<p>
Simba, as related to Af Am you are wrong. We are not pushing our kids to apply to the Ivies or top ranked schools. And the white parents I know are encouraging their kids to apply to schools that offer good merit or athletic scholarships. In fact, I know only one Af Am HS student who is considering an Ivy school. She is applying early to Columbia. Her RD list is Gonzaga, UW, and WSU.</p>
<p>One has to question that princeton study. The data show that fewer than half the applicants are white. Hard to believe. </p>
<p>Also, although asians have somewhat higher SAT scores, they are still outnumbered at the upper SAT levels by whites purely by dint of aggregate populations numbers. I’d like to know what three schools they picked to come up with these conclusions. Its simply not credible that in a combined list of Asianand white applicants who just missed being accepted that 4 of 5 are Asian. </p>
<p>Bowen and the Mellon foundation have several axes to grind, and have refused in the past to allow anyone to look at their data who doesn’t already agree with their conclusions. I find that study and its conclusion highly dubious. It frankly looks concocted to argue to the white majority that affrimative action only displaces Asians. I suspect the discovery in the lawsuit will shine the light on the data in a way that is not too flattering to the author and the Mellon foundation.</p>
<p>“I suspect the discovery in the lawsuit will shine the light on the data in a way that is not too flattering to the author and the Mellon foundation.”</p>
<p>What lawsuit are you referring to? So far Mr. Li has “only” filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights. Is there a similar lawsuit filed at this time?</p>
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<p>Just to stir the pot a bit more, here’s another anecdote on a related point.</p>
<p>On average, URM law students, especially black students, get much lower grades than their white counterparts; this is an extremely robust finding that reaches from the fourth tier into the bottom of the Top Ten. Several Chicago law schools offer free pre-orientation training. The concept is that for a week before other students arrive on campus, interested students can attend mock law classes where they gain practice in law school skill reading cases, the Socratic method, etc. The program is designed to help minority students start off on the right foot, but it is open to everyone. The classes are taught by local lawyers who volunteer their time.</p>
<p>A couple of years ago, I volunteered. Guess who showed up to take the class at Northwestern Law School? Mostly white kids. You might speculate that this is because URMs need the money from an extra few days of summer work, but I doubt it, because most of the URMs at law schools like Northwestern are middle class and above, just like the white students. The vast majority of students of every color take out huge loans for law school, and they’re living on the loans. I quit the program after one year, because I want to spend volunteer hours on people who really need help. </p>
<p>I don’t know what can be done about this. We know that there’s a population in need of support, we try to offer help, and they don’t take advantage of it; instead, the kids who are already going to do fine show up to get an extra edge. Either the URMs had false confidence in their abilities, or they were more worried about being seen as asking for help than they were about actually doing well…it starts to look like the kind of problem that needs to be addressed by the community, because I don’t know what else schools can do.</p>
<p>Putting aside the whole ethnic group (Asian, African American, Caucasian) discussion, I am not sure I agree with Northstarmom’s assumption that “students who were extremely focused on studying and weren’t as interested in ECs – probably are more valued at LACs, which pride themselves on producing many students who eventually get doctorates. Places like HPY are more interested in producing leaders in a variety of fields, not scholars, which is why such colleges put a lot of emphasis on ECs in admission.” </p>
<p>The LACs my daughter considered (she is a student at Swarthmore) seek students who intend to be involved in a variety of activities outside the classroom such as music, theatre, athletics, publications, community service, etc. LACs typically have such a small student body that most students need to take part in one or more activity in order to have the activities thrive. I believe that intention and potential to contribute to the campus community in addition to academics is a major factor in admission to LACs.</p>
<p>“Simba, as related to Af Am you are wrong. We are not pushing our kids to apply to the Ivies or top ranked schools”</p>
<p>True. When it comes to blacks in the U.S., the people who are pushing their kids to apply to Ivies and top ranked schools are the parents who immigrated from Africa or the Caribbean.</p>
