Asian American student with 1590 SAT score blames affirmative action for rejections from 6 colleges

[Anonymous]

An Asian American student from Florida with a 1590 SAT score who was rejected from six elite universities has joined the Supreme Court case seeking to end race-based admissions.

About the student: Jon Wang, an 18-year-old student with a 4.65 high school GPA and a perfect score on the SAT's math section, was rejected from MIT, CalTech, Princeton, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon and the University of California, Berkeley. He blames affirmative action, which notably was banned in California in 1995.

"I gave them my test scores, and then they must've ran the model on that… [they] told me I had a 20% chance of getting accepted to Harvard as an Asian American and a 95% chance as an African American," Wang, whose parents immigrated from China, told Fox News.

Wang has since been accepted at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Wang joined the anti-affirmative action nonprofit Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), which is currently seeking to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger in cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

The lawsuits: The two landmark cases — Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina — were kept separate by the Supreme Court due to Harvard's status as a private institution; UNC, on the other hand, is public. The case against Harvard examines whether the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by "discriminating against Asian American applicants in favor of white applicants," while UNC is similarly being sued for refusing to consider a "race-neutral alternative" in their admissions.

https://news.yahoo.com/asian-american-student-1590-sat-171857237.html

[Anonymous]

The article is very confusing. Who is the "they" that ran his scores in a "model" and told him his likelihood based on race?

[Anonymous]

This case is going nowhere. Those stats are run of the mill at those schools, regardless of ethnicity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The article is very confusing. Who is the "they" that ran his scores in a "model" and told him his likelihood based on race?

Seriously. His consultant didn't prepare him for the inevitable when it comes to applying to colleges that reject 90%+ of the applications they get. Poor dear will have to settle for Georgia Tech. How horrible.

[Anonymous]

I am in favor of affirmative action but find the odds presented in that article entirely plausible.

Here's a similar observation from another proponent of affirmative action:

"So imagine kids who have roughly a 1300 SAT score out of 1600 and a high school GPA like - of, like, a 3.8 on a four-point scale - a quite good high school GPA. You'll have many universities where students with those scores and grades, if they are white, are very unlikely to be admitted to the university, whereas if they're Black or Hispanic are very likely to be admitted to the university. And that's going to vary for each school, but these admissions advantages can be considerable." (https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1181149142)

But he also found that "...access to more-selective universities was just fundamentally more valuable to the Black and Hispanic students targeted by race-based affirmative action than it would have been for the white and Asian students who ultimately took their place after affirmative action was banned. .... What I'm saying is just on average, Black and Hispanic students who gained access through affirmative action were deriving substantially above-average gains compared to the students who replaced them."

I think those of us who favor affirmative action have a responsibility to acknowledge what it means. I'm white and have high GPAs and scores, and I'd be fine with them not getting into as a selective a school as they might if they were Black or Hispanic, because they will still have plenty of opportunities at the very good schools they will likely end up at. My kids have Ivy-educated parents and grandparents; they have plenty of advantages, if they want to use them. I do think there should be additional focus on income; I would give a preference to the middle-class Black student, but also to a poor rural White student. But racial differences in precollege achievement are very large, so it can't be purely based on income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This case is going nowhere. Those stats are run of the mill at those schools, regardless of ethnicity.

However 1450 kids get accepted with certain skin color or rich parents over 1590 kid because.... courage, kindness, and likability?

[Anonymous]

This kid seems insufferable, but I kind of feel badly for him.

He has great scores and he should be very proud of himself, but if folks in his life were telling him that he was a shoo-in for an Ivy League college, then he was getting bad advice.

Very very few people can be assured of spots in the Ivy League. Kids of major (MAJOR) donors are one, kids who have won significant national prizes (ISEF Top Prize Winners) are another. But a kid with good test scores and grades? That's a crapshoot.

Similarly, whoever told him to put this out there into the world was doing him a disservice because the coverage has focused on how at least one of the schools he was rejected from doesn't use race-based admissions at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This case is going nowhere. Those stats are run of the mill at those schools, regardless of ethnicity.

However 1450 kids get accepted with certain skin color or rich parents over 1590 kid because.... courage, kindness, and likability?

well, 2 of the schools he applied to are test blind, so probably yes at those. Or there was something they liked in those applications that he lacked--or something unattractive in his application.

[Anonymous]

His attitude alone sends him to the rejection pile. He sounds incredibly entitled. No one said that academics alone determine admissions. Harvard wants successful people; this guy ain’t one of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This case is going nowhere. Those stats are run of the mill at those schools, regardless of ethnicity.

+1.

Everybody, regardless of background, gets rejected. Plus colleges don't care about the SAT as much anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:An Asian American student from Florida with a 1590 SAT score who was rejected from six elite universities has joined the Supreme Court case seeking to end race-based admissions.

About the student: Jon Wang, an 18-year-old student with a 4.65 high school GPA and a perfect score on the SAT's math section, was rejected from MIT, CalTech, Princeton, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon and the University of California, Berkeley. He blames affirmative action, which notably was banned in California in 1995.

"I gave them my test scores, and then they must've ran the model on that… [they] told me I had a 20% chance of getting accepted to Harvard as an Asian American and a 95% chance as an African American," Wang, whose parents immigrated from China, told Fox News.

Wang has since been accepted at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Wang joined the anti-affirmative action nonprofit Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), which is currently seeking to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger in cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

The lawsuits: The two landmark cases — Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina — were kept separate by the Supreme Court due to Harvard's status as a private institution; UNC, on the other hand, is public. The case against Harvard examines whether the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by "discriminating against Asian American applicants in favor of white applicants," while UNC is similarly being sued for refusing to consider a "race-neutral alternative" in their admissions.

https://news.yahoo.com/asian-american-student-1590-sat-171857237.html

Every week someone on DCUM tries to reduce all of our kids to a single number. Maybe this time the thread won't will up with the same cut-and-paste arguments?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This case is going nowhere. Those stats are run of the mill at those schools, regardless of ethnicity.

However 1450 kids get accepted with certain skin color or rich parents over 1590 kid because.... courage, kindness, and likability?

well, 2 of the schools he applied to are test blind, so probably yes at those. Or there was something they liked in those applications that he lacked--or something unattractive in his application.

For Harvard, it's courage, kindness, and likability however they evaluated the points.

[Anonymous]

WTF?

Two or three of these universities are TEST BLIND.

Kid, you are too smart for your family. I know they love you, but they're using you to wrestle with their own demons.

[Anonymous]

Suck it up. Why should this kid be anymore special than the rest of us? Lots of kids with those scores. He should be glad he got into a 'good' college.

[Anonymous]

So he's one of a gazillion stem-focused Asian applicants with very high stats. Why is it so difficult to grasp statistics, and the fact that profile differentiation is necessary for all applicants?