College Campuses Too Asian?

Alumother · October 12, 2006, 2:29pm

padad, Easydad, the question is: Is this true? Will this kid with high academic performance be denied because he is Asian? If so, how do we know? Where is the proof? And, if so, why?

If this is true, who is taking the place of these highly academically qualified Asian students? If it is kids of other ethnicities who exactly match the profile of the highly academically qualified Asian students, that is racism pure and simple. But if the kids who are taking their places are 1) Recruited athletes 2) Kids with more financial resources 3) Kids with different profiles, i.e. other extra-curriculars, public service, athletics, then that is more embedded if you will, more due to cultural differences and institutional preferences that favor those of European descent who have been in the US long enough to accumulate resources and follow a pattern of behaviour that is valued.

tsdad · October 12, 2006, 2:32pm

OCR has apparently stopped publishing its annual report. The last was for FY2004. I can tell you though that of the 5000 or so complaints OCR receives yearly, approximately 50% plus of them deal with disbility. The overwhelming number of complaints come out of elementary and secondary schools. Not many come from colleges and few involve race or national origin.

And btw, OCR staff knows how to investigate these types of cases. I have had this argument before with Alexandre and the mods; there is very little discrimination against Asian college applicants.

ICargirl · October 12, 2006, 3:47pm

Does anyone know what percentage of the applicant pool at elite schools asians make up? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the statistics somewhere, but I don’t remember where.

To be honest, although I think asian students have a legitimate gripe against the colleges, there is a tendency to overstate the disadvantage against them. Obviously, the huge number of asian students at elite schools proves that there are quite a few asians students who do get in. Based purely on anecdotal evidence, my guess is that the problem is worst at elite private school, since so many of the applicants are “hooked” that asians are at a huge disadvantage. There is a story in The Price of Admission about an excellent Asian student at Groton being passed over at many of the top schools for less qualified classmates with wealthy parents, alumni parents, or minority status. Asian students at public schools are far less disadvantaged, and even the kid from Groton wound up at JHU.

I also think that it is possible that one contributing factor could be the need for academic, rather than ethnic diversity. While I know this is a generalization, I think it is fair to say that a high percentage of high achieving Asians are primarily science/math/engineering students. Even if the colleges had no problem about having a predominently asian student body, the need for students to fill their humanities and social science departments might result in de facto discrimination against asians.

padad · October 12, 2006, 3:50pm

Alumother. Colleges have to do what they need to do to balance the ethnic composition as well as other aspects of the student body (except of course football players whom all colleges should do without. lol). Most youngsters, however, don’t understand that. They just perceive their own disadvantage in this setting when they hear what their CC tells them. The unfornate thing is that colleges such as H could easily take in five times as many students that are equally qualified. For students like my D, they should understand that it is not being Asian that matters but rather being in an over-represented group. Having said that, convincing such youngsters is no easy task.

Alumother · October 12, 2006, 3:59pm

Are the admissions officers just solving for ethnicity or are they also solving for other characteristics? That is my question.

Do the Asians who are rejected, who have higher academic performance statistics than kids not Asian who are accepted, have OTHER differences beyond just ethnicity. This is very important. If it is just ethnicity, nothing to be done but continue to bash away at any actual or unspoken ethnic balancing. But if it is because these Asian kids a) are not recruited athletes b) are not full-payers c) have different less interesting ECs d) do not have parents who are legacies THEN if the Asian families want to they can do something about this. Of course, not the legacy thing, and frankly not the income unless they start early, but even if nothing is to be done if this is the answer it will give kids a different and less fatalistic picture of the life to come in America.

I am asking these question not because I have an agenda but because I believe the answers are very important and I do not know what they are.

sybbie719 · October 12, 2006, 4:25pm

I have read all of the postings and the phrase that I am seeing thrown around a lot is that some one is being passed over for someone else who is "less qualified ".

What I would like to know, by whose standards is one considered to be less qualified? (how does the admissions committee that ***you sit on ***deem who is more or less qualified than someone else)

Are admissions committees saying that the students they admit are less qualified (keep in mind they are not only evaluated on how well they fill a class but also the retention and graduation rate of that class so it is not in their best interest to enroll students who will not be successful) ?

Those of us who have been around for a while we have discussed time and time again that elite admissions are more of a hostlistic approach where the college is looking to *** build a class based on the institutional mission of the school *** and not a strictly by the numbers approach and the numbers only make up part of the objective criteria that a student is able to do the work at a school and simply gets you over one hurdle. I think in the end it is te soft factors and how a student helps to fulfill the institutional mission that moves the application to either the admit, deny or waitlist piles.

Molliebatmit gave a really great response on one of the other threads which I think we should all keep in mind.