<p>The African Americans who don’t fit in those categories and who want their kids to go to college are starting their kids in football and basketball from early ages and are hoping that sports will be their kids’ tickets to financial and academic success. </p>
<p>Sadly, a very large proportion of African Americans also are doing their best to try to help ensure that their sons simply graduate from high school. </p>
<p>Most of the high achieving black students who are taking the classes that could lead to their being Ivy bound are the only black students in their classes. This is true often even if they are in predominantly black schools that happen to have magnet programs like IB.</p>
<p>My Ss went out of our excellent school zone to go to an IB magnet program in a very low performing high school that was about 80% black. To my surprise, my sons often were the only black males in their IB classes. When it came to the higher level math IB classes which my younger S took, he was the only black student in the class.</p>
<p>Despite both of my sons having PSAT scores in the 96-98th ercentile and – both earning National Merit Commended , and having SATs in the 98th-99th percentile-- no one except my husband and I was concerned when both sons carried unweighted averages of about 2.9. The black principal wasn’t concerned. The white head of IB indeed congratulated younger S on his report card.</p>
<p>Why? My sons were being compared with the average black males at their school – students who had been held back so much that they entered 9th grade at age 16; students who on the whole ended up being funneled into GED programs because they couldn’t pass the state-required high school graduation exams.</p>
<p>The situation for African American females is better on the whole because they tend to have higher grades and graduation rates, but merit aid and perhaps athletic scholarships to an HBCU or a state university are what their top students’ parents hope for. It’s very rare even for absolutely outstanding African American females for their parents to consider their applying to Ivies.</p>
<p>I am an alum interviewer for Harvard and live in an area where 42% of the school students are black, and there are many doctorate-holding black professionals who are college profs at 2nd or 3rd tier colleges. While I’ve seen black students applying to Ivies from my area, all were either of Nigerian heritage or were mixed race such as being part Asian. My older S applied to an Ivy (and was justifiably rejected probably due to his low grades), but even he is 1/4 Caribbean and 1/4 black Canadian.</p>
<p>I agree with Mother of Two. Because LACs are so small, the top ones must select their admits the way the Ivy League does - on leadership and ECs in addition to the stats. Otherwise, they couldn’t distinguish among the applicants.</p>
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<p>OK. Here you go. This data is from the WebCasper IPEDS database. 2000 is the most recent year available, so the percentages are a bit lower than they are today as diversity (and especially Asian American enrollment) continutes to increase. However, the rough order probably hasn’t changed much.</p>
<p>The university list is all of the private universities on the top tier page of the current USNEWS rankings. The LAC list is the top 50 or so from the current USNEWS rankings.</p>
<p>The percentage is the percentage of Asian Americans in the undergrad population at each school:</p>
<p>Top Liberal Arts Colleges
Percentage of Asian American Undergrads (Fall 2000)</p>
<p>
23.3% Wellesley College
21.4% Barnard College
21.1% Harvey Mudd College
18.1% Occidental College
16.8% Claremont McKenna College
16.6% Bryn Mawr College
14.2% Swarthmore College
14.0% Scripps College
13.7% Pomona College
11.2% Amherst College
11.1% Pitzer College
10.2% Haverford College
9.7% Smith College
9.1% Williams College
9.1% Mount Holyoke College
8.8% Vassar College
8.2% Carleton College
7.6% Wesleyan University
7.4% Bowdoin College
7.1% Trinity University
6.5% Oberlin College
6.3% Whitman College
5.1% Sarah Lawrence College
5.0% Colgate University
4.9% Bucknell University
4.8% Reed College
4.6% Middlebury College
4.6% Macalester College
4.5% Colby College
4.4% Grinnell College
4.3% Union College (Schenectady, NY)
4.1% Bates College
3.9% Hamilton College
3.9% Colorado College
3.7% Franklin and Marshall College
3.6% Skidmore College
3.0% College of the Holy Cross
2.9% Wabash College
2.8% Kenyon College
2.7% Lawrence University
2.6% Dickinson College
2.6% Connecticut College
2.5% Rhodes College
2.4% Davidson College
2.3% Denison University
2.2% Bard College
1.6% University of Richmond
1.6% Lafayette College
1.6% Furman University
1.3% DePauw University
1.2% Gettysburg College
1.1% University of the South
1.1% Washington and Lee University
0.9% Centre College
**Top Private Universities Percentage of Asian American Undergrads (Fall 2000)**
27.4% Massachusetts Institute of Technology
25.6% University of the Pacific
24.9% California Institute of Technology
22.6% University of Southern California
21.8% Stevens Institute of Technology
21.0% Stanford University
20.1% Carnegie Mellon University
18.0% University of Chicago
17.8% University of Pennsylvania
