Harvard's odd quota on Asian-Americans
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Anonymous
I used 2100 for two reasons -The College Board's data is given in increments of 100 so I knew what the percentiles were -That is approximately the lowest SAT you see accepted in those college confidential threads and Naviance for unhooked applicants If the higher number were the standard than the argument would still work. No matter where you cut it off, Asian's SAT scores skew higher and the mean of randomly selected Asians would be higher. It's a correlation vs causation thing, the Asians who are accepted have higher SATs because they had higher SAT scores when they applied, not necessarily because they needed the higher SATs to get in. ... A 1-2% difference is not significant. If use the data to figure out acceptance rates for each race: Black - 3,731 applied - 241 accepted - 6.4% accepted Hispanic - 4,663 applied - 265 accepted - 5.7% accepted Asian - 7,871 applied - 392 accepted - 4.9% accepted Overall - 37,305 applied - 1,990 accepted - 5.3% accepted These are tiny differences. It's still ridiculously competitive for any race. --- As for your last point: Just saying something does not make it true. Asian SATs are higher, yes, but the rest of what you say is fairly irrelevant. I'd like to see the data saying Asians who get into Harvard have better GPAs, very few people get into Harvard with less than a 3.8, no matter the race, and, as reiterated over and over again on this thread, academics are a starting point, not an ending point, and a 4.0 will not give you any marked advantage over a 3.9 or a 3.8. The average number of AP classes taken by Stanford admits are 4, and I can't imagine it would be much different at Harvard, they are looking for more than a long list of APs. And I'd like to see the studies showing that Asians perform better in all your other categories. FYI, saying that Asians have better "individual talents" is quite racist, and undermines your argument. |
Anonymous
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Oops, I was going off of what you said. If we go over the corrected data it's even more uniform:
Black - 3,731 applied - 241 accepted - 6.4% accepted Hispanic - 4,663 applied - 265 accepted - 5.7% accepted Asian - 7,871 applied - 418 accepted - 5.3% accepted Overall - 37,305 applied - 1,990 accepted - 5.3% accepted You are obsessing over between a .4% and a 1.1% difference in acceptance rates. |
Anonymous
And one last thing: Yale's overall acceptance rate was 6.3%, so if you want the Harvard Black acceptance rate you might as well apply there 
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Anonymous
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"Just as their predecessors of the 1920s always denied the existence of “Jewish quotas,” top officials at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the other Ivy League schools today strongly deny the existence of “Asian quotas.” But there exists powerful statistical evidence to the contrary.
Each year, American universities provide their racial enrollment data to the National Center for Education Statistics, which makes this information available online. After the Justice Department closed an investigation in the early 1990s into charges that Harvard University discriminated against Asian-American applicants, Harvard’s reported enrollment of Asian-Americans began gradually declining, falling from 20.6 percent in 1993 to about 16.5 percent over most of the last decade." http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/19/fears-of-an-asian-quota-in-the-ivy-league/statistics-indicate-an-ivy-league-asian-quota Asian Americans typically make up about 16 to 17% of the acceptances and the 19.7% and 21% for the last 2 years are unusual looking at the past 20 years. |
Anonymous
| The % enrolled is meaningless without knowing how many people applied. For all we know (and I personally believe this is the case) the enrolled percent followed the applied percent. All the hard data we've seen suggests that this is the case. If that's "powerful statistical evidence" than a survey of 20 Black undergrads at Yale on their opinions on affirmative action counts as "strong statistical evidence" that the vast majority of Harvard undergrads support affirmative action. |
Anonymous
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Did you mean % enrolled is meaningless without % who accepted the admissions offer?
If Asian American students were more likely to turn down Harvard (for Stanford or Caltech or Berkeley) than admittees of other races, then 19.7% of the admitted students could turn into 17% of the enrolled students. |
Anonymous
Wouldn't it be nice to have those numbers? The pending litigation is in discovery stage so we may found out more regarding the number of applied, number of acceptances by gender, race etc. for the past 20 years. You dismiss few percentages as insignificant but refuse to offer explanation as to why only the Asian American group experiences lower acceptance rate in comparison to the percentage of the applicant pool. You also dismiss enrollment rates as meaningless. Actually, since Asians are supposedly obsessed with Ivy schools, shouldn't Asian enrollment numbers be higher than other groups thereby slightly lowering the (unknown) acceptances in comparison to other groups? Asian American accptance percentage may even be lower than the enrollment numbers. |
Anonymous
| ^ Good point, that too. No, I was thinking along the lines of that if it became harder for Asians to gain admission to Harvard (i.e. a quota was imposed artificially limiting the number of Asians allowed to be accepted) than we would expect the % accepted to go from being the same to being less than the % who applied. We know that the % applied declined, but without seeing the change in the % who accepted over the same period, we cannot determine if the chances for any Asian applicant to gain admission went up, went down, or stayed the same. |
Anonymous
And the pending litigation would get nowhere even if it was discovered that the % accepted for Asians was lower than expected, because the problem has already been corrected as of this admissions cycle. The explanation is statistical error. Harvard is hand picking candidates, there could have been slightly less Asians than they wanted to admit just because that's just how the applicant pool turned out. You cannot conclude widespread and significant discrimination from the difference of a few tens of applicants from Asians having the same % accepted as Blacks or Hispanics. Enrollment is irrelevant. We're only looking at applications vs acceptances. That data was published before Harvard knew how many of each race enrolled. The class of 2019 profile will be published later. |
Anonymous
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Oops, I misread what you were saying. The % enrolled is meaningless on its own. We have to know what % applied and what % was accepted to make any conclusions.
Pretty much everyone goes to Harvard unless they decide to go to Yale, Stanford, or Princeton. This is true for every race. |
Anonymous
"This decline might seem small. But these same years brought a huge increase in America’s college-age Asian population, which roughly doubled between 1992 and 2011, while non-Hispanic white numbers remained almost unchanged. Thus, according to official statistics, the percentage of Asian-Americans enrolled at Harvard fell by more than 50 percent over the last two decades, while the percentage of whites changed little. This decline in relative Asian-American enrollment was actually larger than the impact of Harvard’s 1925 Jewish quota, which reduced Jewish freshmen from 27.6 percent to 15 percent." http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/19/fears-of-an-asian-quota-in-the-ivy-league/statistics-indicate-an-ivy-league-asian-quota |
Anonymous
An increase in America's College-age Asian population may have came with an increase in the number of Asians applying. Or it might not have. We don't know. |
Anonymous
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Just noticed that the plaintiff in the UNC case is white -- not Asian.
Re the Asian-American population increasing but the percentage of Asian American students at Harvard staying constant. Two non-quota explanations come quickly to mind. One is that Harvard was taking a critical mass approach rather than proportionate representation. The other is that Harvard's concept of diversity has become less racialized and serving other constituencies -- e.g. international students, first generation college students, lower-income students -- has become a higher priority than it was 20 years ago. Has anyone seen data on the racial demographics of Harvard College's international students? |
Anonymous
If this is true, AA admissions would be getting lower and lower. Are they? |
Anonymous
Actually, these stats seem to support complaints Asian-Americans. 1.1% out of 5.3% is 20%. Can someone seriously claim that, from the overall pool of applicants, AAs are at least 20% better qualified than Asians? If anything, it is probably the opposite. |