Nobody gets admitted to MIT (or any other top school) “because” of one factor, nor does anybody get denied from a top school “because” of one factor. These schools practice holistic admissions, and they are looking at an applicant’s whole story.

Another great MITBlogs entry on this topic was written by Bryan '07: 

<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/life/the_mit_minority_community/fear_of_flying.shtml[/url]”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/life/the_mit_minority_community/fear_of_flying.shtml</a>

Most of the people who apply to top schools are “qualified” – MIT estimates about 70%, and I’ve heard Harvard say about 90% of their applicants are “qualified”. The people who get in are not necessarily more qualified than others who didn’t get in (whatever that means), but they were chosen for their other attributes and what they will contribute to the school’s community.

I like the way the MIT admissions officers put it:

Quote:
***When we admit a class of students to MIT, it’s as if we’re choosing a 1,000-person team to climb a very interesting, fairly rugged mountain - together. We obviously want people who have the training, stamina and passion for the climb. At the same time, we want each to add something useful or intriguing to the team, from a wonderful temperament or sense of humor, to compelling personal experiences, to a wide range of individual gifts, talents, interests and achievements. We are emphatically not looking for a batch of identical perfect climbers; we are looking for a richly varied team of capable people who will support, surprise and inspire each other.
***

cptofthehouse · October 12, 2006, 4:47pm

As it now stands, the number of Asians reported at schools is much lower than the reality, because kids often do not feel out the ethnic background section of the app and that really is the only place the college can use to make do their ethnic breakdowns. It optional to fill out the section, and many non URM kids just don’t want to bother as they feel there is nothing in it for them to do so, and there are Asians who believe that the information may be used against them.

Although you can have a pretty good idea about the ethnicity of a student form the parental background page, name, sometimes essays, activities, references from recs, the colleges cannot use that information. Adcoms have better things to do than to try figure out if Jennifer Lee is Asian or not.

Because out of necessity, adcoms are human, and humans can be predjudiced and even bigoted, that is not to say that there are not some flawed adcoms in the process who discriminate against Asians, fat people, people of certain religions, color, social eco background, you name it. It has been my perception, however, that college adcoms tend to like Asian students because they are such successful admits. But when the adcoms of the most selective schools scramble to fill the wishlists that the school, departments, sports, ECs, development give to them, there are precious few spots left for anyone who is not in one of those specialty boutiques. As of now, Asians tend to be in oversubscribed areas of a college where it is the most difficult to get a spot. Even the top schools have admitted that only about a third of the kids get in for purely academic reasons, and those rare gems are kids with a love of learning, curiousity, personality, and creativity that transcends the academic numbers game. Because so many Asian students have the academic stats to be considered strong candidates for the most selective schools, and so many apply, if they do not distinguish themselves and find themselves with a hook the college wants, they tend to create a big category of similar kids of whom only a small number will be accepted. And this category is not just of Asian kids, but also of any hard working, smart, excellent student whose main talent is doing well at school. So many of these kids are not accepted much to the surprise of their circle of famiy and friends. Just too many of the type for the chance of acceptance to be good at those colleges where the accept rate is close to single digit percentages. But, you know what, their acceptance rate is a heck of a lot higher than the next group down in academics stats. Anyone can check that out. There is a notable drop in % of accepts as you move down categories in testscores/grades at the highly selective schools. It’s just that the smaller percentage of kids that are not selective in that upper echelon causes shock waves through their community as they are such good candidates for admissions anywhere.

ucsd_ucla_dad · October 12, 2006, 4:49pm

venkater:

If the demographics of the top UCs matched those of the state of California, there would be far fewer Asians at the schools (and far more hispanics, more AfAms, more whites). The percentage of Asians at UCB, UCLA, UCSD, and UCI is many times that of the pop of California. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is largely due to the lack of racial bias in the admission process. If you can go to the websites of these schools and look at the stats pre and post the law dis-allowing racial bias, you’ll see a huge shift in demographics. I posted some of the stats in another thread on the subject of the low percentage of AfAms at UCLA.

Should the demographics of the school mirror those of the state? Yes and no. In an ideal world, yes because every category would perform equally well. This just isnt the case though as we all know. Given that, the answer is ‘no’ because these schools are specifically catering to the top academic performing group of the state regardless of the racial, gender, and other groupings. Their charter isn’t to mirror the groupings.

I see nothing wrong with having large percentages of Asians at these schools. If they as a group tend to perform better academically than many of the other groups and apply to these schools, more power to them. Maybe it’ll encourage other groups to do better. (I know I’m making large generalizatons of the groupings here but I think you’ll all understand the point).