15.4% Rice University
15.4% Emory University
15.3% Cornell University, All Campuses
15.1% Northwestern Univ
15.0% Johns Hopkins University
14.4% Yale University
14.3% Brown University
14.2% Harvard University
14.1% New York University
13.1% Tufts University
13.1% Case Western Reserve University
12.7% Columbia University in the City of New York
12.5% Princeton University
12.3% Drexel University
12.1% Duke University
12.1% University of Rochester
11.9% Loyola University of Chicago
11.4% Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
11.0% Boston University
10.8% Washington University
10.1% Dartmouth College
9.7% George Washington University
9.5% Brandeis University
8.8% Georgetown University
7.4% Boston College
7.0% Worcester Polytechnic Institute
7.0% Pepperdine University
6.7% University of San Diego
5.9% Vanderbilt University
5.9% Southern Methodist University
5.9% Northeastern University
5.3% Tulane University
5.3% Lehigh University
5.2% Baylor University
4.8% Fordham University
4.7% University of Miami
4.5% Syracuse University, Main Campus
4.3% Marquette University
4.3% Catholic University of America
4.0% Clark University
3.9% American University
3.9% University of Notre Dame
3.6% St Louis University, Main Campus
2.3% Brigham Young University, Main Campus
2.3% Wake Forest University
2.0% Texas Christian University
0.9% Howard University
0.1% Yeshiva University
</p>
<p>From what I (admittedly, am not an expert) have seen with Asian families, the ones who are pushing their kids to go to top colleges want their kids to go to places like HPYS. Somehow, the top LACs don’t seem to be on their radar. </p>
<p>However, as is the case with places like HPYS, the LACS want their student bodies to have diversity of race, ethnicity, national origin, socioeconomic status, majors, etc. The LACs also do not seem to put as much emphasis on campus life as do places like HPYS, which literally have hundreds of different types of ECs all of which need active, involved students for the organizations to continue.</p>
<p>Anyway, if there is a shortage of Asian applicants, then I would assume that Asians whose stats qualify them for admission who have ECs that would be considered weak or ordinary for HPYS still may be able to get into top LACs because the LACs would welcome the racial diversity those students would bring. Those colleges may rather have 15 Asian National Honor Society member, violin-playing, biochemistry majors in their freshmen class than to have no Asians at all.</p>
<p>Anyway, this is all supposition, but I would welcome reflections from those who may be more informed about this than I am. I do know that as of 2005, Asians were included in Grinnell’s summer honors science program for rising h.s. seniors, which told me that Grinnell was trying to attract Asians.</p>
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<p>I don’t know about that for Nobel Prize winners. Graduates of he top three ranked LACs alone account for five Nobel Prize winners in the last five years (Swarthmore 2, Amherst 2, Williams 1). Swarthmore and Amherst grads won 2 Nobels this year alone.</p>
<p>Also, I might count ultra selective colleges as being overrepresented in the ranks of NFL head coaches. 10% of the current NFL coaches graduated from Yale or Wesleyan.</p>
<p>Over time, you see a drop off. The largest group of MacArthur Fellows comes from the Rhode Island School of Design. Not that I think it matters. If the HYPSAWS, etc. students of the world attended elsewhere they’d be just as likely to succeed, and since there are more and more “qualified” students rejected from these places, their talents and gifts are showing up elsewhere. (Be fun to track Wall Street felons.)</p>
<p>I say this having attended a fine prestigious institution, and my daughter doing the same. They are increasingly irrelevant to our national life (though they help sell a lot of magazines.) They do offer an excellent education, or at least they have the money to do so.</p>
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</p>
<p>I stand corrected. Too bad for transparency, since the OCR will likely have precious little interest in examining whether Princeton’s top rejects are 4/5 Asian, since
<p>I stand by my comment that the study that inflamed Li’s complaint is likely “rigged”.</p>
<p>Now, that I’ve got a handy spreadsheet, might as well put it to use. Here’s the same lists of top ranked LACs and Universities, with the percentage of non-white or non-US students in Fall 2000. </p>
<p>Liberal Arts Colleges (Fall 2000)
Percentage of Af Am, Asian Am, Latino, and International</p>
<p>
43.4% Occidental College
41.6% Wellesley College
39.3% Swarthmore College
36.1% Claremont McKenna College
35.5% Barnard College
34.1% Pitzer College
33.3% Mount Holyoke College
31.1% Bryn Mawr College
30.3% Amherst College
29.3% Harvey Mudd College
28.3% Williams College
27.4% Pomona College
26.9% Wesleyan University
26.2% Smith College
25.5% Scripps College
24.8% Haverford College
24.8% Macalester College
24.1% Oberlin College
23.5% Vassar College
20.4% Trinity University
20.2% Grinnell College
20.2% Middlebury College
