again) to the proportionality which is being sought. The more different categories and the more sought-after categories you are lucky enough to be a member of, the higher your chances of admission to that particular institution, and the reverse is true. Population clustering, combined with category-of-achievement clustering, combined with financial profile clustering, combined with personal origin clustering, combined with proceeding from a huge field to a narrow funnel, will disadvantage students who have several points of common identity with that cluster.

texaspg · June 23, 2011, 2:00pm

I am assuming Jewish population in this country is not as large as 25% or more.

Can I change the topic a bit here and ask if WASPs feel like they are being %$#^&ed over at the Ivies based on woeishe’s link? When you look at it as a caucasian pool, you do see 45-50% but if you subtract the jewish percentage at the Ivys mentioned…

Forgive me if WASP is considered derogatory in anyway. I just could nt remember a better term.

aegrisomnia · June 23, 2011, 2:07pm

^ Whites getting… “%$#^&ed over”? If not in admissions, then in scholarships this is certainly true. “Women and minorities are encouraged to apply” should probably read “If we can invent a pretext for choosing a woman or minority over a white male, what the #&%^ do you think is going to happen, whitey?”

siserune · June 23, 2011, 2:20pm

My recollection of the demographic data from Espenshade’s 2009 book was that 91 percent of the Asian applicants and 97 percent of the Asians accepted (in his sample of several “elite” or “selective” colleges, 1997 data) were immigrants or children of immigrants.

It means that recent Asian immigrants are much higher achieving (three times less likely to get a rejection) than Asian-Americans with parents or grandparents born in the US.

It also means that very few (proportionally) of the US Asians who today apply to the schools allegedly discriminating, are descendants of immigrants who were in the US at times and places where discrimination was strong. The “compensation for historical wrongs” argument may apply to some part of the US Asian population but it is basically irrelevant as an argument for treating Asians as an affirmative action minority in college admission. By the way, Asians have been getting affirmative action or its equivalent in law school admission, due to the lower supply of high LSAT scores in that population.

epiphany · June 23, 2011, 2:20pm

I may not agree with aegrisomnia’s language, but I definitely agree with the fact that at many, many universities and colleges – public and private, I will add – there is a blatantly inaccurate assumption that only blacks and hispanics are poor. I strongly disapprove of such scholarship policies. Plenty of southeast Asians, plenty of whites, some recent immigrants (but U.S. citizens) from mainland China, some from India, are as poor as any black or hispanic applying. But they are shut out from scholarship consideration. And that exclusion can result in non-application or non-enrollment.

Both merit scholarships and need scholarships should be personal origin blind, i.m.o., particularly if there’s only one category of scholarship. There are some institutions which sort, and I have less of a problem with that, as long as there’s sufficient sorting and some proportionality involved. Thus, some publics have separate categories. At Berkeley there’s a separate scholarship opportunity for minority leadership than for non-minority leadership.

I also like the more progressive (i.m.o.) policy that at institutions at which a student gets admitted, that student is automatically designated for a look into merit aid, by virtue of admission. It is not a separate application. The URM/non-URM sorting has been done already, at the point of admission. Once admitted, you are in the pool of all competitors equally for that merit scholarship or scholarships, plural, and are being examined for merit and nothing else against your (also-admitted) peers.

Bay · June 23, 2011, 2:23pm

texaspg,

To my knowledge, no, WASP is not derogatory.

As the parent of two WASP students at H and Y, obviously we don’t feel %$#&ed over. My H child did once tell me that she was sitting in the dining hall with 3 friends, one of whom said she had heard that 3 out of 4 H White students are Jewish. They then looked at each other and laughed because it was true for the 4 of them sitting there. My Y child has never mentioned it, but another parent on the Y forum once commented that her D noticed that most of the eligible males were Jewish.

The anti-WASP undercurrent that I have noticed relates to the vehement desires by some to do away with the Greek system/Final Clubs/Secret Societies/Eating Clubs and Division 1 sports in the Ivies. These activities have traditionally been attractive to WASPs (which term now generally includes Catholics I understand), though there is no restriction on participation by any group. I do think that if those activities are eliminated, the Ivies will become less attractive to WASPs which comprise 70% of the US population, but that is my personal opinion.

Shrinkrap · June 23, 2011, 2:23pm

"Whites getting… “%$#^&ed over”? If not in admissions, then in scholarships this is certainly true. "
^

I can never resist the scholarship one. I know there are some scholarships for blacks who also have financial need, but I think the actual dollar amounts, and certaily scholarships “just” for being black, are hugely exagerrated. I know it is easy to do a google search and pull up a supposed link, but just a click or two will prove you are probably wasting about the same amount of time that you would on fastweb.

Yes, it might be unfair that black students with need have opportunity for scholarship that others with need don’t.

Yes, a one time award of $500 dollars is better than nothing.

collegealum314 · June 23, 2011, 2:36pm

WASP literally means white anglo-saxon protestants, so it doesn’t include Catholics or ethnic minorities (Italian, Polish, etc…)

epiphany · June 23, 2011, 2:37pm

Shrinkrap, I acknowledge that I do not have handy links at the moment. I’m going by recent memory, though, of individual college websites about offered scholarships. Generally these are not to the Most Highly Visible colleges & universities, but to less visible u’s and LAC’s. Many of these offer generous scholarships only to URM’s. Not $500. I respectfully disagree with you.

