<p>HYP is an obvious exception, as is perhaps Swarthmore given its current diverse student body. But schools like Wesleyan, Vassar, Tufts? They don’t have unlimited FA budgets, and given the choice between a higher-stat well-off URM and a lower-stat poor URM, both with demonstrated interest and passion, why wouldn’t they choose the former? Part of the resistance against socioeconomic AA, I think, is the huge financial aid commitment necessary.</p>
<p>^^^ But aren’t LACs looking to diversify with Asians?</p>
<p>Asians made up 16%, 12%, and 10% of recent freshman classes at Swarthmore, Williams, and Amherst, respectively.</p>
<p>Go “down” the rankings and you still find that Asians are “overrepresented.” Oberlin was 7%, and Bowdoin was 12%.</p>
<p>Quite frankly, it’s hard to find a top-ranked LAC that doesn’t have an “overrepresentation” of Asians.</p>
<p>What percentage would be an accurate representation?</p>
<p>I think the last reported census figures (2004?) show about 5% of the U.S. population was Asian or about 4% of U.S. 15- to 19-year-olds were Asian.</p>
<p>If they’re over-represented then why do many Asians believe they’re being discriminated against in favor of blacks? Isn’t the over-representation evidence of the meritocracy they want to see?</p>
<p>Speaking of over-representation of Asians, when I spoke to the Assistant Director of Undergrad Business at Indiana Univ., he told me that I would be more likely to get into USC because I’m white, and that the majority of applicants at certain California schools are Asian. He said that white people even fall into the same category as Hispanics. I found that to be quite interesting, although I’m sure he exaggerated a little.</p>
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<p>The issue to check would be the proportion in the college-applying population of people who have completed college-preparatory course work. Here’s a source on that issue: </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.act.org/news/data/08/pdf/three.pdf[/url]”>http://www.act.org/news/data/08/pdf/three.pdf</a></p>
<p>Are blacks overrepresented to the point that Asians are? Are whites overrepresented to the degree Asians are? Hispanics? Native Americans? If Asians are overrepresented by double to triple the degree they are present in the population, doesn’t that account for the degree to which they are achieving higher ACT proficiency? What would be a reasonable degree/%age of representation? And, I must presume we’re talking top institutions here, as any that aren’t accept students at rates around 60%+.</p>
<p>Last I looked, the % of Pell grant recipients were pretty equal among Amherst, Wesleyan, Williams and Swarthmore.</p>
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<p>Did you fully think this through before you posted it? “Overrepresentation” is not evidence against discrimination.</p>
<p>Harvard’s 1908 freshman class was seven percent Jewish. Fourteen years later, it was more than twenty percent.</p>
<p>Then-President Lowell made no attempt to disguise his dislike of Jews and tried his best to reduce Jewish enrollment. Neither quotas nor geographic preferences succeeded. But, “holistic” admissions worked marvelously. From 1922 to 1933, Jewish enrollment decreased from over twenty percent to fifteen percent. ([Source](<a href=“Getting In | The New Yorker”>Getting In | The New Yorker)</a>)</p>
<p>(It is a supreme, supreme irony that “holistic” admissions - the much lauded vehicle of inclusion and “diversity” - originated from a desire to exclude and discriminate.)</p>
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<p>That’s the take-home point here, and that is why merely counting students of different specified categories will not prove that there isn’t active discrimination by those categories in the college admission process. </p>
<p>But since the history of this issue has been brought up more than once, let’s ask ourselves why “Jewish” is NOT a federally recognized ethnic category on college application forms. Why is that category generally invisible in the college application process, and not inquired about at all in the federal effort to gather statistics?</p>
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<p>I don’t know the answer to this; I asssume it is because “Jewish” is considered a religion, which in our country is presumed to be a choice, not an in-born race or ethnicity. If it were accounted for, it would certainly open another can of worms when it is discovered how under-represented WASPS are in the Ivy League and other top universities.</p>
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<p>Nor do I know the answer to this, definitively, although I would recommend checking Jerome Karabel’s book The Chosen </p>
<p>[Amazon.com:</a> The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton: Jerome Karabel: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Chosen-History-Admission-Exclusion-Princeton/dp/061877355X/]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Chosen-History-Admission-Exclusion-Princeton/dp/061877355X/) </p>
