<p>the other complicating factor … Michigan and Cal are state schools while Princeton is a private instution … I would think making the case that a private school should have to take certain applicants would be A LOT tougher to make legally.</p>
<p>ellemenope, that was my thought exactly.</p>
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<p>The anti-African American legal lobby is slick in their legal strategy and wouldn’t want to go anywhere near this case.</p>
<p>First, it doesn’t incrementally push the legal boundaries. The core issues here have already been decided by Grutter and Gratz vs Mich cases. Racial preferences in admissions are allowable in the context of weighing many factors and not applying an automatic, rigid boost based solely on skin color. You’d never make the case that Princeton’s admissions process is mechanical or numeric. The next legal challenges will be against schools where it can be argued that there are such mechanical automatic preferences. For example, the anti-African American lobby is currently working hard to force colleges to eliminate scholarship and orientation programs for black students.</p>
<p>Second, the anti-African American lobby doesn’t want to complicate their legal strategy by going after private schools. That adds another layer of complexity to the case since government funding is secondary. There is government funding, but the legal case would get bogged down and you’d have justices looking for loopholes to avoid the central issue. </p>
<p>Third, it would be very tough to make a case for discrimination against Asian American applicants. They are over-represented in the student pool. The percentage of Asian American students is four times the percentage in the US population as a whole. A plausible explanation for Mr. Li’s rejection by Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and UPENN is not that he is Asian American, but that he came across as a jerk in his application. For a Yale student to “sue somebody” because he got rejected by other schools would qualify rather conclusively for world-class [jerk] status to a degree that might be hard to hide in the application.</p>
<p>I still think folks are missing the biggest (or at least most unique) part of the story:</p>
<p>Li is challenging Affirmative Action for legacy applicants and athletes.</p>
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<p>Yeah, I’m sure the George W. Bush (he of 1200 SATs at Yale fame) Justice Department is really going to want to pursue that one with a vengeance.</p>
<p>I didn’t miss that part of his complaint. I’m just wondering what legal grounds he has to attack legacy and athetic admits as discriminatory against Asian American students? Disparate Impact? Is that still a viable argument? Anyway, legacy and athlete preferences don’t operate as an absolute bar against admission. So what is the legal theory?</p>
<p>I’ve been following this thread with interest because I live across the hall from Jian Li at Yale. For the most part, I’ve found this thread to include reasonable arguments on both sides, but I’m a little disturbed by the way some posters have been trying to characterize Mr. Li.</p>
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<p>I actually happen to agree that suing Princeton lacks any basis, but to claim that makes him a jerk is very unfair. It would be nice if posters could discuss the issues underlying his complaint without launching into ad hominem attacks on someone they know very little about.</p>
<p>Legacy as an historic bar to all minority admissions, given the rate of minority admissions in previous generations were lower? Undue value placed on athletic recruitment relative to other ECs, with known and predictable impacts on Asian-American admissions?</p>
<p>I understand the claim that these two preferences have the effect of having a disparate impact on Asians on account of race in college admissions. But is that the legal theory here?</p>
<p>Why is it unfair to judge Mr. Li by his actions? </p>
<p>Nobody held a gun to his head to file the complaint. How else could you describe someone who gets into Yale and then wants to file a legal complaint against Princeton because they failed to give him another admissions trophy to hang on his wall?</p>
<p>Franky, from looking at his extensive list of rejections, he probably should be thankful that he’s at Yale and not Rutgers and that is certainly not because Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, and UPENN discriminate against Asian Americans.</p>
<p>Asian American enrollment in 2005/06:</p>
<p>Harvard: 18%
Princeton: 13%
Stanford: 24%
MIT: 27%
UPENN: 18%</p>
<p>Asian American percentage of US population (2000 Census): 4.2%</p>
<p>Ahhh…the sword of fame and infamy. It is cutting isn’t it, sval?</p>
<p>Presumably Mr Li is a clever lad. This suit may be partially about Mr Li’s (wrongheaded) attempts to rectify racial injustice, but really, it’s more about his personal righteousness. As it is unlikely to gain him admission into Princeton, it appears to be a quest for fame and by God, he’s got it.</p>
<p>Now, he is not only the boy accross the hall. Mr. Li has made himself a public figure. The American public is ‘free’ to judge ‘famous’ figures out loud. I believe the public judgement against Mr Li will be very, very harsh–detrimental to his standing at Yale, detrimental to his prospects at graduate school, detrimental to his future employment and detrimental to his fellow Asian students. ‘Jerk’ may be the mildest accusation. </p>
