<h1>359</h1>
<p>Yes, the “Asian as monolith” affrontery gets raised often in these types of threads. As though all Whites and Blacks are the same.</p>
<p>@NewHope: This goes back to the “rack and stack” mindset Pizzagirl is talking about. And of course it favors those who excel in quantifiable areas like math. Which in turn, discriminates against “right-brain” creative types who excel in subjective pursuits, like studio art and music and dance. </p>
<p>I don’t care whether MIT or any other institution with “technology” in its name has a dance or musical theater department or a student orchestra, but I would hope that any university or LAC that confers degrees in the humanities would–and that talent in the arts would be recognized and considered in the admissions process in addition to the cold, hard data of GPAs and test scores.</p>
<p>I, for one, object to the stereotypification of straight-A 2400ers as boring.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No at all. There are too many reminders to say they are not.</p>
<p>^ Yes. The issue goes deeper though. Once admittance criteria is reduced to a single “number” wouldn’t any student with a brain know where to put their emphasis? THAT is a really bad thing. “Hmm, should I tutor a classmate who could really my help, or expand my vocabulary of five-syllable words? No brainer … work on the words.”</p>
<p>NotYourBusiness, your “fallacies” assume that if only we removed AA from the elite school admissions process, that a “color-blind meritocracy” would result. I am not sure why it’s so hard to grasp that this is not a meritocracy under any terms. Colleges simply don’t screen exclusively for academic excellence. Remove AA and you’ll be disappointed because the school elected to boost geographic diversity or excellence in the arts or to favor more athletes or to allow more professors’ kids entry. If a candidate doesn’t fit the school’s institutional priorities, or if he looks too much like 100 other kids with the same profile and has no special hook, odds are against his admission. It’s not just a matter of race: in the county I lived in, kids were looked at as a group, that those with a certain range of scores, gpa and (pretty predictable) activities would be treated as similar. From that pool, a few would be selected for admission. From our perspective it looks arbitrary. From the school’s perspective, it makes sense. </p>
<p>I haven’t read every post but where was it said that AA kids would get in anyway? I thought we were all pretty much agreed that AA’s purpose was to provide a boost to kids who otherwise wouldn’t necessarily get in to the schools they sought.</p>
<p>@Bay, Yeah, I don’t know where the Asian monolith myth comes from. Our community has a huge range of Asians from many different countries. My kids would never say “all Asians are the same” because they know better. They have friends from Nepal and Tibet and Indonesia in addition to China, Japan, Korea and India. They are especially tuned into the challenges within our large Hmong community, which fares much more poorly here than other Asian groups. Even though the schools send announcements home in Hmong and have translators on hand at events, the language barrier is huge and the Hmong people are still at a big disadvantage when compared against other, more established Asian (or even some non-Asian) minority groups.</p>
<p>“I, for one, object to the stereotypification of straight-A 2400ers as boring.”</p>
<p>One straight-A 2400 SAT student is a marvel. A group of ten might form an Institute, with each making significant contributions. But in a uniform class of fifteen-hundred, each student is just ordinary. And as I pointed out above, once it’s “official” that it’s all about “the number,” you have effectively screened out students who are focused on anything else. (What student in his right mind would try for an Intel award if the consequence was falling a couple points short of SAT perfection? What student would devote the hours required to become a good musician? And what “highly motivated parent” would accept any diversion to the goal of attaining “the number?”)</p>
<p>Twelve years of number obsession for every member of the freshman class? I stand by my pronouncement: B-O-R-I-N-G.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not really. Even Caltech has holistic admissions and I have no problem with that. (And you could easily have a similar admissions style for humanities, so no "science uber alles’ as one poster likes to say. Stop oversimplifying the argument.</p>