<p>for citations of some of the history of this issue. My impression about events that happened before I was born is that after World War II and the documentation of the Holocaust, it was considered extremely odious to inquire about who is Jewish and who is not, and many colleges that formerly tracked that information about applicants, to exclude Jewish people, dropped the practice of even inquiring, which made it more possible for Jewish applicants to gain admission on an even-handed basis. </p>
<p>And this is why I respectfully disagree with the idea that if certain ethnic groups are not counted by the federal government (as they are today), then applicants from those groups will surely fare poorly in the admission process. I think a race-blind admission policy could (and my best guess is would) do just fine in admitting outstanding young people of all ethnic groups to all the most outstanding and desirable colleges. Because, as was mentioned above, most colleges admit the great majority of their applicants, this really is only an issue at a few dozen highly selective colleges anyway. Anyone in the United States who can afford to pay tuition can attend college, and dealing with people who can’t afford to pay tuition is a separate issue.</p>
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<p>What will prove it?</p>
<p>I think the larger elephant in the living room is class, not race or ethnicity. But to stay on topic, whether Jewish is a race or a religion is much debated, although Hitler didn’t have any such qualms. Most Jews - not all - feel it is both. Certainly there are may Jews who are atheists but self-identify strongly as Jews. And Israel does not ask you how many times you go to synagogue when they accept you in their right of return. I am very glad you brought this subject up. Personally, I can say that the little boxes open to me do NOT accurately reflect my own self-identity. I don’t feel ‘white’ - I am definitely discriminated against far more than a Christian mainstream white person - but there is no other box I can check. Middle Eastern? Sure, my ancestors, but not me. I read “The Chosen: The Hidden History” (above) and it was depressingly eye-opening. But in addition to the idea that to identify people as Jews Post-Holocaust is odious, there is the additional fact that Jews are considered almost ‘too successful’ (still) to ‘need’ special treatment. And yes, anti-semitism is still alive and well. I hear it A LOT as a public school teacher of middle schoolers (for instance, the ‘joke:’ “What’s the difference between a Jew and a pizza? Answer: Pizza doesn’t scream when you put it in the oven.). Recently, in trying out for a movie job, I was asked about my ‘ethnicity.’ I had no idea what to write in (they wanted something)–to be perfectly honest, I was afraid to write 'Jewish” or “Israeli” (part of my background) because there are still plenty of people who would love to knock a Jew down, believe me. It’s sad that I would feel hesitant to write “Jewish” even though that is what I am, yet if I were, say, English, I would have no such qualms.</p>
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<p>What has proven discrimination by race in past court cases is discovery of specific college policies contrary to law, with the specific illegal policies differing case by case. It would be an interesting exercise to search college websites and see how many colleges identify what their affirmative action policy, if any, is, and how specifically they describe it. </p>
<p>What onlookers notice that gives them a clue something is amiss in the admission process is bizarre admission results. Some of the court cases have begun with rebuffed applicants trying to figure out what went wrong with their applications. The court order in more than one case was to admit the previously rejected applicant.</p>
<p>hoveringmom, most of the intelligent debaters on both sides in this thread agree on the need for socioeconomic affirmative action. Whether this should be in addition to or in replacement of racial affirmative action, is the debated matter.</p>
<p>Personally, I do not consider “Jewish” a race because it is not permanently identifying–you can choose to deconvert, but you can’t choose to become not-black or not-Asian any more than you can choose to become not-white. For many, however, it is certainly an ethnicity like Latin@ (i.e. applicable to people of any race).</p>
<p>^^^agreed. ppl either buy into the overall idea of AA or they don’t. One person’s “bizarre result” is inevitably going to be someone else’s unintended consequence. The only thing on which the Supreme Court has been able to agree is that adcoms can’t resort to a robotic formula that assigns arbitrary points to applicants <em>simply because</em> of their race. One justice specifically referenced a NESCAC college’s amicus brief as a model approach, one that looked at each applicant individually and took account of the <em>whole person</em>, which is, of course, extremely expensive and hard to do if the adcom happens to belong to a large, flagship state university that gets tens of thousands of applicants…</p>
<p>We identify culturally as Jewish, but not religiously, which left the question of whether to check Jewish under religion. Son decided not to. The last name identified him culturally, as much as the last name Gomez might have. Judaism is a strange duck - not an ethnicity, but still a culture.</p>