<p>Personally, I find it refreshing that kids who don’t want, or like, to play sports every day of the week can distinguish themselves with other activities, including orchestra, academic teams, and rigorous course work. No doubt many people would think my son’s course schedule was “unrealistic and unhealthy”. We don’t begrudge other people the opportunity to ride buses all over the midwest for sports and music competitions, if that is how their kids find fulfillment. I find it amazing that people criticize Asians (and my son and other non-Asians) because they like to be challenged in the classroom. To each his own.</p>
<p>Yeah, but for better or for worse, all those things don’t mean diddlesquat compared with a first-rate, high quality, football quarterback.</p>
<p>That quarterback means more alumni funds, better research capabilities, better campus facilities, better teachers, more academic opportunities for students of all kinds.</p>
<p>I have a nerdy, geeky, SAT-aceing daughter. I don’t overestimate her Princeton value. (she chose a school where research opportunities, quality of studies in her major, and study abroad options were decidedly superior to Princeton, with less than half the drinking, and no football team.)</p>
<p>midmo, glad your son found his niche. I may be wrong, but I was sensing that you found his choices superior to other kids who chose sports, music, arts, or community service as theirs. I certainly think Mr. Li does. </p>
<p>I also contend that classes should be challenging, but no kid should feel compelled to skip lunch every day just to cram in another course. That’s unhealthy.</p>
<p>The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001, 378 pp.</p>
<p>Beer and Circus: How BigTime College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education Murray Sperber. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2000, 322 pp.</p>
<p>Intercollegiate Athletics and the American University: A University President’s Perspective James J. Duderstadt. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000, 331 pp. </p>
<p>“athletics = money = myth according to these books”</p>
<p>What’s interesting about Bowen’s book (which I happen to like) is that he wasn’t even able to convince the trustees of the university he was President of (which happened to be Princeton) that what he said was true (for them). </p>
<p>(The reality is that, given how little Princeton actually spends on big time athletics, it probably isn’t.)</p>
<p>“Last year, UMich accepted 578 Asian American applicants with combined SAT scores below 1320. It doesn’t seem like the SAT “bar” is set that high.”</p>
<p>Really?</p>
<p>you don’t consider difference of 80 points (per original posting) or 50 points per your number( I trust the former - more credibility)significant?</p>
<p>ask that to any kid…they retake the tests to improve 20-30-40 points.</p>
<p>How on earth could they find discrimination against Asian Americans at Swarthmore?</p>
<p>Asian American enrollment has increased from 1% in 1976 to 16% in 2006.</p>
<p>17% of this year’s freshman class is Asian American. 21% of this year’s acceptances went to Asian American students.</p>
<p>The acceptance rate for Asian Americans last year was 36%, some 1.5 times the overall acceptance rate.</p>
<p>52% of this year’s acceptances went to US minority students and internationals. 47% of this year’s freshman class is US minority or international students.</p>
<p>What possible justification could this Asian American group have for putting Swarthmore on this list? What percentage is this organization looking for? Would 100% be high enough?</p>
<p>It may be based on enrollment figures. Quite possibly, Swarthmore is viewed as a campus that’s not “Asian-friendly” which means that most who were accepted won’t go, OR maybe those who get into Swartmore also get into HYP and therefore go for the Ivy prestige.</p>
<p>In the case of the New England colleges, the area surrounding them is certainly more homogenous than it is further south or on the west coast. I know that schools such as Middlebury, Williams, and Dartmouth have more trouble than others in attracting minority, URM or otherwise.</p>
<p>If they believe that, they’ve obviously never set foot on the campus!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s based on a mindless mechanical spreadsheet. They’ve picked an arbitary number of years, with incomplete and inaccurate data and come up with an “average” Asian-American enrollment at a group of 25 schools, giving equal weight to all years. Their “control” group includes specialty schools (Julliard, Cooper Union, MIT, and CalTech) which have atypical Asian American enrollment). It’s just stupid.</p>
<p>To give you an example, Julliard is listed in the good category, even though their Asian American enrollment has fallen more than 50% in the last ten years and is currently below the rate at 6 of their “bad” schools including Princeton and Swarthmore.</p>
<p>" When Jian Li applied to start his freshman year at Princeton University this fall, he secretly hoped for the one thing most college appli cants dread: rejection.</p>