<p>What I would prefer is more emphasis on intellectual creativity and originality. Have you ever seen Jon Stewart on Crossfire, where he criticizes the shallow partisan hackery of the show which masquerades as an intelligent debate? He’s not against a show that would have a republican debating a democrat. Crossfire reminds me of a debate that was staged at Harvard between the undergrad version of Dr. Ruth vs. the head of the virgin club (or abstinence society). Did they say anything new, any new insights at all? Did anyone care? Take the whole AA and athlete preference out of it. I think there is too much emphasis on people who set up activities and act their different roles, without any mindful reflection on what is wrong with the current thinking, how it can be improved. Now what’s the proof that this is going on? There is no way to prove or disprove it definitively. And usually when I write something like this someone comes back with, “So you want all 2400 SAT scores. B-O-R-I-N-G.” Such is the beauty of holistic admissions. It’s a mirror that reflects the academic utopia of the looker.</p>
<p>“I have to say that I am just amazed that Asian-Americans are viewed as monolithic. This fact has been reiterated in multiple posts before and yet many posters here cannot look past Asian faces.Saying to accept more than a certain percentage will make it less diverse suggests ignorance and bigotry.Not every Asian-American gets 2350 and yes, many are also very well rounded. Unless you have looked into their applications, it is disturbing to make a blanket pronouncement that you can’t find an Asian-American applicant who fits the criteria that PG has authoritatively said in post #346.”</p>
<p>Huh? Where did I make a “blanket pronouncement” that you can’t find an Asian American who fits the criteria I referenced above? Obviously plenty of Asian Americans do - who the heck else are my white kids going to schhol with? </p>
<p>"The Jews has made similar charges 80 years ago and were over-represented in top US colleges and perhaps now that members of that subgroup are threatened, just as they threatened the WASP cultural domination.</p>
<p>Harvard’s Jewish Problem</p>
<p>Who Controls the Ivy League? Who Controls America?"</p>
<p>Leaving aside the fact that whoever “controls” the Ivy League doesn’t even remotely control America, the fact that you went to Thezog.■■■■■■■■■■■■■ as a source doesn’t really help matters. Rather a biased and conspiracy-theory site.</p>
<p>"One straight-A 2400 SAT student is a marvel. A group of ten might form an Institute, with each making significant contributions. But in a uniform class of fifteen-hundred, each student is just ordinary. And as I pointed out above, once it’s “official” that it’s all about “the number,” you have effectively screened out students who are focused on anything else. (What student in his right mind would try for an Intel award if the consequence was falling a couple points short of SAT perfection? What student would devote the hours required to become a good musician? And what “highly motivated parent” would accept any diversion to the goal of attaining “the number?”)</p>
<p>Twelve years of number obsession for every member of the freshman class? I stand by my pronouncement: B-O-R-I-N-G"</p>
<p>Exactly. There’s a reason Americans aren’t lined up to try to get into those universities overseas that are strictly rack-em test scores. They’re viewed as boring and not the places that inspire creativity and leadership. Harvard et al doesn’t want to model itself that way. And thy don’t have to. They can reject a perfect stat student of ANY race who bores them, and that’s how it goes.</p>
<p>“It’s a mirror that reflects the academic utopia of the looker.”</p>
<p>Exactly. The admits are not random selections. And there is a paucity of evidence that making AA illegal would materially alter admissions patterns at top universities.</p>
<p>Thanks Pizzagirl for pointing out the source. I’ve been ignoring the repeated references to Jews in this discussion because I’ve not really been sure what the point was. But the clear reliance on an anti-Semitic, hate-filled site leaves me appalled that anyone would have the nerve to raise, in the same post, a charge of racism against Asians.</p>
<p>ok well I wouldn’t exactly point to Harvard as a hotbed of creativity Pizzagirl but I get your point.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I guess the whole question is whether we think what excites the adcoms makes any sense. For instance, a Harvard adcom was talking about one applicant who sent in an application with a shoe and said, “Now that I have one foot in the door, let in the rest of me.” Then word got around and a bunch of people started sending shoes in, and those people got in to. Eventually she said they had to put a stop to this because it got ridiculous. </p>
<p>Now maybe Pizzagirl looks at that and says, “Wow, that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. We need this guy because he is the next Jerry Seinfeld.” Now while I agree it would be great to get the next Jerry Seinfeld, I personally think that stunt was dumb and didn’t show anything except a corny sense of humor.</p>
