<p>As far as I know, disparate impact is not de facto discrimination by itself. (assuming that it is even true.) For example, if Stanford decides to aggressively court applicants from flyover country and admits them, the numbers of Californians at S will continue to decline. And since there are plenty of qualified Asian (and White) applicants in California, there numbers will be excluded. But, just bcos the numbers of Californians goes down at S – disparate impact – does not mean that S-Admissions is discriminating against Californians; instead, S is discriminating in favor of the midwest.</p>
<p>What would make it discrimination is if S had a goal to purposely maintain say, Asians, and a way that to accomplish that was to admit fewer eligible California residents. In such a hypo, folks might have a discrimination case.</p>
<p>Perhaps Hunt can chime in with legal practice.</p>
<p>Thank you Swimkidsdad for the additional info from DOJ.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, What do you think it is called when the percentage of Asians admitted is the same year to year?</p>
<p>xiggi Not sure why my response to your post is taken so dear to heart. Your arguments are in your own words “ad nauseam to convince me”. You have made the same arguments in other threads with jabs at Asian students like “And, lastly, here is another “food for thought” … what if HYPS borrowed a page from Bates or Bowdoin and declared themselves “test optional?” What would be then be left for the lawsuit based on SAT scores and “revised” representation percentages?”</p>
<p>You somehow want people to believe that Asian students would not stand out without the SAT when this myth has been debunked. Asian students excel not only in SAT but in GPA, Course Rigor, EC, LOR, and essays so whether a school goes test optional or not, the same issue in the lawsuit would remain. Yes, it would be more difficult since it is difficult to quantify the quality of the non-test factors except GPA, but not impossible. Believe it or not most test optional schools admit most of its applicants from those who submit tests even Bowdoin and Bates.</p>
<p>The apportioning of spots in a college class is a zero-sum game. However, the pressures on the college change with time.</p>
<p>There are parts of the student body which are set by quotas. In the Ivy League, the portion of recruited athletes is set by agreement. There is a quota. I could well believe the number of primarily academic admits have not increased with time, because the percentage of athletic admits increased, both because sports are more important to Harvard than in the past, and due to the impact of Title IX, which mandates equal opportunities to men and women. It has taken time to correct past imbalances. </p>
<p>The Harvard of today is not the Harvard of 40 years ago. 42 teams has a huge impact on the composition of the student body. It has a huge impact on admissions, too, I’d bet, even if one sets aside the official recruited athletes. At a minimum (which is an understatement), every reasonably good high school athlete applying to Harvard may be able to get a coach to contact admissions in his or her case. </p>
<p>A new varsity women’s rugby team means admissions might have an eye out for female applicants who’ve played rugby in high school. That’s not a common sport in the US, especially for women. And so on and so forth.</p>
<p>periwinkle Quotas are allowed as long it is not a Racial Quota or on protected class. No one said that athletic quotas are not allowed. Schools cannot place Racial Quotas or quotas on protected classes.</p>
<p>Periwinkle True but if admission is holistic then why should having athletic quotas disproportionally affect Asians? Shouldn’t the affect be the same for all Ethnicity?</p>
<p>“For example, if Stanford decides to aggressively court applicants from flyover country and admits them, the numbers of Californians at S will continue to decline. And since there are plenty of qualified Asian (and White) applicants in California, there numbers will be excluded. But, just bcos the numbers of Californians goes down at S – disparate impact – does not mean that S-Admissions is discriminating against Californians; instead, S is discriminating in favor of the midwest.”</p>
<p>This is exactly it, voiceof reason. You need to read this statement above, and internalize it. </p>
<p>The other thing that you fail to get is that Asians happen to be concentrated in certain geographic regions. Roughly 50% of Asians in this country live in CA. That hurts them in admissions at schools that want geographic diversity. It hurts Jews, too, who are concentrated along the coasts and Florida, but to a lesser extent since they aren’t quite so geographically concentrated in pockets as Asians are. </p>
