<p>LOL - LOL</p>
<p>THOROUGH OWNAGE</p>
<p>Soccerguy, dude you are a statistics machine! No wonder you landed at William and Mary. Inform me some more…I just don’t get how colleges are able to discriminate against Asians. In one post it said that in some cases 100 points are subtracted for an Asian applicant. How can this be so? I mean some Asians are smart, talented, etc., but certainly not all of them. No offense but there are PLENTY of White and African Americans who are equally intelligent or exceed the intelligence and talent of Asians. Some of this I still don’t get. Soccerguy, brillant explanation of your theory. I still stand by the fact that the number of Asians at William and Mary is in direct relation to the number of QUALIFIED (you can’t assume that all applicants who are Asian are in fact qualified for our beastly school) applicant’s, and those when accepted, CHOOSE to attend. I find it hard to believe that William and Mary (or any other public school in VA) would turn down a qualified applicant just because they are Asian. This is confusing at best. To clarify some more, I have seen posts where a student is asking about chances for admission to a particular school and say that “my great grandmother’s cousin was African American, Vietnamese, Chinese, Asian, whatever, will that help me”…You know, give me a break, already!</p>
<p>soccerguy315, your logic is flawed. Let me do the math first and then I’ll point to your fussiness.</p>
<p>Asian overall population: 10.9% in CA and 3.7% in VA. that gives us a multiplier of 2.95 (10.9/3.7).</p>
<p>Top 2 CA schools asian students of 18,793 over total students of 48,258 gives us 38.9%.</p>
<p>Top 3 VA schools asian students of 3,368 over total students of 40,473 gives us 8.3%.</p>
<p>Now divide CA’s asian student percentage (38.9%) by the overall asian population percentage multiplier (2.95), we get 13.2%. This would be the average asian student percentage at the 3 top VA colleges if we follow exactly the CA pattern. The real average percentage now in VA (8.3%) is almost 5 percentage lower!</p>
<p>So what’s the problem with your calculation? You used absolute number of asian population in CA over that in VA. Here the relative numbers (i.e. percentages) matter, not the absolute ones.</p>
<p>The fussiness of your math reinforces the common believe that America needs to improve it math and science education. And in my opinion the education on philosophical and logical thinking needs to be improved too. The sadder part of your posting somehow implied that even the current percentage of asian students in top VA colleges was too high compared to the overall percentage in the commonwealth. You seems to prefer percentage-based quota system instead of performance- and merit-based one.</p>
<p>Asian students are obviously among the top performers which is evidenced by their higher percentages at the top universities in the nation. Colleges are mostly academic institutions and admissions should be mostly performance- and merit-based, which is the true spirit of equal opportunity on this wonder land. If top VA schools would scratch the “hidden” limit on asian student admission, they would enroll more of the most talented. And their rankings would most likely go higher too as a side benefit.</p>
<p>pedsox, universities can “discriminate” against asians for the same reason that they can “discriminate” for URMs.</p>
<p>Actually, using the absolute number in calculations IS correct. You need that as your base for calculating percentages and likelihoods.</p>
<p>It seems that the question that we’re trying to answer here needs to be stated clearly. A few assumptions first: We don’t have the college-age population of either state, only the total population and the total Asian population. The question we’re trying to answer here then can’t be more precise than “What is the likelihood that an Asian is attending one of the elite schools in either state?” We assume that the age distribution of Asians in California and Virginia is roughly the same, so that when we compare likelihoods between states, they won’t be confounded by a larger proportion of college-age population in one state compared to the other. We also assume that all Asian students are in-state, since we don’t have data that allows us to distinguish in-state from out-of-state students. It does make sense to use the adjusted number of 4016 for Virginia Asians, to remove differences due to number of slots available, but you can do this using raw numbers as well.</p>
<p>OK, so we have:</p>
<p>VA 4016/261905 = .0153 </p>
<p>Roughly 15 Virginia Asians in a thousand is attending one of these three schools.</p>
<p>CA 18793/3602010 = .0052</p>
<p>Roughly 5 California Asians in a thousand is attending Berkeley or UCLA.</p>
<p>.0153/.0052 = 2.94</p>
<p>Which means that an Asian in Virginia is three times as likely to attend one of the three elite state schools as a California Asian is likely to attend one of the two elite schools. The ratio would be slightly lower, if we used raw Virginia numbers, but not enough to flip the comparison.</p>
<p>Maybe ICare is trying to answer a different question, but these numbers are in line with the first set of calulations and make sense if you’re trying to determine which state has a more favorable likelihood for individual Asian students attending its elite institutions.</p>
<p>bigflyerz, see what you’ve started!</p>
