Yale discriminated against whites and Asians, per Justice Department

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:what do you mean rate them equally? the same or similar achievement from the more disadvantaged student is more impressive.

Is it more impressive to climb mount Everest with or without an oxygen tank?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:what do you mean rate them equally? the same or similar achievement from the more disadvantaged student is more impressive.

ah finally someone who gets it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:what do you mean rate them equally? the same or similar achievement from the more disadvantaged student is more impressive.

ah finally someone who gets it

DP.. indeed, but students who don't achieve as much still get preference based on their background. Now, one can argue that someone who comes from a poor background had more hurdles to overcome, so that achievement is more impressive, which I would agree.

But, are these universities giving the same weight to those achievements to students from similar income/SES background but different skin color?

If they are not, then that is playing fast and furious with quotas in the guise of "holistic" approach.

I think most people are fine with giving a leg up to those from poorer backgrounds, irrespective of skin color, but not based on skin color alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As far as I am aware, not only did the Asian lawsuits use test scores, IT ALSO used soft skills to prove that Asian-Americans were discriminated against. Many of these kids are musicians and artists. There are less athletes but it is not nil. We have Asian-American friends who have had to prove themselves 3x over purely because of their race. I am so tired to claim Americans of Asian ethnicity lack soft skills when I see plenty who prove otherwise.

+1 this is true. Plenty of Asian Americans who have great e.c. and top scores get denied. If a URM person had the same exact transcript/application, that person would get in.

The problem is that they are competing against themselves as a group rather than against ALL applicants.

As my white DH says, Asian Americans are victims of their own success.

No, Asian Americans are victims of racial discrimination due to their inadequate political clout.

PP here.. I'm Asian American.



I don't think they are discrimianted because they are of Asian heritage. The problem is that these institutions want a diverse student body. I don't think that's a bad thing. We chose a school cluster in part because of the diversity. I think it's a laudable goal.

Unfortunately, there are just a lot of really qualified Asian American students. Many of these students don't have legacy or sports as their "hook". They only have their brains and hard work, and many are not from really wealthy families.

The group is indeed a victim of their own success, unfortunately. Is there some discrimination against them purely because of their "race"? There certainly could be some in the admissions office who are indeed racist. For example, I read an article about how some in the admissions office would mark the Asian American applicants as not having good "people skills" or whatever label they use even though they had ever met the application, but the person who interviewed the applicant stated on the feedback that the applicant did have those skills.

I don't know if this type of thing is systemic or it was just a few bad apples. But, I do think that these institutions have a right to achieve a diverse student body.

Having stated that, however, I think that in order to achieve this, they really should get rid of legacies. I know why they admit legacies, but if they truly want a diverse student body and care about the purety of their admissions, then they should get rid of legacies. IMO, they are trying to play two games at the same time.

What does it mean to have a "diverse student body"? Not trying to be difficult, but who gets to decide what it means to be a "diverse student body"? I think the problem with this concept is that then you're effectively creating quota systems based on some pre-conceived notion of how things should be. I support the concept of affirmative action, but I worry that it devolves into a quota system based on the arbitrary choice of some admission officers of what a "diverse student body" should look like. A quota system I think is what causes people to cry that the process is unfair.

All that being said, none of this really gets at the larger structural issues in society. That is, by the time you're applying to college at 17 years old, much of your life has been shaped by the opportunities in front of you, so in some sense, things can never be fair or equal. Even if you eliminated all the "unfair" preferences (race, legacies, etc.) in an admissions process, it wouldn't change the larger structural issues. That is, you could have a "fair" admissions process but it still may not actually really be fair.

It’s not about quotas. It’s more:: all things being equal — does one student bring something extra to the table. And “extra” could mean a wide variety of things— from having been a refugee, to being a musical prodigy, to being a 10th generation legacy — so that all of those kids can sit together in a dining hall and communicate with each other to build a better world. Looking at ‘fair’ and measuring that with test scores and awards isn’t the point. It’s more about getting a group of people with the skills and aptitude to do well (the easy part) and then building an interesting community.