<p>Princeton fulfilled his secret wish, he said.</p>
<p>By doing so, the university unwittingly played into Li’s plan to spotlight alleged bias against Asian-American students in the ad missions offices of prestigious schools like Princeton.</p>
<p>And now Princeton finds itself under a federal civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which opened a case against Princeton in response to a complaint Li filed over the summer calling for the federal probe of his ad mission denial.</p>
<p>“I was actually hoping to be rejected by Princeton University so I could file a civil rights suit,” Li said in a telephone interview yesterday."</p>
<p>Sounds like a pretty sick guy. I’m sure that Yale now believes they made a mistake.</p>
<p>From the 3/16/06 Swarthmore student newspaper:
"From March 16 to April 26, Swarthmore will celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month by bringing culturally themed events such as film festivals, speakers and other shows and demonstrations to campus.</p>
<p>Led by student organizations such as SAO and Deshi, Asian Pacific American (APA) month seeks to recognize the important issues facing Pacific Islanders and the Eastern, Southern and Southeastern Asians. According to Hansi Lo Wang ’09, publicity chair of SAO, the implicit goal of the month is to celebrate the culture of all Asian Americans and increase awareness of Asian Pacific American Heritage on campus." </p>
<p>The above is quoted from an article from the Swarthmore student newspaper about a Heritage Month that celebrates the Asian-American presence.</p>
<p>I personally have never seen anything in any Swarthmore publication that has ever had any complaints in it from Asian-American students, and the Swarthmore students will certainly speak up if there is a problem. One of the most vocal (OK the most vocal) recent opinions columnists at Swarthmore is Asian-American and I don’t recall him ever saying anything negative about Swarthmore vis a vis Asian-American student life or admissions policies there. He would if he could. There is a notable presence on the campus, and really I just don’t see that Swarthmore has a problem in either Asian-American admissions or student life.</p>
<p>I understand that Mr. Li has a right to his opinion, and I have seen many EEOC conmplaints that are totally off-point, so figured he has as much right as anyone to voice his viewpoint with the Office of Civil Rights or any government office.</p>
<p>But now I see that if he is following the lead of Asianam.org, then he is misguided, as Swarthmore has nothing but positive attitudes and results in terms of having a diverse, representative student body, including Asian-Americans. If Asianam.org wants 100% of the student body at an LAC to be Asian-American, then they will have to start their own school and exclude all others. Which is fine, it is just that now their encouraging students to file frivolous complaints is expensive and time-consuming for all parties, and Swarthmore has better things to do than reply to ridiculous complaints by non-injured parties.</p>
<p>I don’t see why Bowdoin is on the list. When we visited Bowdoin, the admissions officer–himself an Asian-American, made it clear to parents that the school was trying hard to recruit more minorities, and for Bowdoin, that included Asian-Americans.
It’s a hard row to hoe. And yet, if one looks at the minority enrolments (which I looked up when S1 was considering colleges) most of the minority students were actually Asian-Americans (also the case at Bates). Only at Wesleyan were most of the minority students African-Americans.</p>
<p>This is from the Swarthmore website. However, such a high percent of Swarthmore students are minorities, that I just don’t think that Asianam.org is barking up the right tree.</p>
<p>Journal of Blacks in Higher Education Names Swarthmore New Leader in Enrolling Black Students</p>
<p>For the 14th consecutive year, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education published its survey of the percentages of black first-year students at the nation’s highest-ranked universities and liberal arts colleges.</p>
<p>This year, for the sixth time in the last eight years, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill leads the other universities in the percentage of black students in its first-year class. The Ivy League schools did well with Columbia leading the group.</p>
<p>Among the nation’s highest-ranked liberal arts institutions, there is a new leader. This year, Swarthmore College in suburban Philadelphia has the largest percentage of black students in its entering class.</p>
<p>Everything is relatively speaking, whare are the data of other ethnics? How many asian and other ethincs got accepted that have SAT score higher then 1320, what’s the percentage of each ethnics group in each SAT range?</p>
<p>asianam.com is talking about possible lower admission rate among asain in those colleges, and you are talking about high admission rate of black students, and you say they are barking at wrong tree? LOL, look who is doing that right now.</p>