<p>Ninian…VT is not one of Virginia’s elite schools. It is not on par with UVA, W&M, UCLA or UCB in any way.</p>
<p>Ninian, your math is fussier than soccerguy315’s. Using your method the numbers and comparison result could easily swung. For example, let’s just take cavalier302’s word and discard VT, then your so-defined “likelihood” number would drop by nearly 50%! </p>
<p>Now how about add UC San Diego (#32 on UNWR, 7618 asian students/20048 total students) and UC Irvine (#40 on UNWR, 9473 asian students/19333 total students) into the equation? Those 2 are on par with W&M. And maybe we can even add UC Santa Babara (#45) and UC Davis (#48). See what problem you are getting into? Using my method we won’t get into the trouble.</p>
<p>Now please allow me to suggest you guys/pals go to your teacher and ask for and answer. I’ll not debate with you again on this math topic.</p>
<p>cavalier302: URM are not discriminated but Asian American students are. It’s getting sadder that a self-regarded elitist is as ignorant as it could go yet arrogant enough to be laughed at.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>PLease explain.</p>
<p>This is one of the funniest and most entertaining threads I’ve ever read on College Confidential. LOL!</p>
<p>ICARE, please define your definition of the word “fussier, fussiness, etc”. This is a serious question. Also, someone please answer this question for me; Why would a particular college care so much about having a small number of total Asian students? I mean why, if the Asians are qualified applicants (and that means not just GPA,SAT qualified, but well rounded as well) would a college care if the Asian population at their school was say, 20%. I mean why would that be a problem? And if having more Asians at a particular college would bring it’s ranking up, why wouldn’t a college be in favor of that? I don’t understand why a college would purposely want to keep the Asian population low.</p>
<p>Also, ICARE is a parent. I saw that he/she was born in 1962. Positively ancient! Not that this should matter, but just have patience with us ICARE as we are students.</p>
<p>No point in debating with ICARE, I agree. FWIW, I’m also a parent and a professional statistician. Don’t need to scratch my head and ask my teacher. Did that a long time ago. :-)</p>
<p>I included VA Tech in my list, because it’s almost as difficult to get into Tech these days as UVA/WM. We can disagree/agree on which schools in either state belong in the elite pool. Subtract and add which ever schools you wish that you believe are defensible. But, “fussy” or not, the math and the logic are sound. Sorry if this disappoints you.</p>
<p>Virginia Tech is nowhere near as hard to get into as UVA and W&M. The students who enroll there are in a different stratus than those who go to the two good publics in VA.</p>
<p>sorry guys, I didn’t mean to start this issue on asian acceptances into colleges, which was not what my original question encompassed. Anyway, I have decided to go to w&m just because it’s a much better academic school than Vtech. And to answer the previous post, difficulty for acceptance for undergrad at Vtech is nowhere near the requirements for quality students at w&m or uva. I am thinking about going to w&m with a positive attitude, but if things don’t work out I can always transfer.</p>
<p>Yeah, you created a surprisingly funny thread. Have fun at W&M, Bigflyerz.</p>
<p>Most important, on topic to the OP:</p>
<p>bigflyerz, i’m confident if you come to W&M with an open attitude, looking to have an enjoyable experience, you will indeed, have a good time.</p>
<p>And to the subtopic in the thread:</p>
<p>whether you want to include VT/UCI/UCD etc doesn’t really matter, the math will still work out essentially the same. I included VT in my list because the post I was responding to included it. If there were more schools in the list, I would have included those too.</p>
<p>As I was writing my post, I was hoping that I was doing everything correctly. I thought I was, and I am happy that Ninian (statistician) confirmed it. I mean, the last time I took a math class was 2 years ago in high school. I also didn’t write that post in like 5 minutes, but it was definitely entertaining, possibly even more entertaining than the reading about Brazilian political culture, which is probably what I should have been doing. Heck, I had to borrow my roommate’s calculator (physics major) because I don’t have on at school.</p>
<p>
I know you said you won’t come back, and that’s fine, but I’m going to take issue with this. I would put a group of W&M students against a group of students from any other public school in the country, and probably any private school, and they would hold their own just fine in any major subject with the exception of engineering (for obvious reasons). This statement makes it sound like there any kind of significant gap between UVA/UCB/UCLA and W&M.</p>
<p>I’m still trying to figure this out:
fuss·y P Pronunciation Key (fs)
adj. fuss·i·er, fuss·i·est
Easily upset; given to bouts of ill temper: a fussy baby.
Paying great or excessive attention to personal tastes and appearance; fastidious: He was always fussy about clothes.
Calling for or requiring great attention to sometimes trivial details: a fussy actuarial problem.
Full of superfluous details: It can indeed be fussy, filling with ornament what should be empty space (H.D.F. Kitto).
