<p>@texaspg. Not to limit this to an Asian thing or Jeremy Lin…this past year Stanford did not offer a football scholarship to Larry Allen, Jr. (son of a Hall-of-Fame Dallas Cowboys Linemen) who lives in the Bay Area…he had the grades but not the talent to compete at the FBS/PAC-12 level that Stanford was looking for…I understand he really wanted to play and attend school at Stanford and know he was very disappointed as well…so he ended up at Harvard…</p>
<p>@gravitas - I guess a 6-4 285lb football player with some pedigree would have seen a lot more action at Harvard unless he was hurt! Harvard football team must be good this year.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.gocrimson.com/sports/fball/2014-15/bios/allen_jr._larry_4dza?view=profile”>http://www.gocrimson.com/sports/fball/2014-15/bios/allen_jr._larry_4dza?view=profile</a></p>
<p>If Barry Sander’s son (highly recruited running back) can barely get any playing time at Stanford…I can imagine how much bench warming Allen junior would be doing…</p>
<p>So diversity is a good thing when applied to the academic settings but not in athletic team and sports settings, is that what I am hearing? That seems to be hypocritical. Stanford coaches believed that Lin was not good enough to play but since he is now playing in the NBA, that assessment appears to have been misplaced. Even if Lin’s talent was slightly less than others why then is having a diverse basketball team not prized like it seems to be in the classrooms?</p>
<p>Going back to St. Johns School, here is one that sends a lot of students to top schools and has an interesting profile. They usually have 120 students in a batch, average 45 or more per class in NMSFs, win many sports championships in the private school conference and predominantly white with many top school alum parents.</p>
<p>When I read the profiles of two sisters who are on H’s volleyball team, I am amazed at what all they have done. Both were national merit finalists, played multiple sports for their school, captained their school in sports winning state championships, worked on several causes, lots of ECs etc. I am not sure H was losing much in admitting these students even if they scored only 2200 (for national merit, they needed at least 217+ in Texas).</p>
<p>Having a winning team is prized. Having a championship team is even more highly prized. Coaches are under a mandate to win. Evaluating HS athletic talent is tough; coaches who do it right more often then not keep their jobs; coaches that don’t get fired. </p>
<p>Color, religion, ethnicity, sexual preference have nothing to do with it. </p>
<p>Life is always clearer looking in the rear view mirror.</p>
<p>"So diversity is a good thing when applied to the academic settings but not in athletic team and sports settings, is that what I am hearing? That seems to be hypocritical. "</p>
<p>Yep. It is. That’s not against the law. </p>
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<p>Seems like those other college coaches underestimated him. He made it to the NBA, and is still playing in the NBA. That puts him into the elite category of college basketball players (see [here[/url</a>] and [url=<a href=“3 reasons why the 76ers would destroy Kentucky - SBNation.com”>3 reasons why the 76ers would destroy Kentucky - SBNation.com]here](<a href=“Kentucky Would Lose To The 76ers At Least 78 Percent Of The Time | FiveThirtyEight”>Kentucky Would Lose To The 76ers At Least 78 Percent Of The Time | FiveThirtyEight)</a>).</p>
<p>Pizzagirl Discriminating based upon talent is not against the law. Discrimination based upon a protected class is against the law. My point was that Asians like Jeremy Lin who, at least in the eyes of the coaches at Stanford et al thought that he did not have the athletic talent, diversity was not enough to merit entry onto the team. But these same schools have no problem with doing the exact opposite to qualified Asians when it comes to admissions in the name of diversity. And the brunt of the penalty to foster diversity is disproportionally borne by Asian applicants.</p>
<p>xiggi wants Asians to start “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.” He seems to think anyone can be a successful Varsity sports star just by taking up the sport. Wish it was that simple. There is a reason why many Asians take up Golf, Soccer and Tennis versus other sports like Football, LAX, Basketball. There are many more professionals of Asian descent in the former versus the latter. Seeing helps foster the youth to take up those sports when Asian presence is next to nil in the favored revenue sports, even if capable of competing at that level like Lin, just the lack of Asian presence could have shot his chance, Asians don’t get the opportunity because of real or perceived bias against Asians in being able to perform at such a high level. </p>
