I think a lot of this just gets down to colleges wanting diversity on campus and not wanting everyone to be the same. When kids have equal stats it is hard to choose and sometimes it just comes down to needed a student who is underrepresented on campus.
Seems like an underhanded way to game the system. Not sure a college would even want such an unethical student to even join. If they lie about that, what else are they willing to lie about?
That sounds painfully realistic. It exactly explains why they focus on race over economic diversity.
I don’t think that the white non-Jewish male don’t realize they are underrepresented it is more a question of who is going to listen. When my son, an average white male student, began his college search he routinely asked me “why would a school want me? I am just like thousands of other white males from an affluent suburb, what do I bring to the table?” To be honest I had a hard time answering him, I often fell back on looking at some schools that were in more rural states, that might find a bit of a hook in a more urban perspective.
In the end it all worked out for him and he is happy as can be. That said all he heard from his high school, admissions reps, the media, etc. was that he had nothing to offer as he did not fit in any bucket that provided a hook of any sort. I hate to make this about white privilege but in the end that was the space he was coming from, being white and male he had received enough over his 18 years and now the field was leveled, only the reality is the field is not level, it has just been tilted the other way.
If American Cultural Imperialism could just do it’s job faster and the planet becomes an American monoculture then Universities wouldn’t need to worry about that pesky diversity. Things would be so much easier.
@websensation I would love equal K-12 education for all children as well. I’m just not sure it would make the debate about college admissions disappear from a “bucket” perspective. How would we be able to look like America without taking America’s demographics into account? We want STEM students, we want history majors, we want conservatives, we want liberals, we want urban, rural, various religions, we want it all. Is the 3.92 North Dakota farming student more worthy than the 3.89 urban Compton student or the 4.0 athlete over the 3.95 Asian STEM-focused student? All deserving, all capable by academic standards. Still buckets, still decisions to be made, still debate on what we should value and who gets to determine that value.
Perhaps I’m being overly pessimistic and we would be better able to accept rejection (and teach our children to accept it too) if all things were “equal”. I’d certainly like the opportunity to find out and be pleasantly surprised.
As long as the most desired colleges are so selective that they are flooded with applicants with top-end academic credentials and use opaque holistic admissions processes with subjectively graded criteria, there will always be controversy and debate (regardless of whether those debating are correct on what the colleges actually do). Anything high stakes that is hidden from view will always generate speculation about favoritism, corruption, unfairness, etc… Such things may actually exist, although they can be exaggerated when outsiders speculate and talk about it.
The US focus on holistic admissions creates one of the more arbitrary and opaque admissions process in the world. Selecting the best future leaders across a wide range of areas sounds great in theory, until you look at how admissions works. Being a recruited athlete is one of the strongest hooks, but the NCAA was even running ads for awhile on how almost all their athletes were going pro in something other than sports. If we’re bragging about the leaders from a school at the top levels of government and business(CEOs, senators, congressmen), many of them applied to undergrad over 40 years ago, so their success might tell us little about the admissions process in place today.
There is also something called “building a class” which is a bit different than bucketing. It varies from year to year, but it’s a real phenomenon. Holistic admissions may be opaque, but they aren’t as fuzzy as people believe.
As a college consultant, I’ve analyzed dozens of my students’ admissions results (including my own sons) in order to extrapolate information that might be helpful for future students; patterns do emerge. College admissions is an interesting business, and I applaud those students who go in with confidence that they do have something to offer, regardless of their ethnic background, yet have a healthy understanding about the competitiveness of the most selective colleges, and are satisfied that they gave it their best shot.
Having said that, I’m certainly watching the lawsuit against Harvard with interest.
The author is a “she”. Anyway, as a person who grew up being called a “ch*nk” several times a week from both whites and blacks (note I also called them some names in retaliation), I believe we should all feel proud of our ethnic background. I am who I am. Having said this, my Asian-American kid, while living abroad in Asia as an expat for first 10 years of his life, only realized he was Asian, when he was around 8 years old. I think he associated his being a US citizen to being “white” for some reason. I still tease him about this time to time. Lol
When I first emigrated to US long time ago, I couldn’t understand why some white kids hated Jewish kids because to my eyes, they all looked the same except for their names ending in “stein” etc. Lol
The fact is that college admissions to the most selective colleges will never be “fair” in the eyes of everyone, especially for the thousands of applicants who are all highly qualified but nevertheless rejected. The concept of “merit” (or who is deserving) is completely subjective once we venture out of the world of standardized tests, and even there reasonable people can raise issues of test bias and the role of access to prep, especially paid prep. Assessing high school records also contains some level of subjective judgments, e.g. grade inflation, class rigor, intra-school competition…
What we have to realize is that these highly selective colleges are trying to build an undergraduate body that serves institutional goals that that college has set. The goals themselves are diverse and extend well beyond building classes comprised of individuals with the highest test scores and high school academic achievement. Some of the goals have to do with what the school believes creates the best educational environment for all students where “soft” factors such as demonstration of curiosity, diversity of background, talents, interests and perspectives are all considered factors which enrich the overall educational experience. Some goals have to do enhancing the social life of the campus where athletics, attributes of leadership, community and selflessness are valued. Finally, there are more selfish institutional goals related to development and alumni engagement, maintaining leadership in certain departments and perhaps shoring up others. Each institution has different goals and different priorities of goals. MIT and Caltech desire a much different student body than HYPS, and even within HYPS I am sure there are differences in what they feel is an optimal class makeup. For these schools and others with sub 20% admissions rates, they really are the consumers in the college selection process and not the sellers. Like a master chef, even if lobster and filet are their favorite proteins to work with, a complete meal will require other ingredients (but of the highest quality within that category). That being the case, if there are more perfectly good lobsters and filets available than the chef can use, those just won’t be purchased. So it is that every year there are super high quality students that don’t find a place at a highly selective because the supply of them is just greater than the demand.
