“If it’s true that admitting more Asians would hurt the prestige of a school because they all flock to a handful of majors, how does UC Berkeley and UCLA manage to stay at the top of virtually all national and international rankings all these years?”
I think you’re far overestimating how prestigious UC Berkeley and UCLA are to the average person. It’s understandable that those are colleges that are perceived very strongly among Asian communities because so much of the Asian community is based in California and of course there’s the proximity to Asia itself. I think you might be surprised to hear that outside California, and outside people with specific academic interests, those schools really aren’t on most radar screens. UCLA is vaguely associated with sports prowess (and confused with USC, one of those other schools that suffers from the somewhere-out-in-California meme). Berkeley is vaguely associated with hippie-dippie '60’s leftovers. On CC, the New Yorkers think the world centers on New York and the Californians think that the world centers on California, but neither is really the truth.
Anyway, the racial makeup of a school doesn’t make it prestigious or not-prestigious. The prestige that those schools have is driven by their professors, opportunities, etc. - not what the racial makeup of the campus looks like.
Nobody thinks that as Harvard increases the % of African Americans (for example) on campus that it’s becoming “more prestigious” in doing so.
Since nothing I’ve ever posted on CC, in 11 years, has ever suggested such a random hypothetical, I have no idea what you’re talking about and why you would address such a frankly asinine question to me. I do know that plenty of students of various ethnicities and national origins try to be “cute” or “different” in some artificial or trivial way (ways that are seriously being suggested on another thread right now in PF), as if such a contrivance will bring the outcomes those students wish, but efforts to add things artificially rarely bear fruit.
Here are the unhooked students who get admitted to Elite U’s in this country, over the last 10 years:
Students who have achieved quite a bit (and not necessarily with great perspiration), exhibit intellectual depth (not measured per se by grades and scores), seem to have a value system which comports with what the U also values, have some sense of proportion about themselves versus the rest of the world, will add both intellectually and socially to a diverse campus, simply by who they are (what they have shown themselves to be by their priorities and personal qualities and by whatever variety of pursuits they have chosen).
"On the Asian Academic Success Formula question - one experience always struck me. When I’d bring the kids to piano or violin recital put on by their teacher, the students and their families were overwhelmingly Asian. "
Just be careful you don’t use the word “comical” to describe it, because then you will be assumed to have made a value judgment as opposed to an observation.
I only brought up your comical comment, because, in your honesty, I think you voiced the opinion of many non-Asian people. No, you may not think that too many Asians downgrade the prestige of schools, but I can see where others may feel that way.
There is privilege in being white. So if Jews can blend in as white, there is privilege in that.
From my reading, the implication was that Asians may not be as interesting. Sorry if I misunderstood.
I was ready to be done with this discussion. I have to tend to my kids (they are daring to read novels when they have not memorized the periodic table; they had the audacity to remove HYPSM from their college list; they are banging on the drums when the piano is waiting for them ). As others have said, it is an endless loop of the same arguments and probably no one can be convinced. I was happy to stop reading after @al2simon’s post. Yet there came a chorus of but, but, but…defensive posts claiming that Asians are indeed not disadvantaged and if they are, they can only blame themselves.
Ms. Pizza, you’re confusing who said what. I like and appreciate most of what you have to say, even if you have labeled me as clueless. It’s true that my “cluelessness” is renowned. But on the nature of future job growth areas, I feel I am on solid footing. Take a look at The Second Machine by Erik Brynjolfsson to see where I’m coming from.
The single largest ethnic group in our small public school district is Asian, and most of the Asian students are Chinese-American. Our school district has a very high percentage of parents who are college-educated (across all ethnic groups) which is one of the major predictors of kids heading to college. It’s a pretty middle-class to UMC, well-educated community. This is purely anecdotal but one thing I noticed, especially when my kids were younger, is that certain theories that were popular among well-educated white parents were not popular among well-educated Chinese-American parents, and those cultural differences made a real differences in what the expectations were from kids. For example, when my kids (now teens) were younger, there was a real trend (still is probably) among the white parents of thinking boys couldn’t sit still, needed more kinesthetic learning, were not as good at small motor skills as girls (therefore that’s why their handwriting was worse), etc. Whereas the Chinese-American boys were at Chinese school three days a week in addition to regular school (so were much better at self-regulating, the small motor skills were developing more quickly by being made to learn Chinese letters, etc.) In addition, all or nearly all of the Chinese-American students started music lessons at a young age – whereas the white kids started later and were allowed to quit. These cultural expectations/experiences made a difference. Now I’m not saying one is right and the other is wrong. There are positives and negatives to both.
Actually, I don’t think I am. Check any national or international college rankings and you will often find these two schools in the top 25 of any ranking. Even US News put UCB at #20 and UCLA at #23. But I do agree that there is a lot of regional bias when it comes to schools. Since I live in the west coast and worked in IT, UCB and Stanford are far more prestigious to me than any east coast school. Similarly I wouldn’t be surprised if people in the Midwest think Michigan and Notre Dame are more prestigious than Amherst or Williams, and people in Texas probably give higher regards to UT-Austin and Texas A&M than any Northeast schools.
As I’ve pointed out before, in general people in the Northeast tend not to think much of their public universities because they are not as old and established as their private counterparts, but outside of the Northeast, the public universities are often the most sought after by top students in each state.
“There is privilege in being white. So if Jews can blend in as white, there is privilege in that.”
But I’m not “blending in” as being white. I AM white. I don’t know why you’ve lifted Jews into some special category of not-white-but-can-pass-as-white here.
