Provocative Idea: Why isn't there an Asian University?

[coolweather]

<p>

But it’s certainly my observation that high-achieving Asian students seem to have more common ECs and interests than high-achieving white students.

Do you expect 5ft high and 100 lbs kids to compete against 6ft high and 160 lbs kids? And are football and basket ball players not common?</p>

[xiggi]

<p>^^–^^</p>

<p>No, but there are plenty of **team **sports that do not require height or size.</p>

[barrons]

<p>I guess Yao Ming would enjoy pounding some here into submission. There are many HS sports around Seattle with lots of Asian kids playing. Baseball, tennis, golf, track, wrestling, swimming and even football and basketball. With a typical US diet lots of Am-Asian kids are now similar in size to the average US kid. Then there are the Samoans. Lookout.</p>

[coolweather]

<p>It does not require but you know for sure that you will not be good in it. And the coach will not select them if they don’t do well. Why should I invest if I know that I will lose money? Furthermore, kids play the kind of sports that their parents play. Most first generation Asian American parents don’t play baseball, football.</p>

[coolweather]

<p>

With a typical US diet lots of Am-Asian kids are now similar in size to the average US kid. Then there are the Samoans.

</p>

<p>Do you mean that with some kind of food that Japanese sumo use?</p>

[xiggi]

<p>

Most first generation Asian American parents don’t play baseball, football.

</p>

<p>There are hundreds of thousands of parents who did not know the first thing about international football (soccer) and happily remained clueless when driving their kids to practice and games. </p>

<p>The main issue relates to the avoidance of activities that do not directly reward individual prowess nor provide resume padding.</p>

<p>PS Remember the opponent of the US when Brandi Chastain scored the winning penalty kick in one of the most memorable TV event ever?</p>

<p>[Brandi</a> Chastain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandi_Chastain]Brandi”>Brandi Chastain - Wikipedia)</p>

[barrons]

<p>I’m no expert on Asian names but I think a few of these kids are.</p>

<p>"1. Natalie Allen, Holy Names, and Davis Mangham, Lakeside; tennis. Meet your new Metro League champions. Mangham won 6-2, 6-3 in the championship against Seattle Prep’s Shuhei Matsuya, and Allen beat teammate Rachel Storz 6-3, 6-0.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Natsumi Ueda, Newport, softball. Hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the sixth to put Newport ahead in a 5-3 win against Skyline.</p></li>
<li><p>Chris Hashimoto, Lake Washington, baseball. Went 3-for-3 with a big two-run home run in an 11-2 win that kept the Kangs’ season alive"</p></li>
</ol>

<p>From a recent Seattle pI HS sports rundown</p>

[coolweather]

<p>So you mean playing violin in an orchestra team is for just individual reward?</p>

[xiggi]

<p>/sigh /sigh</p>

[Hunt]

<p>Barrons, your example shows that Japanese kids play tennis and baseball. That’s kind of the point, though. It’s my belief that around here, anyway, you will find Asian kids playing tennis, but not wrestling, running track, playing lacrosse, etc. You also will find lots of Asian kids playing the violin. There is nothing wrong with any of these things. The point is that this can hurt Asians in college admission, even if the admission is race-blind, because colleges will also be looking for football players, wrestlers, tuba players, etc. To put this question another way: are there cultural factors that may be disadvantaging Asians as a group at certain top colleges? I’m suggesting that two such factors might be (1) concentration in a limited number of expected majors and (2) concentration in a limited number of ECs. I know there are probably plenty of counterexamples, but we’re talking about the group as a whole.</p>

[Bay]

<p>I think you also need to look at the impact of having “too many” of one race, on the macro level. For example, (and Yes, I am using stereotypes here), whites generally put a high premium on the social network value of their college experience. Hence, a u with “too many” whites, is likely to be seen as having too much “partying,” fraternities, and spectator sports. Asians put a high premium on academic intensity, so a u with “too many” Asians, may be seen as a school where students just study all the time. Latinos place a high premium on family, so a u with “too many” Latinos may become a “commuter school.” </p>

<p>If u’s are to remain competitive and attract the top students of all kinds, they need a balance that creates an attractive atmosphere with something for everyone.</p>

[StickerShock]

<p>

Then there are the Samoans. Lookout.