<p>And you still seem not to get that if Asians self-cluster in certain majors (mainly STEM), they can’t all be admitted even if “qualified” because these schools need French majors and English majors and philosophy majors and classics majors. You seem to think that it’s the student, not the institution. </p>
<p>I responded to you out of courtesy because … you addressed your post to me. </p>
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<p>Again, do not send that argument in my direction. I am addressing what what the best shot in the lawsuit, and like it or not, ALL of it rests on the minute disparity in SAT test scores. You can claim “equality” in the qualifications beyond the SAT all you want, but you can neither demonstrate nor have … Harvard agreeing with you in any meaningful way. </p>
<p>Rest assured that I do understand your baseline position, which amounts to state that "if we are better in the SAT scores, the only think that precludes us to have even larger admissions is that Harvard considers the “rest of the application” under a holistic review … lacking. Well, duh and double duh, my friend. That is exactlty what people in the position of making decisions have been saying – with a degree of PC, and what many have been saying here with less care or less cynicism. </p>
<p>I have often written about changing landscapes in terms of admissions. I am not sure why it remains so hard to understand that the subgroups that cling to what USED to work so well is no longer delivering the goods in terms of critical representation. There used to be a time that the stepford Suzuki and tennis aspiring geniuses clinched positive decisions. Then it veered into the Intel boondoggles (that are still delivering more than they ever should have) and the Hagwon uberprowesses. </p>
<p>The bottom line? If you feel that athletes get such a sweet deal, why not join the … teams and switch the flute and the viola for a Riddel helmet or a bat? Or a hockey or Lacrosse stick. If unselfish EC are so easy to engage in, why not try to help your community instead of building small monuments to the I person? </p>
<p>Like it or not, there is strong evidence that a large number of Asians DO understand that there is more than test scores. This is reflected in the admission numbers that easily are multiples of the racial mix of the US. Among the 20 percent of students at Harvard, there are plenty who did DO all the things that are expected from positive applicants. </p>
<p>Your problem is basically one that refuses to see that there are plenty of students who are simply a BIT weaker in a College Board setting, and a bit better in the rest of their activities. </p>
<p>Happy now? I doubt that as you will probably start asking me for proof about what I wrote. Regardless of this mostly rhetorical debate about what enters into a holistic process, it remains that the basic claims remain entirely lacking and that a response based on the “rest of the application” is not even warranted. </p>
<p>So Harvard will show that they have all kinds of quotas (but not racial quotas) so everyone competes inside certain boxes against applicants like himself. Some of these boxes have a lot of Asians and some have less of them. So the outcome is 25% that looks possible to achieve without direct discrimination.</p>
<p>“The lawsuit filed against Harvard cites an Asian-American student who was denied admission despite being valedictorian of a competitive high school, achieving a perfect ACT score and a perfect score of 800 on two of the SAT II subject exams, and participating in numerous extracurricular and volunteer activities. The applicant, the lawsuit states, was “denied the opportunity to compete for admission to Harvard on equal footing with other applicants” due to his race.” (csmonitor) </p>
<p>What’s missing is that there is no simple checklist and, again, kids aren’t chosen solely on, “I got high stats, I was in numerous ECs.” We know, over and over, that it’s more than that.</p>
<p>If there’s a consistent goal, it’s about candidates’ acquired perspective (not just the one they were born into,) drives, the nature of particular challenges chosen and impact, etc. And the ability to then convey this in the app, including what is listed, how it’s structured, and in the writings. Plus the grounding, spirit and more. Quality of the whole. You can’t judge it without looking at the entire package, not just the bare bones digest similar to a Chance Me thread.</p>
<p>In Harvard’s case, a desire for diversity may, if applied in undergraduate admissions, benefit whites, who are underrepresented at about 50% of Harvard domestic undergraduates, versus 63% in the US (and 75% in Massachusetts).</p>