<p>This is anecdotal, but I witness this type of discrimination every time I go to play in a pickup game of basketball at the local BBall court. The Asian kids are the last to be picked, even though the pickers have no idea what skills they have or don’t have. This was the same when I played intra-collegiate basketball. My basketball team was comprised mostly of Asians and each time we went up against a team we could hear snickers of how embarrassing the game was going to be. Yes, we were shorter and smaller than the teams we went up against, but we were smarter and learned to shoot from the 3 point line and make our free throws. Those teams were not laughing when they were at the losing end of those games. Bias runs both ways, but the problem here is that Asians seem to have the worst end of both.</p>
<p>Biased against in the admission process while URMs are favored, but when it comes to sports, Asians are given no extra consideration like that given to URM in the admission process. I remember not to long ago when Asian baseball players did not play in MLB. And how many thought that the Japanese Leagues were minor leagues in comparison to the MLB. Seems this belief is not so accurate today.</p>
<p>Why aren’t Asians suing Stanford?</p>
<p>The percentage of Asians at Stanford is similar to Harvard’s if you count internationals. </p>
<p>There are a lot of Asians in the SF Bay Area and in Cal.</p>
<p>UC Berkeley is almost 40 percent Asian. </p>
<p>“xiggi wants Asians to start “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.” He seems to think anyone can be a successful Varsity sports star just by taking up the sport. Wish it was that simple. There is a reason why many Asians take up Golf, Soccer and Tennis versus other sports like Football, LAX, Basketball. There are many more professionals of Asian descent in the former versus the latter”</p>
<p>What do the professionals in those sports have to do with it?
What a conformity-mindset you have. Clue: elite colleges don’t care for the conformity mindset. </p>
<p>I think some fail to understand that a Harvard only has so many seats and a tsunami of applicants, a huge, unwieldy number of whom are 4.0, rigor, high scores and have a full roster of activities. Then, they assume that the college’s choice means discrimination, automatic preference for one sort and absolute discrimination against another. It’s a severe and superficial reaction and I suppose it satisfies some to get all hot and bothered. But you really don’t know. You look at matriculation data, parse, try to find some absolute truth. But that skips the all-important front end. </p>
<p>The elites are not simply looking for top stats, the dry recitation we see on Chance Me threads. The kid projects himself into the app and either does it well or doesn’t, per what that college wants to see, needs to see, to sort through. (We shorthand it as “personal attributes.”) And after they get those kids with the right academic, EC, and personal stuff, it’s still an unwieldy mass; they have to sort for geo diversity, attempt to balance majors, look for variety in strengths/interests, talents, perspectives and potential contribution to the whole. </p>
<p>When I saw the line, “numerous extracurricular and volunteer activities,” my first reaction was, yeah, but what? There’s a simple assumption on CC that (after stats/rigor) the magic is in “passion” and “busy.” Or awards, any sort, even for attendance. Or a hard-luck tale. In a hs kid, that’s limited thinking. Same for adults. </p>
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I think you will find that the percentages of Asians at Harvard do change, but not by a lot. Contrary to what you seem to think, that won’t be enough to prove deliberate discrimination without more evidence. Harvard will explain this by saying that it does holistic review, and that’s just where the chips fell. They will probably decline to speculate, but I won’t: the reason is that for a number of years now, the pool of Asian applicants hasn’t changed very much–it is still loaded with STEM-focused kids with a narrow range of ECs, and with good-but-not-great achievements in those ECs. This may sound harsh, but in my experience many of the high-scoring Asian kids simply do not have the same kind of Ivy-appealing EC achievement kids as the high-scoring white kids do. I think this is for cultural reasons, as opposed to innate ability. Each year, kids are surprised that high grades and SAT scores are not enough for Harvard, even when coupled with being the captain of the tennis team and first chair violin in the all-regional high school orchestra. The shock seems to be based on the idea that hard work does not seem to pay off.</p>
<p>And here’s another point: unless you think Asians are somehow innately superior, why would you expect them, over the long term, to be substantially overrepresented at the most selective universities as compared with white students? They are already overrepresented, and the complaint is that they are not even more overrepresented. Newsflash: Asian kids are not, on average, smarter than white kids. They may, for cultural reasons, work harder, but that will only pay off if they work hard on the things that matter most to Ivy League schools. So far, a lot of them do not seem to have figured this out.</p>