You’re so right. If I were a coach of a Div1 football team, I’d have my college set up permanent recruiting stations all over the Samoan Islands. </p>

<p>In my town, I don’t believe there is a single Asian kid on the team sports, especially contact sports. Absolutely not on football, ice hockey, or lacrosse. (My town is very Italian in ethnicity, so we don’t have very big kids around here. On average, the Asians (Korean, Chinese, Indian) & Italian-American kids aren’t very different in size.) However, tennis, track, and crew are predominantly Asian. When I passed by the tennis courts to pick up son from football practice, I noticed loads of big blue SAT review books scattered among the tennis team’s duffle bags. Many of these kids have been in SAT prep courses since middle school. I know of one who had a live-in tutor last summer. It’s as if the kids live in two different worlds, even when they grow up on the same street. One of D’s friends always complains about her “crazy Chinese mother,” who has been pushing the ivy league since the girl could talk.</p>

<p>I don’t think these stereotypes are pulled from thin air.</p>

[SV2]

<p>[College</a> Admissions: Who Wins and Who Loses?](<a href=“http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8606135694351174596]College”>http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8606135694351174596)</p>

<p>An interesting video (56min) of a talk by Daniel Golden with a question and answer portion at the end. Daniel Golden is the award-winning Wall Street Journal writer and author of the book:The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges – and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates</p>

<p>He discusses admissions preferences of various kinds: legacy, development, athletes, faculty children, etc. At about 23:10, he discusses Asian student admissions.</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>Well, what did it say?</p>

[xiggi]

<p>SV2, is this deja vu all over again?</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/3045483-post129.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/3045483-post129.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/3045574-post132.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/3045574-post132.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/3045574-post132.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/3045574-post132.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

Guilt by omissions </p>

<p>This is an example how using partial data can be misleading:</p>

<p>Golden writes, “In 1990, federal investigators concluded that UCLA’s graduate department in mathematics had discriminated against Asian applicants.”</p>

<p>Well, that was true in … 1990. But was it true upon further examination?</p>

<p>The regional office submitted a revised investigative report to
headquarters on July 23, 1991, in which it concluded that UCLA’s
Mathematics Department was not in violation of title VI and recommended
the withdrawal of the violation LOF. On December 26, 1991, the Deputy
Assistant Secretary for Policy concurred and suggested revisions of the
draft investigative report to the regional office. The next 20 months were
spent by the regional office and headquarters exchanging drafts of the
revised LOF.</p>

<p>On August 8, 1993, OCR issued a revised LOF concerning the Mathematics
Department. It stated that because of new evidence, OCR had revised its
original findings and no violation had been found to have occurred.

</p>

[SV2]

<p>I’ve posted this before; these topics recycle. (And I know that as before Xiggi will have some scorching comments to make.)</p>

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

<p>

… 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."

</p>

<p>

Federal investigators also turned up stereotyping by Harvard admissions evaluators. Possibly reflecting a lack of cultural understanding, Harvard evaluators ranked Asian American candidates on average below whites in “personal qualities.” In comments written in applicants’ files, Harvard admissions staff repeatedly described Asian Americans as “being quiet/shy, science/math oriented, and hard workers,” the report found. One reader summed up an Asian applicant this way: “He’s quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor.”

</p>

<p>

He [Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt] added that the stereotype of the quiet Asian student is “really a strange notion. My Asian American students are very lively. They take leadership positions. They’re not at all shy or reticent.”

</p>

<p>

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.</p>

<p>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."

</p>

<p>

Lenny [college counselor at Hunter College High School] acknowledged that the failure of college admissions staffs and high school counselors to probe below these superficial similarities and get to know Asian Ameican students as individuals may reflect unconscious racism. As a “white melting-pot woman” she said, it may be harder for her to communicate with Asian students than it would be for an Asian counselor. At the time of my visit, none of Hunter’s counselors were Asian American."</p>

<p>…Hunter’s mission is to find and educate New York City’s most intellectually gifted students. … This system produces a student body that is nearly 40 percent Asian American, including many first-generation students.

</p>

<p>From chapter 10, “Ending the Preferences of Privilege”:</p>

<p>

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.</p>

<p>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.

</p>

[SV2]

<p>Great minds think alike, Xiggi, or at least great minds remember alike. ;)</p>

[barrons]

<p>And not being found legally guilty does not always mean there is a clean record. It might just mean UCLA had better lawyers, like OJ.</p>

[xiggi]

<p>Barrons, what is happening to you? Does your constant need to be contrarian start to impede your unabated and blind defense of public schools? </p>

<p>This is UCLA as in the University of California not USC. :)</p>

[barrons]

<p>I think the UC schools certainly do give Asians the shaft, expecially UCB and UCLA. I think they are limited in order to keep room for other minority students. The numbers are stark.</p>