<p>There aren’t many Asian names on those rosters. If you click on each name, you will see a photo and more details about the athletes. The effect might be the same for all ethnicity if Harvard were choosing students solely based on classroom indicators first, then filled the teams from that group. But they don’t. I would say Harvard wants to win, so they look for applicants who are really good at their sports, and really good at their academics. </p>
[quote]
Her commitment to it, though, was unusual among Asian parents and, in the Taiwanese television interview, Jeremy acknowledged his appreciation for his mother’s willingness to break from the norm.</p>
<p>“Growing up, some of my mom’s friends would tell her that she was wasting everyone’s time by letting me play so much basketball,” he said. “And so she would get criticized, but she let me play because she saw that basketball made me happy.”</p>
<p>He added: “It’s funny because once I got into Harvard, the same moms that were criticizing her were asking her questions about which sports their kids could play to go to Harvard. It was a funny reversal for me to see them support me in basketball, even though not many other Asian parents would have done the same.”</p>
<p>I am not entirely certain there is a quota across Ivy league for athletics. Harvard is doing its bit to recruit more athletes but Yale on the other hand has decided to cut back and accepted lot more walkons on their teams.</p>
<p>Jeremy Lin has been underestimated as a pro basketball player because he is an Asian who attended Harvard. This is a stereotype that keeps pushing him down the depth chart. He was number 4 or 5 on Houston team, was cut and became a major star with Knicks, only to be signed back by Rockets for millions. </p>
<p>xiggi - there are 2 6’-4" sisters from St. Johns at Harvard playing volleyball. Why aren’t they at Stanford? :(</p>
They might be tall and play volleyball…but they also need to be the top talent …I think Stanford does pretty well to have the top ranked volleyball team in the nation as it is…</p>
<p>Not sure that you can make that statement, tx, without a survey of NBA gm’s.</p>
<p>I would agree that Lin has been underestimated, but his race may have nothing to do with it – his Ivy pedigree certainly does, however. Sure, he put up great numbers in Cambridge for four years, but that was against “inferior” competition and he was never on TV with the exception of a couple of tournament games. People can’t “estimate” what they don’t see…</p>
<p>If you are in charge of the draft, you can pick a kid from an Ivy or from a blue-blood b’ball program (Duke, Kentucky, 'Cuse, et al). I can assure you, the owner won’t question the latter. </p>
<p>@gravitas - One of the shorter Ivy players’ parents who was recruited by 3 separate Ivy schools told me her D doesn’t stand a chance at Stanford because of the height requirement at Stanford. I believe she put the minimum requirement at 6-2! There are also several players on Stanford roster from St. Johns in multiple sports and so it is a given they are being consistently checked out.</p>
<p>Until he joined rockets, I didn’t know Lin existed in college basketball. However, Lin himself mentions repeatedly that he is underestimated in basketball because of going to Harvard and being a short Asian. I always wondered about Kevin McHale’s talent assessment since someone he cut became an instant sensation on another team and became the main star for a long stretch of a season.</p>
<p>Certain athletes on certain teams do check multiple boxes. If you look, for example, at the faces in the team photo for the Harvard football team you can clearly see that going on.</p>
<p>Jeremy Lin played at PALO ALTO High School of all places!! He desperately wanted to play at Stanford, but the Stanford coaches didn’t think he was good enough. They offered to let him try out as a non-scholarship walk on player. If he could get in, which is tough to do without being a recruited athlete. Had nothing to do with ethnicity. The coaches at UCLA and Cal Berkeley told him the same thing.</p>
<p>When it comes to athletics, the Ivy League is literally not in the same league as the Pac-12. Obviously.</p>
<p>Lin, by the way, is 6’3". Even in the NBA, he is not short. One reason that Harvard decided to recruit him was because he was tall.</p>
<p>There have only been 4 NBA players of Asian American descent. I would agree race has nothing to do with it if there was a broader sample to choose from. I have watched Yao Ming play for several years but he is from China. His wife also played for the Chinese team and she is 6-3, same height as Lin!</p>