<p>Edited to emphasize that I am talking about averages. There are Asian kids who have figured it out, and they are more successful in getting admitted to top colleges. Jeremy Lin is a prime example.</p>
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<p>And yet you can’t see the connection in your own words?</p>
<p>fwiw: I’m a small white guy, and I was one of the last ones selected in park games as well. But I was really quick and with excellent eye-hand coordination, I could catch, so I was able to make the varsity football team, and even start.</p>
<p>Just saying, imo, Hunt and a few others “get it.” This isn’t going to play out on emotions and assumptions. And Espenshade is on record explaining the limits of his study about score differences. They’re going to have one heck of a time finding the smoking gun.</p>
<p>Cardinal Fang, on another thread, suggested “Fang’s Razor.” To me, boils down to: never assume the other guy (or entity) is stupid. These schools don’t have “But he’s Asian” notes in their files. Or, “Gee, he;s good but we expect an extra X points from an Asian.” They don’t sit around talking about this year’s “quota.” </p>
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<p>I would not assume that H – the entity – is stupid, but having dealt with employee legal issues over the years, I can assure you that even H hires “stupid” staff members – perhaps book smart, but zero common sense. The fishing expedition called Discovery just might find some shred of what they believe to be evidence.</p>
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I agree that they won’t have notes that say this, but it does occur to me that Harvard might expect an extra X points from an Asian. It could be that Harvard’s admissions people believe (rightly or wrongly) that, on average, Asian kids are more likely to have done substantial formal exam prep than other students, and thus their scores are discounted to some degree. It’s even possible that they look for clues that there was likely a lot of exam prep–these might include substantial increases in scores over multiple sittings, or perhaps a lack of significant ECs.</p>
<p>And here’s a thought experiment: what if Harvard performed a survey that showed that, on average, an Asian applicant with an SAT score over 2000 had 100 hours of standardized test prep, compared to an average of 50 hours of prep for a white applicant with an SAT score over 2000. Would it be fair for Harvard to discount the SAT scores of all those Asian applicants by some amount?</p>
<p>and, of course, besides geographic diversity by state, I believe that colleges also have diversity by HS. Many students of any race/ethnicity attend a HS that of which they comprise the majority. Numerous top high schools in California have a very large contingent of Asian students. Obviously, H (or S) is not gonna accept the top decile of that HS even if they are all over 2200. H&S want to spread around their love to as many of the 30,000 high schools that they can.</p>
<p>Our local HS is a perfect example. For about the past 20 years, the Val is accepted to H every year, regardless of the color of that person’s skin; the HS is about 40% Asian, and top decile is NMSF’s, so we have plenty of 2200’s . But only the Val is accepted to H. No one else. Every year.</p>
<p>(Our top kids fare much better at S, partially due to legacy and athletics.)</p>
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<p>If you stratify Asian versus white students by generation-since-immigration, it is likely that the differences we see in academic achievement disappear. Since immigrants themselves tend to be highly motivated (to move to a new distant country), and the immigration rules bring in many as (highly educated) PhD students and skilled workers, it should not be a surprise that many of the first US-born generation kids grow up in education-valuing homes. Of course, this is not unique to Asian people, but immigrants and low-generation-number-since-immigration people make up a much larger portion of Asian people, so this phenomenon has a much larger effect on the Asian population than the white population. (Going even further, we can also look at what portion of immigrants come in the high education categories, versus other categories or illegally.)</p>
<p>Of course, the overriding focus on race and ethnicity as the definition of “diversity” means that such other distinctions as generation-since-immigration (or even SES) tend to have much lower visibility. But, to your question about the long term, it likely depends a lot on future immigration patterns.</p>
<p>Digressing a bit, I am amazed at how financial success and Harvard are tied together in these discussions. I see people claiming to have gone to Harvard but looking for FA for their kids. On the other hand, I have met Asians locally who have gone to State and directional Us who have gone into fields like optometry who live in 4000k mansions. I didn’t know optometry had that kind of money!</p>