18.9% Wabash College
17.2% Franklin and Marshall College
16.9% Sarah Lawrence College
16.8% Carleton College
16.4% Bowdoin College
16.2% Colgate University
16.2% Connecticut College
16.0% Union College (Schenectady, NY)
15.6% Colorado College
15.1% Bard College
15.0% Hamilton College
13.9% Denison University
13.8% Davidson College
13.7% Lawrence University
13.5% Reed College
13.3% University of Richmond
13.2% Whitman College
13.1% Bucknell University
12.6% Colby College
12.4% Lafayette College
12.3% Skidmore College
12.3% Bates College
11.8% College of the Holy Cross
11.3% DePauw University
11.1% Kenyon College
9.8% Rhodes College
9.8% Furman University
9.3% Washington and Lee University
7.9% University of the South
7.1% Dickinson College
6.7% Gettysburg College
6.3% Centre College
**National Universities (Fall 2000) Percentage of Af Am, Asian Am, Latino, and International**
99.4% Howard University
55.0% Massachusetts Institute of Technology
50.9% University of Miami
50.3% University of Southern California
44.3% Stevens Institute of Technology
43.5% University of the Pacific
42.3% Stanford University
41.6% California Institute of Technology
40.7% Columbia University in the City of New York
39.1% Carnegie Mellon University
36.9% University of Pennsylvania
36.0% University of Chicago
34.7% Rice University
34.4% Cornell University, All Campuses
33.8% Yale University
33.6% Brown University
33.4% Tufts University
33.2% Harvard University
32.6% Loyola University of Chicago
32.1% Johns Hopkins University
32.1% Princeton University
32.0% New York University
31.9% Pepperdine University
30.1% Emory University
30.0% Duke University
29.8% Northwestern Univ
29.8% Drexel University
29.4% American University
29.3% Georgetown University
28.0% Boston University
27.8% Dartmouth College
27.7% George Washington University
26.2% University of San Diego
25.4% University of Rochester
25.1% Washington University
25.0% Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
24.7% Southern Methodist University
23.6% Case Western Reserve University
23.4% Fordham University
20.6% Brandeis University
20.5% Tulane University
20.5% Baylor University
19.9% Clark University
19.7% Northeastern University
19.5% Boston College
19.3% Syracuse University, Main Campus
19.2% Catholic University of America
16.9% Vanderbilt University
16.6% Texas Christian University
16.5% University of Notre Dame
16.3% Worcester Polytechnic Institute
15.3% Marquette University
15.3% Lehigh University
14.8% St Louis University, Main Campus
11.9% Wake Forest University
8.5% Brigham Young University, Main Campus
0.3% Yeshiva University
</p>
<p>"Somehow, the top LACs don’t seem to be on their radar. "</p>
<p>That certainly might be true. I must confess that before I found this site, I had no clue about LAC. Some of us immigrants are just ingnorant. I frankly was surprised when parents were happy that their child got admission in to Smith or Reed or Swarthmore. It was only after xiggi mentioned that he will go to CMC I started looking at them. Somehow many of us equate LAC as a place only rich girls go. In India, overwhelming majority of girls go to YYY Arts college. My sister went to one and 80% of them were girls.</p>
<p>That was a very interesting post about your sons, Northstarmom. I’d like to support one of your observations. My daughter was accepted at several elite NYC high schools and scholarships to a couple of private schools, but chose to attend the IB program in a predominantly black public high school (because of academics and because she thought they would be more accepting of the fact that she is, shall we say, a unique individual). It’s not predominantly minority or African or Caribbean, but specifically black American. So she joins this program and we’re thinking she’s getting some diversity in her life (she came from a very diverse middle school), but I almost fell over when she told me that there are NO black students in her classes, except her non-IB elective. None. Zero. The donut. I was truly stunned and haven’t yet processed it. A couple of hispanic students coming from private schools and a couple of SE Asian students, but that’s it. Mostly middle class and above white kids, many Jewish, who don’t live in the area.</p>
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</p>
<p>Well, NSMom, while I am not “more informed” than you on this issue, I believe that this would NOT be the case at all at the LAC I attend. A few years ago, the Dean of Admissions had to offer a public apology for having stated that the school was NOT very interested in the type of Asian student you described. At that time, in response to a question why the percentage of Asians was lower at CMC than at other Californian leading schools, he pointed towards the excessive pursuit of individual awards and recognition over team spirit, and the absence of true leadership and passion among many asian students. Before using his comment as fodder or proof for discrimination claims, one has to understand that the school does welcome --and accept- asians who fit the profile of the school with open arms and wallets. The school is however known for valuing and rewarding extra-curricular activities, and especially athletic and leadership ones. In this regard, an article published in the Spring of 2006 is very telling:
<a href=“http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/news/cmcmagazine/2006spring/Admission/[/url]”>http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/news/cmcmagazine/2006spring/Admission/</a>
</p>
<p>Oh, and for what it is worth, I also happen to believe that, by being almost exclusively residential colleges, LACs have to maintain a high focus on campus life and student’s participation. This said. I may have misunderstood your definition of campus life.</p>
<p>“At that time, in response to a question why the percentage of Asians was lower at CMC than at other Californian leading schools, he pointed towards the excessive pursuit of individual awards and recognition over team spirit, and the absence of true leadership and passion among many asian students”</p>
<p>That statement shows a profound ignorance and a bigotry that is beyond belief.</p>
<p>I would have fired his ***.</p>
<p>“an IB magnet program in a very low performing high school that was about 80% black. To my surprise, my sons often were the only black males in their IB classes.”</p>
<p>In your observation, how much do you think various factors contributed to this phenomenon? Did you see HS teachers failing to encourage the black kids to excel, or black kids not having the grades/scores to get into the IB program, or black parents having lower expectations and not requiring their children to take a challenging schedule? Or some combination of the above?</p>
<p>“Oh, and for what it is worth, I also happen to believe that, by being almost exclusively residential colleges, LACs have to maintain a high focus on campus life and student’s participation. This said. I may have misunderstood your definition of campus life.”</p>
<p>Having never gone to a LAC, I don’t have personal experience with the difference between the LAC experience and what I had at Harvard undergrad and what I saw at Stanford in my one year there as a grad student. </p>
<p>However, what I especially experienced at Harvard was that most students were putting a lot of time into ECs, and the college greatly encouraged this by having, for instance a couple of “reading weeks” weeks at the end of the semester. During this time, students literally caught up on all of the academic things they’d put off while, for instance, spending 30+ hours a week on one of the campus newspapers (though the school doesn’t have a journalism major) or spending a similar amount of time organizing theater productions for a college that lacks a major in drama.</p>
<p>My impression – which admittedly may be wrong – is that level of involvement in campus activities is a hallmark schools like HPYS, but isn’t at all what’s expected or even wanted by top liberal arts colleges or most other colleges. One reason is that colleges would justifiably fear that students’ grades would suffer (which certainly would happen at Harvard without the reading period and grading policies which are easier than at many other colleges, particularly many LACs.). The other reason is that LACs do view themselves as havens for the true intellectuals and scholars and launching pads for students desiring academic and research careers. Consequently, LACs may value more students who, frankly, study more and do ECs less than do students at HPYS.</p>
<p>I do not mean to suggest that there’s no campus life on LACs. My impression, however, is that what students and the administrators most value is the learning that goes on in class. That’s what the LAC students and alum whom I know seem to appreciate most about their college experience – the intellectual stimulation. From what I’ve seen, however, Harvard grads and students tend to appreciate most their interaction with other students, and their freedom to pursue in depth ECs.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’m guessing that while, of course, LACs prefer students who’d add to the campus life and not spend 4 years holed away in the library, the top LACs may view someone who was NHS president and did some community-service projects with NHS or who was a class officer or a school newspaper editor as having had strong ECs. Meanwhile, such ECs would be unremarkable in a HPYS pool where to stand out one might need to be the national NHS president or to have written for a professional media publication.</p>
<p>The differences that I’ve noticed between the (admittedly small) numbers of students and alum whom I know who attended top LACs and those who went to places like HPYS are that the top LAC students appear to be smarter and more scholarly, but less active in ECs (though they were in ECs, including having had offices). The HPYS seem to be much more active in ECs, particularly in terms of doing things outside of the box and with leadership with a major impact.</p>
<p>Northstarmom, I went to Dartmouth. My daughter goes to Smith. The emphasis on ECs and leadership is the same in the Ivy and the LAC.</p>