I’m an Asian American, meaning my parents were born in Asia but came to america and I was born here. We are basically all of a Chinese descent I believe.
I am a female sophomore in high school. I’ve begun to start researching for my future, and I came across several articles that say Asian American’s SAT scores were penalized by 50 points, whereas African Americans and Mexican Americans had “Bonus points”.
I am certainly not a typical Asian with straight A’s, all honors classes, plays the violin, etc. I have average grades, volunteer, and I do gymnastics. I just don’t understand why that just because I am of an Asian descent, my SAT scores are penalized. I am not going to be that person that gets 2400 on the SAT, but why should I be punished just because some others do?
Because you have to remember the purpose of doing such things, which is to try and make sure the class is not overly represented by categories of students who typically do better than average on the tests nor under represented by groups that typically do below the average. Whether or not that is right, or fair, or justified or any of a number of other issues that surround such things is a discussion for which we have a designated thread. So let’s not reargue that here. But quite simply that is the answer to your question, IMO.
Check the Asian box on college applications is optional. If you think it will penalize you to do so, don’t check it. If there are other things on your application that indicate you are Asian, you’ll have to leave them off. If you name is Asian, you may have a tough time sliding under the radar.
My daughter’s name is Irish and not one item on the application indicated she’s Chinese. She did check the box, but it didn’t matter. In most cases, at most schools, it will be a benefit to be a minority.
If your scores aren’t going to be exceptional, you’ll need other achievements to get you into the top schools, and that’s true no matter what race you are. Even minority applicants who are getting ‘bonus points’ still need to be outstanding.
Mostly these studies analyze very selective colleges where they can cherry pick the incoming classes. For the vast majority of colleges, your SATs are your SATs – no penalty. They only want your transcript, your scores and your fees.
Since you consider yourself average, thus I assume you’ll target less selective colleges. Then the so-called anti-Asian bias cited by those analyses won’t apply to you whatsoever. Good luck. You’ll be fine.
Not all highly selective colleges discriminate against Asians. Caltech, the entire UC & Cal State system, Michigan, lots of LACs (who actually want Asians because they are under-represented). If you are very good at gymnastics or some other sport played in college, you could be a recruited athlete which is near guaranteed admission and often scholarships at D1 schools.
The highly selective non-discriminating schools enroll Asians as 2-5x greater than the population of the state that they are located in. Others, usually a tier or two down, admit such a high percentage of applicants that race is a non-factor. It is more likely that your sex will work against you because many colleges try to maintain a 50-50 M/F mix, but the population of colleges students in about 40/60 M/F. Even that will only matter if you are on the fringes of admission ranges.
Much of this is driven because Asian families gravitate toward certain high prestige schools.
Simply because a sub-group has a higher academic track record than another does not directly correlate with “being held to a higher standard”
Correlation is not causation. IMHO, among selective colleges and their “category admissions” makes it tougher for everyone who is competing for the non-hooked “average” applicant’s slot.
If you pare away all the recruits (arts, athletics, perhaps legacy, URM) and specialty applicants – you’re left with the non-hooked pool – and this pool generally has higher stats than most of the kids in the earlier batches – why? Because there are many more applicants than seats for this pool than the others. Thus, the colleges can cherry pick even more. I’d say both Asians and whites in this pool will have higher SAT/ACT metrics than those in the earlier pools. Since Asians tend not to be in the larger specialty pools (athletics & legacy) in general, they tend to vie for seats in the larger un-hooked pool. Thus, those Asians are admitted to this pool (along with other whites) tend to have higher grades & test scores than the earlier pools. However, I don’t conclude this is discriminatory bias. Simply examine the pool of non-hooked whites. Their SAT/ACT and other metrics will be greater than the earlier specialty pools as well. But taken as a whole pool of “white students” it gets diluted by the recruit pool. The Asians tend to congregate in the un-hooked admits pool and thus, have higher average metrics.
If overnight, there was a proportional uptick in Asian athletic recruits vying for seats in top colleges, you’d see the Asian SAT average drop immediately. But for the individual non-hooked Asian or white, their chances don’t improve.
This is a really simplistic way of summarizing it - not your fault, OP, but the fault of the articles you are reading. I’ve seem them use this language myself, and it does a disservice to everyone involved.
African Americans and Latinos (and Native Americans as well) score lower on standardized tests, on average, than Asian American students. However, there’s some research out there indicating that standardized tests aren’t a great indicator of the potential performance of African Americans and Latinos in college. Put another way, black, Latino, and Native students who scored a certain amount lower on SATs and ACTs perform just as well in college and graduate at the same rates as Asian and white students who score higher (sometimes several hundred points higher). The conclusion that a lot of admissions professionals and educational psychologists are coming to is that these tests simply aren’t calibrated well enough to measure the predicted performance of students in these groups.
So they admit African Americans, Latinos, and Native American students with much lower scores because their experience - and science - shows that these students will still perform very well, despite their standardized test scores being lower.Admissions professionals are not “punishing” Asian American students by doing this.
The simple reality is that there are currently far too many highly-qualified Asian and Asian-American applicants to the nation’s most highly selective schools. And since they are each looking to create a diverse and well-rounded freshman class, they are only going to accept so many of each category of applicant. Thus, many Asian or Asian-American applicants will be rejected, despite their qualifications for admission. To overcome such, you would need to find other ways to standout among that group of applicants… i.e. - athletics, ECs, exceptional essays, some recognized hook, etc.
But again, as @T26E4 suggests, this penalty scenario is really only applicable at roughly 50-60 colleges and universities. And as others above have also suggested, there are many schools or even entire state school systems where no such penalties are applicable.
If you self-evaluate your stats and overall application parameters accurately during the spring of your junior year and into the fall of your senior year accurately and then apply to a good mix of reach, match and safety schools, you will likely be fine and have some good choices to choose from in the Spring of your senior year.