I'd have no issue if all things were equal but there are significant gaps in test scores by race. At Harvard Asians averaged the highest at 767 followed by whites at 745, Latinos at 718, Native Americans at 712 and Blacks at 704. That's not all things being equal now is it?

Test scores are only one component of admissions, and not even the most important part. Maybe everyone over 700 - or some other cut off does well. Maybe the student that gets 700 on their own with the experience of crappy public schools is viewed differently from the student who gets 700 with over a decade of tutors, private schools with small classes and personal attention, and parents who are alums. The simplest way to see this is to understand that test scores are necessary but not sufficient for admission for all students.

Since the test scores seem to matter a lot to you, do you have the average scores for the legacies as well? If so, I’d be curious obout where they fall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They are not a monolith. Kids get into one and not another. How is that explained in the meritocracy.

Who says it’s a meritocracy? Private institutions don’t owe anyone anything

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are not a monolith. Kids get into one and not another. How is that explained in the meritocracy.

Who says it’s a meritocracy? Private institutions don’t owe anyone anything

Private institutions that receive lots of federal funding, yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As far as I am aware, not only did the Asian lawsuits use test scores, IT ALSO used soft skills to prove that Asian-Americans were discriminated against. Many of these kids are musicians and artists. There are less athletes but it is not nil. We have Asian-American friends who have had to prove themselves 3x over purely because of their race. I am so tired to claim Americans of Asian ethnicity lack soft skills when I see plenty who prove otherwise.

+1 this is true. Plenty of Asian Americans who have great e.c. and top scores get denied. If a URM person had the same exact transcript/application, that person would get in.

The problem is that they are competing against themselves as a group rather than against ALL applicants.

As my white DH says, Asian Americans are victims of their own success.

No, Asian Americans are victims of racial discrimination due to their inadequate political clout.

PP here.. I'm Asian American.



I don't think they are discrimianted because they are of Asian heritage. The problem is that these institutions want a diverse student body. I don't think that's a bad thing. We chose a school cluster in part because of the diversity. I think it's a laudable goal.

Unfortunately, there are just a lot of really qualified Asian American students. Many of these students don't have legacy or sports as their "hook". They only have their brains and hard work, and many are not from really wealthy families.

The group is indeed a victim of their own success, unfortunately. Is there some discrimination against them purely because of their "race"? There certainly could be some in the admissions office who are indeed racist. For example, I read an article about how some in the admissions office would mark the Asian American applicants as not having good "people skills" or whatever label they use even though they had ever met the application, but the person who interviewed the applicant stated on the feedback that the applicant did have those skills.

I don't know if this type of thing is systemic or it was just a few bad apples. But, I do think that these institutions have a right to achieve a diverse student body.

Having stated that, however, I think that in order to achieve this, they really should get rid of legacies. I know why they admit legacies, but if they truly want a diverse student body and care about the purety of their admissions, then they should get rid of legacies. IMO, they are trying to play two games at the same time.

What does it mean to have a "diverse student body"? Not trying to be difficult, but who gets to decide what it means to be a "diverse student body"? I think the problem with this concept is that then you're effectively creating quota systems based on some pre-conceived notion of how things should be. I support the concept of affirmative action, but I worry that it devolves into a quota system based on the arbitrary choice of some admission officers of what a "diverse student body" should look like. A quota system I think is what causes people to cry that the process is unfair.

All that being said, none of this really gets at the larger structural issues in society. That is, by the time you're applying to college at 17 years old, much of your life has been shaped by the opportunities in front of you, so in some sense, things can never be fair or equal. Even if you eliminated all the "unfair" preferences (race, legacies, etc.) in an admissions process, it wouldn't change the larger structural issues. That is, you could have a "fair" admissions process but it still may not actually really be fair.