I can understand why the author of the article did what he did (and why other Asians whether on their own or through these consulting services) are trying to disguise the fact they are Asian or set themselves apart from Asian stereotypes. They are simply responding to the fact that there is (or at least a perception that there is) an oversupply of stereotypical Asians (high stat’s, STEM based interests, piano/violin, individual sports, etc…), and the goal of getting into a highly selective school is a paramount goal because that is the best means to success (usually in professional/economic terms). What is disturbing is that some of these individuals may be doing this at the cost of developing their true talents and interests in the pursuit of a goal (getting into HYPSCM) which actually has a lower correlation to their ultimate goal of having a successful career/happy life than they think. A lot of this can be laid at the feet of their parents who grew up in a world where attending Seoul National University, University of Tokyo, Tsinghua or Peking University, or National Taiwan University gave a huge leg up to graduates. Interestingly, what may be a benefit of high achieving Asians moving away from stereotypical activities is that it will allow Asian kids who are more interested in non-STEM related fields, who want to play the drums, who want play a team sport, who want to pursue advocacy, more freedom to do so as their parents realize the narrow interests that they had assumed was the surest way to success is crowded and not necessarily the best path.
A great article on this topic was in the NYT recently https://nyti.ms/2z3hzGp
My Asian kid did not need to ‘whitewash’ her college applications in any way because there is not one thing on it that would indicate she is Asian. Many times in her life she’s shown up for an interview, a try out, a new school and you can actually see the person call out her name and do a double take when this Chinese kid answers “here” to the Irish name.
The only thing that indicated she was Asian was her checking the optional race box on the application. She thought long and hard about that before she decide to check the box, not because she was trying to hide that she is Asian but because she doesn’t identify as Asian. If they asked ethnically if she was Asian/Chinese, she would have said no, she’s American, but it asked about race and she is racially Asian.
@BKSquared , I don’t think you can hide your racial identity in college application. There is a section in Common App
where you have to provide information about your parents, where they were born, where they went to college. Colleges know you are an Asian no matter what box you check or leave blank.
@TimeUpJunior, the point of the original linked article was that the author did in fact try to hide his identity by not checking off his racial/ethnic identity and did not write about his heritage in any essays or short questions along with other techniques to “whitewash” his identity. Some surnames will be a dead giveaway, but others are ambiguous and the applicant can be of mixed heritage where the surname is not Asian. As far as parents’ place of birth is concerned, it would only be a giveaway if the parent were born overseas and had a unmistakable ethnic surname. I also played around with that field on the Common App. It can be kept blank as it is not an asterisked required field, although I obviously could not hit a “submit” button to see if an error message would come up. I agree that in many cases the AO will be able to figure out your racial identity even if you try to hide it, but the fact is that there are many who try.
Parent name, birthplace, and college (if any) do not definitively indicate race or ethnicity of the parent or kid.
Suppose someone named Robert Edward Lee was born in California and attended San Jose State University. What can you assume about his race/ethnicity?
They should have a separate box for “Human Race”.
As I said, NOTHING on the application indicated that my daughter is Asian. I (parent) was born in the USA and attended school here, so that section wouldn’t give her away either. We have Irish names. The only thing that gave her away was that she checked the box. I don’t think it mattered one bit in the long run.
My daughter plays a sport and I watch/listen to her games on a Stream. The announcer, who is working off an info sheet but has actually met my D and can see that she’s Chinese, goes on and on about how she was born in Denver (not correct), that she moved many times and went to several high schools (true) because she’s from a military family (not true). People come to their own conclusions when looking at ‘facts’.
Even if everything on the application screams typical Asian, admitting the student will not increase Asian % on the college’s demographic report as long as the student did mark on the “OPTIONAL” race checkbox. And that could be an advantage enough.
I read the article and the author compares his outcome (Yale) to a similar student who ended up at the University of Pennsylvania. I’m sorry, but it’s hard to have sympathy for this “discrimination” when the student who embraced “Asian extracurriculars” ended up at U Penn - a phenomenal university with a wealth of opportunity. If applicants are viewing admission as some kind of trophy, perhaps that is why select universities are turning them away.
Well, if the applicant viewed admission as some kind of trophy, Yale didn’t turn him away.
It all comes down to identity politics. Diversity is just another word for racism. It’s sad that the author felt she had to hide who she was because the system was stacked against her.