<p>[At</a> the Ivies, Asians are the new Jews | AEIdeas](<a href=“http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/12/at-the-ivies-asians-are-the-new-jews/]At”>http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/12/at-the-ivies-asians-are-the-new-jews/)</p>
<p>Interesting, an article written about a second article.</p>
<p>I’d be more interested in knowing how the admitted student population compares to the applicant pool - especially to the ‘qualified’ applicant pool. </p>
<p>Obviously, UC Berkeley is going to have more Asians than Stanford because UC Berkeley, as a state school, draws primarily from California - a heavily Asian applicant pool. Stanford draws from a national (and even international) applicant pool - and sets aside a significant part of it’s incoming class for recruited athletes (for better or worse) to support that massive sports program, legacies (also for better or worse), and ‘first generation to college’ (part of the institution’s mission). I don’t think Stanford does this to ‘avoid’ Asians - but I’m guessing Asians are under-represented in all three of those sub-categories which results in an overall lower admission rate for Asians than at Berkeley. I think Dartmouth’s ‘discovery’ by the Asian population in the US is primary the reason why percentage of Asian students has jumped there over the past 30 years, not just that Dartmouth suddenly decided to stop being racist and admit more Asians.</p>
<p>In short, I think some of this is simplistic, some of this is the result of the ‘categories’ that schools have created (sports, legacy, etc…), and yes, there may be some element of racism (the ‘too many science students who play the violin’ stereotype). But generally, I think racism is a less significant factor than this article implies. (My kids are Asian AND Jewish, by the way.)</p>
<p>The other aspect of this article is the comparisons of apples and oranges.</p>
<p>Caltech is a STEM school. Instead of comparing to Stanford, the author should look to MIT, a close ‘relation’ to Caltech. MIT has 24% Asians.</p>
<p>Berkeley is a state school at ~half the cost of the Ivies. (Not to mention it is 3,000 miles away from the Ancient Eight.) Every year at our HS, a student or two turns down one of the Ivies to attend Cal or UCLA, primarily due to cost, but also due to distance from home.</p>
<p>NM Students also have plenty of free/discounted education offers. In California, USC offers an automatic tuition discount for NMSF’s; USC is 24% Asian.</p>
<p>Berkeley also has a some what auto admit process for people meeting certain numerical attributes based on GPA/SAT and whatever else. So the admission process can’t be equated to the privates.</p>
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<p>There is no such auto-admit process, although students with very high academic credentials (particularly all A grades in rigorous high school courses) are likely to get favorable holistic reading scores.</p>
<p>(There used to be such a process for about half of the freshman class in each division or major, but that is long gone.)</p>
<p>So how are the admissions done at Berkeley these days and why are the 25%ile score so low?</p>
<p>First, to OP, asians being the new jews is old news. </p>
<p>Berkeley uses holistic review without considering race. Stanford also does such a complete analysis of every student, but gives extra points to URMs.</p>
<p>^ what exactly is Berkeley’s holistic review? I thought it was purely merit based.</p>
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<p>[Admissions</a>, Enrollment, & Preparatory Education | Academic Senate](<a href=“http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/committees/aepe]Admissions”>Admissions, Enrollment, and Preparatory Education (AEPE) | Academic Senate)</p>
<p>Note that test scores are less considered relative to high school courses and grades, and that Berkeley is also very large compared to many “top N” schools.</p>
<p>Holistic review (as described in the Hout report) is done somewhat differently from how it is usually described at super-selective private schools. Basically, admissions readers assign scores to applications (two readings per application; a third if the first two scores are too far apart), but do not directly make admissions decisions. Then the scored applications are rank ordered (within division or major) and the top however many are admitted. The scoring criteria are more rigorously defined and documented than at the super-selective private schools.</p>
<p>The goals are likely consistency, repeatability, and scalability, as opposed to “crafting a freshman class” on the fly.</p>
<p>“In the nineteen-eighties, when Harvard was accused of enforcing a secret quota on Asian admissions, its defense was that once you adjusted for the preferences given to the children of alumni and for the preferences given to athletes, Asians really weren’t being discriminated against. But you could sense Harvard’s exasperation that the issue was being raised at all. If Harvard had too many Asians, it wouldn’t be Harvard, just as Harvard wouldn’t be Harvard with too many Jews or pansies or parlor pinks or shy types or short people with big ears.” from “Getting In” by Malcolm Gladwell</p>
<p>[gladwell</a> dot com - getting in](<a href=“Malcolm Gladwell – Home | Malcolm Gladwell”>Malcolm Gladwell – Home | Malcolm Gladwell)</p>
<p>So how are the admissions done at Berkeley these days and why are the 25%ile score so low?</p>
<p>Cuz the UCs value “UC GPA” over test scores so as to help qualify students from disadvantaged schools.</p>
<p>UC institutional research also indicates that HS GPA is more predictive of college GPA than test scores are, at least in the UC context. (The opposite may be true at super-selective schools where the HS GPAs of nearly all admitted and attending students are compressed at the top of the scale, making them irrelevant in predicting the performance of those who are admitted and attend.)</p>
<p>Ok, how does using UC GPA make it holistic? I don’t see it being that far from auto admit if the UC GPAs are high enough.</p>
<p>Way to go quota system</p>
<p>Closing:</p>
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<p>Links to blogs.</p>
<p>Discussion of pro/con AA.</p>