And btw, why would $500, to a child of an immigrant living above a laundromat in a 2-room flat in a high-crime urban neighborhood, not be as decisive a need as that of a black living in that neighborhood in an apartment or house? Maybe, since such two students have probably equal need, there could be a lottery system if a whopping $500 is all that university has the generosity to offer? Or possibly the non-URM student who is equally poor can be granted a service option after graduation, to “repay” equivalently $500 in service local to that institution’s community.

Pizzagirl · June 23, 2011, 2:45pm

Oh, good grief. What system could possibly be invented that would make everybody happy? I swear, some of you just don’t get that when you have 30,000 applicants competing for 2,000 seats, 28,000 people aren’t going to be happy and it doesn’t mean that they were (&(&&@* over. The only way to placate some people I think would be to draw numbers from a hat or something.

aegrisomnia · June 23, 2011, 2:56pm

The question is whether the 28,000 applicants are being treated fairly. I don’t think pulling numbers out of a hat would be fair (in a sense, it would be, but not in the sense I mean)… and I don’t think “selective admissions” is necessarily fair either… the question is what method is fair?

Bay · June 23, 2011, 2:56pm

collegealum
I know what WASP stands for, but my understanding of common usage of the term today, is that most people apply it to any White Christian of upper/middle class background.

texaspg · June 23, 2011, 3:07pm

Bay - Your friend’s daughter was n’t considering all those good looking Hispanic/African American/Asian males at Yale as eligible (tongue in cheek!)?

Pizzagirl · June 23, 2011, 3:09pm

But “fair” gets back to … what is what they are looking for? And the problem from many people’s points of view is that they assume that “most academically qualified” = what the schools are looking for, and that therefore the “fairest” procedures produces the “most academically qualified.” That isn’t what they are trying to do. If they wanted that, they’d rank people by SAT’s or somesuch.

Pizzagirl · June 23, 2011, 3:10pm

Bay - you need to read Alumother’s blog (if you find her name, it is linked in her profile). She will give you more than you need to know about High WASPs, as she is definitely one herself!

texaspg · June 23, 2011, 3:13pm

“Oh, good grief. What system could possibly be invented that would make everybody happy?”

The thread is asking if colleges are racist. Why should this be always a war between Asians and everyone else shouting them down?

Is nt it fair to ask if anyone else has unexpressed feelings about the topic?

Bay · June 23, 2011, 3:18pm

It wasn’t my friend’s D, it was a mother posting here on CC. And you are right, apparently her D must not have considered the non-White males “eligible!”

epiphany · June 23, 2011, 3:40pm

aegrisomnia, no contest which has such an oversupply of equal/virtually equal talent (the Embarrassment of Riches in the Atlantic article cited earlier) will be “fair,” because by definition such a contest excludes equally qualified candidates. Same for beauty contests and Olympic trials. In the Miss USA contest, Miss Georgia merely represents the single final candidate in the drop-dead-gorgeous round of competition within Georgia. In the subjective eyes of various beholders, the “losers” may be not only equally beautiful but more beautiful than the final contestant. And Miss Georgia may or may not end up with the Miss USA title. Various criteria of selection go into the ultimate decision for the national title. I know it’s a poor (superficial) comparison, but all competitions involve comparisons. Comparisons are (1) relative to each other; and (2) dependent on a moment in time. Those two elements iimply lack of control by the candidate, lack of measurements defined as “absolute,” and lack of predictability.

Not only are there both objective and subjective evaluations in every such well-supplied contest, there are objective and subjective aspects to the applications and efforts on the part of the candidates. Thus, in Olympic trials and beauty contests, the ‘attitude’ of the candidate can come into play (negatively & positively). Ditto for the efforts of college applicants. Spend less time differentiating oneself on an application, and your subjective quotient for admission is affected. (Regardless of personal origin, naturally.) So the Quest for the Fair Admission System is problematic on its face, unless you think there is such a thing as ‘objectively fair.’ You’ve acknowledged that a lottery system is also not fair.

The private elite (as opposed to many of the State) universities are not going to go to a strictly objective system that chooses only academic accomplishment, because – even if applicants were given numbers and no personal origins were viewable – the class still might end up lopsided for certain majors or extracurriculars or geographic areas, which could affect the economic viability of the insitution (popularity vs. its competitors), and that in itself could also be fodder for a resultant lawsuit (restraint of trade). The University would be able to present all kinds of arguments that social appeal (built into wide variety of extracurriculars and regions represented, even apart from personal origins) is essential to the academic engagement which is the business end of the institution. I promise you that they have done all kinds of studies which support the importance of such student choices.

And, even if they did go to a ‘strictly objective system that chooses only academic accomplishment,’ there will still be ‘unfairly’ rejected candidates who are equivalent in accomplishment terms, regardless of personal origin. The universities have already acknowledged that. That also is not “fair.”

are colleges racist?

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