<p>CollegeAlum brings up an excellent point … Adcoms are people. I don’t know how many Adcoms Harvard has to review the 20,000 UG applications it receives each year, but it’s probably not enough. I can see why a bit of humor would be appreciated. (Yeah I think the shoe thing is pretty lame … but who knows, after reading a thousand applications or so, I might welcome lame.)</p>
<p>BTW, there is an institution that uses a quantitative metric for the selection process. It’s called Civil Service. 'Nuff said.</p>
<p>Collegalum-- First, I have really been listening to both sides of this, or all five, or whatnot, and bringing back evidence for everyone of each point of view, including your own. But, at this point, I have to respectfully suggest that if you need sooooo much literal information about exactly what the adcoms are looking for, you might be a genius at following instructions, but that’s clearly not what they are looking for. They repeatedly make it clear, at nearly all top 25 universities, that what they want to see is what makes you unique, what makes you you. </p>
<p>It is intangible. It just is. And, I see that after 12 years of measured grades and standardized tests, and whatnot, that this seems to be tripping some kids up. But, maybe that’s the point? They aren’t going to accept you based on a set of instructions. It’s not like that. They are creating a community, not a CV for an engineering program.</p>
<p>Anyway, anyone who is this invested in education will be going to grad school. The real issue, nowadays, is that everyone goes to college (at the same rate they graduated high school in the post wwII era.) Grad school is the new college. At one time, there were enough spots in all of these schools for all of our top students who wanted to go, or mostly. Now there aren’t.</p>
<p>@ cbreeze: This is real for everyone, not just those the schools categorize as asian. (it is the demographic designation in the CDS which causes the discussion to be of asians, though if you prefer we could list them all every time we write, at which point you can also list the country designation of all URMs, before you mention them.)</p>
<p>"But, at this point, I have to respectfully suggest that if you need sooooo much literal information about exactly what the adcoms are looking for, you might be a genius at following instructions, but that’s clearly not what they are looking for. They repeatedly make it clear, at nearly all top 25 universities, that what they want to see is what makes you unique, what makes you you. "</p>
<p>Yes!! After all, the best way to get into Harvard is to be the kind of person who isn’t desperate to and has prepped his whole life to get into Harvard. They want interesting. Some 2400s will be plenty interesting, others will be boring. Some 2200s will be interesting, some will be boring. Some math geniuses will be interesting, others will be boring. And so on.</p>
<p>The very fact that you’re looking for some kind of equation because you need to know ahead of time exactly what the magic formula is so you can contort yourself to fit it is precisely NOT what America’s top schools want. Or they may want some of it, but not an entire freshman class worth of it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Math and science types are disproportionately right-brained; it certainly helps to be able to mentally visualize a function graph or a physics problem from the word problem or math formulas. Richard Feynman’s diagrams visualizing the behavior of subatomic particles is an example.</p>
<p>Both my sons are very right-brained and excel at solving math problems by working them from every possible direction – front, back and middle outward. Left-brain types tend to excel in writing-based subjects because writing is a more linear beginning-to-end process.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>People do this anyway to satisfy the non-academic criteria, and it’s pretty successful. The problem is that it’s easy to game the system by doing dumb things that anyone can do. In the 90’s people went to Africa to do community service. Let’s just say that the vast majority of these people did not continue this sort of activity after they got into wherever they are going. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, I think you missed the point. I think if there was more transparency, the universities might be less likely to do some of the dumb things they do because they would suffer a hit to the brand name.<br>
Second of all, I think I understand the process pretty well, but as I said, there is no proof one’s opinion is accurate. I am well past the process, and got into almost all of the elite schools I applied to.</p>