An interesting question to ask one’s self is - How would the demographics of (insert college name here) change if race/groupings weren’t considered at the time of admissions? IMO, there’d be a large shift at many of them.

Back on the subject of parents encouraging or pushing students to succeed, it does seem to me that Asian parents (generally speaking) do encourage more than some other groupings - it’s evident in the results. Other groups are known for encouraging or taking a hands-off or lack of encouragement approach and that shows in the results as well.

Another interesting question is - Does the typical Asian parent ‘encourage’ more than the typical CC parent?

I know I did plenty of ‘encouragement’ of my D’s and IMO it was to their benefit. Of course, I don’t think I went overboard in doing so but I suppose someone from the outside could have a different opinion. Some people think it’s perfectly fine for their kids to do no homework and little studying as long as they bring home 'C’s and could therefore watch TV for hours every night rather than studying. Not me. These people could think I was a pushy parent for not allowing recreational activities to the exclusion of doing schoolwork. What others might be critical of I would call good parenting and enabling my kids to achieve.

SV2 · October 12, 2006, 5:06pm

From Daniel Golden’s The Price of Admission, chapter 7, “The New Jews, Asian Americans Need Not Apply”:

… most elite universities have maintained a triple standard in college admissions, setting the bar highest for Asians, next for whites, and lowest for blacks and Hispanics. According to a 2004 study by three Princeton researchers, an Asian American applicant needs to score 50 points higher on the SAT than other applicants just to have the same chance of admission to an elite university. (Being an alumni child, by contrast, confers a 160-point advantage.) Yale records show that entering Asian American freshmen averaged a 1493 SAT score in 1999-2000, 1496 in 2000-2001, and 1482 in 2001-2. For the same three years, the average for white freshmen was about 40 points lower. Black and Hispanic freshmen lagged another 100-125 points below whites. A Yale spokesman attributed the Asian-white gap to more whites being recruited athletes, and said Asians and whites are held to the same academic standards."

Now as then, a lack of preferences can be a convenient guise for racism. Much as college administrators justified anti-Jewish policies with ethnic stereotypes – one Yale dean in 1918 termed the typical Jewish student a “greasy grind” – so Asians are typecast in college admissions offices as quasi-robots programmed by their parents to ace math and science tests. Asked why Vanderbilt poured resources into recruiting Jews instead of Asians, a former administator told me, "Asians are very good students, but they don’t provide the kind of intellectual environment that Jewish students provide.

Similarly, MIT dean of admissions Marilee Jones rationalized the institute’s rejection of Henry Park by resorting to stereotypes. Although she wasn’t able to look up his application because records for his year had been destroyed, “it’s possible that Henry Park looked like a thousand other Korean kids with the exact same profile of grades and activities and temperament,” she emailed me in 2003. “My guess is that he just wasn’t involved or interesting enough to surface to the top.” She added that she could understand why a university would take a celebrity child, legacy, or development admit over “yet another textureless math grind.” College administrators who made such remarks about black or Jewish students might soon find themselves higher education outcasts."

From chapter 10, “Ending the Preferences of Privilege”:

Provide equal access for Asian American students and for international students who need financial aid. If elite colleges were truly committed to socioeconomic diversity, they would regard the proliferation of outstanding Asian American applicants as an opportunity, not a problem. They would rush to propel into the higher ranks of American society a group of students who not only boast outstanding test scores and grades but also are immigrants or immigrants’ children from low- or middle-income familites that sacrificed in hope of a better life for the next generation. Asian American students also bring a variety of cultures, languages, and religions to stir the campus melting pot. Colleges should counter anti-Asian bias through sensitivity training sessions and hiring more Asian American admissions deans, directors, and staff.

In 1990, the federal Office for Civil Rights found that Asian Amercian students needed highter test scores than whites to be admitted to Harvard. But it bought Harvard’s argument that preferences for legacies and athletes, who were mostly white, accounted for the gap, rather than race discrimination. Scaling back those preferences would deprive elite universities of excuses for setting a higher bar for Asian Americans and compel them to confront the question of racism.

tsdad · October 12, 2006, 5:07pm

1990 is 26 years ago.

mini · October 12, 2006, 5:11pm

“Similarly, MIT dean of admissions Marilee Jones rationalized the institute’s rejection of Henry Park by resorting to stereotypes. Although she wasn’t able to look up his application because records for his year had been destroyed, “it’s possible that Henry Park looked like a thousand other Korean kids with the exact same profile of grades and activities and temperament,” she emailed me in 2003.”

Wow. That’s about as racist as it gets. Take away the Korean name, the “slanty eyes” that made them all “look the same”, would she have said Henry looks like a thousand other WHITE applicants?