“Since I live in the west coast and worked in IT, UCB and Stanford are far more prestigious to me than any east coast school. Similarly I wouldn’t be surprised if people in the Midwest think Michigan and Notre Dame are more prestigious than Amherst or Williams, and people in Texas probably give higher regards to UT-Austin and Texas A&M than any Northeast schools.”
“I only brought up your comical comment, because, in your honesty, I think you voiced the opinion of many non-Asian people. No, you may not think that too many Asians downgrade the prestige of schools, but I can see where others may feel that way.”
You’re going to have to trust that I’m a pretty straight shooter. I cast no aspersions on any of the students I saw; I have no doubt that everyone there was hard-working, “worthy” of having gone there and I wish all of them nothing but success. Especially the one who may marry my son, LOL.
But it was - fine, I’ll substitute notable for comical – that the Asian students were not evenly distributed within the majors - that there was evident clustering towards the engineering school, away from the school of communications, and within the liberal arts school where my son was, towards biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics and away from classics, art history, etc. There is no value judgment being made – I certainly HOPE every student is studying what he / she wishes to study, don’t you? - but if indeed Asian students are over-clustering into certain fields and under-clustering in others, they are, in essence, competing for a more limited STEM-based set of spots versus for the entire school.
Of course, the same could be said for any group of X who are uber-concentrating in major Y. If every Jewish kid from Long Island decided to major in political science, that’ll hurt them as a whole too.
Of course. That’s the whole point. And to the extent that Asian students cluster (whether that clustering is “natural” or parent-imposed) towards certain majors, or certain extracurricular activities (tennis, violin, math competition, etc.) - that will hurt them.
There are 2 different threads that go on when this is brought up.
One is – but that’s not true, Asian students are no more or less likely to cluster in certain majors and / or certain EC’s. And then the other thread is – well, yeah, they do cluster in STEM, but that’s because that’s what their parents know, the parents are driven by fears of economic insecurity, etc. and they do cluster in certain cultural activities because those particular activities are highly culturally valued.
Both of those things can’t be simultaneously true.
"I only brought up your comical comment, because, in your honesty, I think you voiced the opinion of many non-Asian people. "
But I didn’t voice an opinion about the fact that there were so many Asian students in the STEM fields. I didn’t say such a thing was good, bad or indifferent. Because it IS neither good, bad or indifferent – it just is. It was an observation to refute the notion that Asian students weren’t over-clustered in certain fields.
As I pointed out in another thread (about the prudent choice of one Ronald Nelson), of the 7 kids who were admitted to all 8 Ivies plus Stanford and Duke this year, all except one are either first gen immigrants (born abroad) or 2nd generation immigrants (children of first gen parents). Three are children of African immigrants, 1 Bulgarian immigrant, 1 child of Indian immigrant, 1 child of Mexican immigrant. Only 1 is a native born and he’s African American. Last year a son of Ghanaian immigrants accomplished this feat. Of the 7, 4 expect to major in medicine, 1 in engineering, 1 in government, 1 in economics/history.
Immigration definitely plays a big part in achievement. Studies have shown that second generation immigrants tend to be the most successful (children born here to parents born abroad). After that, they get fat and lazy like everyone else.
The great thing is that one can only go to one college at a time, so while it’s impressive to run the table, it’s ultimately pointless.
That’s one thing that angers me on CC threads - you’ve got kids getting into multiple top 20 schools but they didn’t get into Harvard so they’re disappointed. To me, that’s a major gimme-a-break-buddy.
Per Inside Higher Ed, there are around 3.2 million first time freshman enrolling in college next year. Let’s say the top 2% of these kids are in the “gifted” population and are academically qualified for top 10 schools (Ivies + Stanford + MIT), or 64,000. These top 10 schools collectively enroll approximately 16,900 students. Since over 60% of seats in these schools are already spoken for (URMs, athletes, legacies, developments, internationals), unhooked top 2% applicants are really fighting for 6,760 spots, which means they have a 1 in 10 chance (10.5%) of getting a spot in any of these schools.
For 2014, the SAT 98th percentile scores are: 740CR, 770M, 730W, or 2240 composite.
If you are in the top 1% or 99th percentile, i.e. 760CR, 780M, 760W, or 2300 composite, your chances improve to 1 in 5.
A top 1% unhooked applicant’s chance to get into Harvard? 32,000 top 1% of unhooked applicants going for 40% of 2,047 acceptances or 818 spots = 2.5%, roughly 1 in 40.
The point of post 177?
Your chance “improve” to [whatever] only insofar as that aspect of the application is concerned. It puts you in “consideration” range, but after that you can be eliminated on qualitative factors, such as teacher rec content, “overly” popular major for available slots (possibly make competition much tighter within your desired major or field), “need” of your particular activities in campus life, geographical considerations (including post-grad) and genuine student voice in your essays.
You can never use quantitative factors as stand-alone or hierarchically more important (“chance”-wise) than other types of factors.
I don’t see the point of post 177 either. It’s an attempt to call out what’s ALREADY BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS - that any one person’s chances of getting into these top schools is low. Know where you can find that out? Gee, you can look at the overall acceptance rate and stare it in the face. What part of Harvard’s acceptance rate is 5% and Cornell’s is 12% (or whatever the numbers are, I can’t be bothered to look them up) needs explaining?
(Of course, there are plenty of places in which these top / gifted students couldn’t care less about the Ivies / Stanford / MIT and are perfectly content to go off to their state flagship. Why, that would be almost all of the country except for the Northeast.)
). As others have said, it is an endless loop of the same arguments and probably no one can be convinced. I was happy to stop reading after 