… unless you were calling my post full of superfluous details, which it was not.</p>
<p>
Well, first off, I am a humanities major. Second off, as you can see, I am at least fairly well rounded. I can’t do any multivariable calc or electrical engineering, but as far as logic goes, my mind works quite well. Pedsox liked my explanation of my math, which I would like to credit IB Math, for making me write out problems text book style, with explanations of why you did what you did, each step of the way. And finally, my post IN NO WAY implied that there were too many asians in top colleges. I was attempting to illustrate WHY the percentage of asians in top colleges was so much higher than their representation in the general population.</p>
<p>Soccerguy, don’t obsess about “fussiness.” It took me awhile, but I think ICARE meant to say “fuzzy” math, a term that had its 15 minutes of fame a few Presidential elections ago. It’s not a technical term, and your logic isn’t deficient. Nice job working this out with no statistical training. </p>
<p>I don’t want to perpetuate this minor flame war, but I do want to say it’s ironic that in the midst of a homily about deficiencies in math, philosophy, and logic education, a simple spelling error had us all wondering what was going on. I think the lesson here should be: Be careful about criticizing. It can backfire.</p>
<p>Well here’s my last word on this…It doesn’t matter what he “meant” to say, ICARE said fussiness, which was properly defined by Soccerguy. This is America and in this country fussiness does indeed have a definition. ICARE is an Asian parent. Not sure if he’s from USA or not. But like George Bush just recently said…and I preface this by saying that I am NOT a George Bush fan in any way, but you know, if you are in America, speak the language. Speak the &^%$# language and be glad you are here! The number of Asian students at a particlular school is in direct relation to the number of qualified applicants who are accepted and choose to attend. And I add that IF it is a PUBLIC school, this number will reflect the percentage of overall Asians in the state. And Bigflyerz, come to William and Mary, you won’t be sorry. You will love us and we will love you back!</p>
<p>I suppose it would only be appropriate for me to weigh in to this situation. Let me preface this post by stating my background: I am a Vietnamese male, originally from Orange County, CA, and am an accepted transfer student to W&M via the University of California, Berkeley (yes, that one school with 41% ‘Asian’).</p>
<p>It’s really cute that some of you have tried to use statistics to explain the discriminative/nondiscriminative policies by the admissions office by comparing relative admissions data from two unique sites. It is not right to compare data from UC schools to schools of the Virginia system. In this way, any attempt at statistics will invariably fail. Why is this the case? For a start, not all Asians are equal. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Asian-Americans are not the same as Vietnamese, Laotian, Filipino, or Cambodian Asian-Americans. This has less to do with one’s parents’ country of origin, for the sake of this discussion. Rather, consider the immigration patterns of the group: those who belong to the latter (including myself), are more likely to have immigrant parents, are more likely to come from low-income families, and are more likely to have come from underresourced communities. These conditions, therefore, make this less an issue of racial diversity, but socioeconomic diversity in college admissions. Another issue is the populations in which you are analyzing. While you use statewise ‘Asian’ populations, as we have seen, it’s more a matter of what type of ‘Asians’ you are referring to. Here, we don’t even have to consider which group (of non-immigrant or immigrant backgrounds) an ‘Asian’ student belongs to. But we do have to take into account migrational patterns within the United States. The issue hasn’t been raised here, but did you guys ever consider why Asian-Americans are so concentrated along the West Coast? The most simple answer, of course, is the location on the Pacific Rim. However, this is just extremely simplified at best. This (over)concentration in California is due, in major part, to financial constraints: spatial and social mobility are inextricably linked. Starting out from the West Coast, many underprivileged Asian-American families simply cannot afford the adjustments associated of a coast-to-coast change of environment. The question becomes, just which Asian-American families are represented along the East Coast, in Virginia?</p>
<p>Another problem is that admissions requirements between the two systems are different. I have personally seen the points system for the University of California, San Diego, and one is awarded bonus points in UCSD’s criteria for having come from an immigrant background, or for having come from a low-income family (these have separate point values: if one is both, then they are awarded both points). Therefore, even if the socioeconomic distribution of Asian-American populations are EXACTLY the same in both states, then the UC and Virginia state college systems also have a final say. There is much more to be said on the matter on differences in college admissions, such as role of the transfer system (each year, 1/3 of Berkeley’s incoming class is comprised of transfer students, with transfer students being understood as a mode of opportunity- a ‘second chance’ if you will- for students who did not have the privilege of parents who attended college, or for students who had to work for basic necessities at home during high school- this is a purely California understanding, and these conditions might not apply to Virginia which, perhaps, even leads us to question just “who” makes up the transfer student populations). In short, the colleges, themselves, help skew the data as a byproduct differences in ideology of public education.</p>
<p>While I sincerely enjoy and appreciate the efforts of everyone’s input as it relates to statistics, I hope you also consider infusing a little Sociology 100 once in a while into your understanding of life. Sometimes, things aren’t always as they appear.</p>
<p>TTG</p>