In 2003? If I was a college president and had a dean of admissions who said something like that, she’d be out as quickly as I could say kim-chee.

xiggi · October 12, 2006, 5:24pm

SV2, it would be a glaring mistake to consider Daniel Golden’s The Price of Admission a model for accurate research.

The book might be an enjoyable novel, but that is because facts and fiction are mixed with glee and abandon to create the necessary interest from a mostly uneducated audience. Even when his numbers are --mostly-- accurate, they might not tell the entire story. For instance, using SAT scores expressed on a xxxx/1600 does not tell the entire story, as there is a world of difference between a 800V/650M and 650V/800M. Students who scored 800 on the math section are a dime a dozen; students with high verbal scores are not. It so happens that the majority of hyper-elective schools do place a higher value on higher verbal scores.

For the record, the complete history of Groton’s Henry Park has been well-documented on the web … and discussed ad nauseam on College Confidential. As far as a story of misplaced entitlement, reading the comments of Henry’s mom about how Groton FAILED her son is fascinating. After all, he was ONLY accepted at … John Hopkins.

Now, let think about how easily one is blamed for daring to discuss parental expectations and causing Pepto Bismol alarms. :(

wisteria · October 12, 2006, 5:25pm

Statistical note: A difference in average scores is not, in and of itself, prima facie evidence of discrimination when the score distribution of the underlying populations differs.

Consider this analogy:

A police department requires that all candidates be at least 64 inches tall as an initial screening requirement. Assume they allow everyone over 64 inches to enter the candidate school.

The AVERAGE height of the males in the candidate school is likely to be greater than the AVERAGE height of the female candidates, even though EVERY applicant over 64 inches was accepted. That’s because if you average a random sample of women (all of whose heights are over 64 inches) and a random sample of men (all of whose heights are over 64 inches), the latter number will be greater due to the differing distributions of height in males and females.

Thus a difference in average scores between two populations at a school does not say anything about whether there was discrimination.

wisteria · October 12, 2006, 5:28pm

Interesting math, tsdad!

JHS · October 12, 2006, 5:38pm

I don’t like that Marilee Jones quote, either. But she clearly isn’t referring to Park’s physical appearance when she says he “looks like” 1,000 other Korean kids, and it is entirely possible that there were 1,000 other non-Asian kids who looked the same on paper, too. And MIT wasn’t going to admit all of them under any circumstances.

ucsd_ucla_dad · October 12, 2006, 5:41pm

SV2:

It was after that point in time (16 years ago) that the state Uni’s in California changed the admissions criteria to exclude race as a factor. Perhaps the above investigation was one of the reasons for the change.

mini · October 12, 2006, 5:43pm

" But she clearly isn’t referring to Park’s physical appearance when she says he “looks like” 1,000 other Korean kids, and it is entirely possible that there were 1,000 other non-Asian kids who looked the same on paper, too."

I know. That’s what made it worse. It is likely she had never physically even seen “Henry”, and just assumed that his application, given his last name or whatever, looked like 1,000 other KOREAN applicants’, as if those were all he was competing against.

“like a thousand other Korean kids with the exact same profile of grades and activities and temperament”

Like she knows the “Korean temperament”, like some kind of racehorse.

It’s disgusting. If she’s going to hold to racist beliefs and act in racist ways, the least she can learn to do is keep her mouth (and her e-mail) shut.

wisteria · October 12, 2006, 5:54pm

I agree that it’s outrageous to say such a thing.

MIT sent a holiday card a few years ago to every student it had accepted EA. The holiday card had a snowflake on it and a message inside saying something like “Every MIT student is a unique and special person, just as every snowflake is unique,” or words to that effect.

Ms. Jones ought to have been expressing appreciation for the fact that EVERY applicant is unique and special as a human being, even if MIT doesn’t have room to accommodate all of them.

padad · October 12, 2006, 5:54pm

I am sure that there are a lot of unjust paranoia regarding college admission for asian american students. Afterall how could our best colleges practice racial profiling and hold bias toward one ethnic group. Haven’t we learned and corrected all our past failings toward the Jews, the black and so forth. If there is any bias, certainly it is the fault of the Asian parents who never feed their kids right so they can be football players or who are so pushy that their kids never excel in other activities besides schoolwork and violin. Look at the Asian students that we have admitted. They are a lively bunch and are great contributors to our schools. Those we didn’t admit of course do not possess those qualitites. End of story.

mini · October 12, 2006, 5:56pm

“Ms. Jones ought to have been expressing appreciation for the fact that EVERY applicant is unique and special as a human being, even if MIT doesn’t have room to accommodate all of them.”

Every accepted student is unique; the rejected ones are…Korean. :rolleyes:

College Campuses Too Asian?

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