UC Berkeley vs Stanford Asian Americans

beebthe1
Mon, 03 Dec 2012 11:38:32 +0000

In my post, I did not deny the possibility of discrimination; I wrote that it was not a totally satisfying answer so I posited something else from my experience — that the less-involved Asians at my old high school were, as a group, presenting applications to privates that did not fill the criteria that the colleges have. So…

@nosering — 2 good posts. On my issue on “involvement”, let’s assume for the moment that everyone here (you, Yupper, me) is accurate. Why the difference in the very ‘involvement’ that leads to a compelling application? Is it possible that your daughter’s school has some attribute that causes higher Asian student involvement than yupper’s school or mine? Is it possible that your daughter’s school has a much higher percentage of Asians, bringing them to a point where they feel more secure as a group? Is it possible that my old high school had subtle discrimination of which I wasn’t aware?

One more thing. I’m going to compare my high school’s Jewish students to my high school’s Asian students in one relevant regard. The Jewish students I knew generally applied to multiple top privates and 1 or 2 UC’s as safeties. The Asian students I knew rarely applied to top privates, but applied to 5 or 6 UC’s. For many of them, the question was “Will I get into Berkeley or UCLA, or will I go to Irvine or Davis?” (Just my experience, don’t know why)

This, of course, brings up an interesting question for which, unfortunately, there may not be data for an answer. The fact that 18% of Asians (not my figure) are enrolled at top privates does not by itself settle the discussion. For a place like Stanford, or Harvard, or Duke, we need to ask what percentage of of Asian applicants are being accepted? This would be easy for the UC’s using the UC Statfinder, but not so easy for the privates.

Answering this question is important because there MAY NOT EVEN BE A PROBLEM.

If qualified Asians are being accepted at a lower rate than other ethnicities, then there is some kind of problem — either outright discrimination, less involvement on the application, or something else. However, if Asians are being accepted at the SAME RATE, then there is no problem to discuss. Any data on this?