<p>You might want to keep a journal of the various reactions. Like the students at Duke, you are living next to an important event.</p>
<p>That’s the first thing that came to my mind when I read the original post: he can’t be a very popular person around campus now after the suit came out. Whatever his intentions in filing the law suit, I can’t imagine how he could keep Yale and its students from seeing this as a big slap in the face. I wonder how the students at Yale are reacting.</p>
<p>My problem, however, is that you really have no idea why he’s doing this. Having actually talked to him about this issue extensively (including before this lawsuit became public knowledge) I think he is doing this because he firmly believes that the current system is unfair and wrong. You may disagree with him, as do I, but to assume that he is a jerk who wasn’t satisfied with only getting into Yale seems somewhat unfair. After all, all you know about him comes from one news report.</p>
<p>As far as the reaction at Yale goes, it seems to me that very few people even know about this. Jian actually never told me he was suing Princeton, even though we’ve discussed the issues behind the lawsuit, and the only reason I even knew it was happening was because a friend’s brother happened to see a story about it. As far as I know, it is, as of now, a non-issue at Yale.</p>
<p>None of you are familiar with Mr. Li’s application, and for that reason, you are not qualified to make judgment on his character. Many of you also make the assumption that he, and not his application, was rejected. </p>
<p>Besides, there must be something special about his application to explain his acceptance to Yale.</p>
<p>How many of you actually believe that Li would transfer to any of the schools that rejected him if he were granted admission now? I personally don’t think so. I think that he filed this complaint for the benefit of Asian applicants in the future.</p>
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<p>Why is it unfair?</p>
<p>Look, his complaint is either the work of a self-centered jerk who thinks perfect SAT scores make him special or someone who isn’t very smart in terms of his statisitcal analysis of college admissions.</p>
<p>The extreme over-representation of Asian American students at Princeton and other highly-selective colleges and universities undercuts any suggestion of systemic discrimination.</p>
<p>In his quotes regarding his motivation, he said that he wanted to bring attention to his situation. He’s done that. Where’s the beef?</p>
<p>Had he been admitted to Princeton and not to Yale, do you think he would have sued the latter?</p>
<p>Point being that he was rejected at most of the “prestige schools” to which he applied, meaning he was “less qualifed” than those admitted. Maybe Yale made a mistake?</p>
<p>sval:</p>
<p>I appreciate your comments. Unfortunately, the story will become far better known soon, and Jian Li may well regret having embarked on his particular crusade. </p>
<p>I don’t why the percentage of Asian-Americans admitted at Princeton is lower than at peer institutions (which, except for Yale, rejected Jian Li, too, but he’s not suing them). One possible explanation (which may not apply to Li) was that under Fred Hagardon, there was a bias against urban applicants, and in favor of suburban athletic types, to the extent that Stuy had a hard time getting its students in (worked against Jews and Asian-Americans). Hagardon has since left, a big effort to convince Stuy students has been made and paid off. the point, however, is that it would be impossible to prove bias against urban Jews and Asians; though bias in favor of suburban athletes could be documented.</p>
<p>EDIT: It’s easy to explain why Jian Li was accepted at Yale but not elsewhere: He filled a need at Yale , but not at the other schools. He’s special for Yale, and not for the other schools.</p>
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<p>To be honest:</p>
<p>If my daughter had been rejected by five of the top six schools on her list and accepted by the sixth, I would chalk it up to a stroke of pure luck saving her from a miscalibrated application list. Dodging a bullet, if you will.</p>
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I think so. He certainly (at least as far as I can tell) has no intention of transferring to Princeton, so it’s not about getting in there. </p>
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Interesteddad: if you think that Jian Li’s belief that there is discrimination against Asian Americans is unusual, you are certainly wrong. In high school, I had the experience (analogous to the much more common accusation against URMs) of being told that the only reason I was accepted to the schools which accepted me was because I am white rather than Asian. Though Asians are overrepresented in terms of percentage of the population, they are underrepresented when one considers statistical measures of achievement like class rank and SAT. Though it’s obvious that those should not be the only factors considered, it still creates a legitimate argument that Asians are held to a higher academic standard. Jian Li’s argument, though flawed, is not illegitimate.</p>