It’s not about quotas. It’s more:: all things being equal — does one student bring something extra to the table. And “extra” could mean a wide variety of things— from having been a refugee, to being a musical prodigy, to being a 10th generation legacy — so that all of those kids can sit together in a dining hall and communicate with each other to build a better world. Looking at ‘fair’ and measuring that with test scores and awards isn’t the point. It’s more about getting a group of people with the skills and aptitude to do well (the easy part) and then building an interesting community.

I'd have no issue if all things were equal but there are significant gaps in test scores by race. At Harvard Asians averaged the highest at 767 followed by whites at 745, Latinos at 718, Native Americans at 712 and Blacks at 704. That's not all things being equal now is it?

Test scores are only one component of admissions, and not even the most important part. Maybe everyone over 700 - or some other cut off does well. Maybe the student that gets 700 on their own with the experience of crappy public schools is viewed differently from the student who gets 700 with over a decade of tutors, private schools with small classes and personal attention, and parents who are alums. The simplest way to see this is to understand that test scores are necessary but not sufficient for admission for all students.

Since the test scores seem to matter a lot to you, do you have the average scores for the legacies as well? If so, I’d be curious obout where they fall.

There is not a significant difference between a 767 and a 704. Higher test scores do not automatically make you a better student, especially if the student with 704 has to overcome more hurdles to get there. It's really a matter of a few questions. If it were 767 and 600, I could see your point. Test scores are one piece of the puzzle. Like it or not, the college look at many factors. It's just the way admissions are done in the US. If they looked strictly at test scores, how would they decide since so many kids have 1600s and 36s? They could fill their classes many times over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of very talented and high test scoring/high GPA Asian Americans who deserve to get into Ivy league schools but don't get accepted. It is what it is. It sucks for those who don't get accepted and it's probably not going to change (SCOTUS or not).

However, you're not going to change how it works because it's a zero sum game. You'd have to take something away from another racial group and that's not going to happen anytime soon. Asians are competing against themselves and the only ones complaining are the ones who didn't get accepted. It's not like there aren't any Asians getting accepted. IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT THE SCORES AND GPAs!!!

Also, if they made it harder for URMs to get accepted, do you really think they'd make room for more Asians? If you think that, then you don't know how society works.

I agree, it is what it is. The US finds social engineering acceptable in certain processes whereas many other western countries or developed Asian countries use pure meritocracy. Both have its pros and cons. I guess time will tell which one is a better system for achieving a ‘desirable’ society.

In the meantime, I will fight to end racial discrimination against Asian Americans.

So you consider not letting ALL Asian Americans who meet the minimum quantitative threshold (scores/GPA) to get into their college of choice to be racial discrimination? You're just throwing away all of the other criteria that factor into an admissions decision?

No, I do not. These schools should replace affirmative action only for blacks/Hispanics with a boost based on SES for all races. That would be infinitely more ideal.

You don't understand systemic racism, huh? The colleges can adopt those standards when all kids from the same SES have equal opportunity to education and are treated equally by the police, etc. There is more at play here than just SES, although SES matters, too.

[Anonymous]

If colleges didn’t intend to discriminate on the basis of race, they wouldn’t ask applicants to state their race on their applications.

I’m not necessarily opposed to affirmative action, but it is disingenuous to the point of insulting for Yale to deny that they are discriminating on the basis of race.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are not a monolith. Kids get into one and not another. How is that explained in the meritocracy.

Who says it’s a meritocracy? Private institutions don’t owe anyone anything

Private institutions that receive lots of federal funding, yes.

Have to comply with very broad standards- holistic admission fits within those standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:what do you mean rate them equally? the same or similar achievement from the more disadvantaged student is more impressive.

ah finally someone who gets it

DP.. indeed, but students who don't achieve as much still get preference based on their background. Now, one can argue that someone who comes from a poor background had more hurdles to overcome, so that achievement is more impressive, which I would agree.

But, are these universities giving the same weight to those achievements to students from similar income/SES background but different skin color?

If they are not, then that is playing fast and furious with quotas in the guise of "holistic" approach.

I think most people are fine with giving a leg up to those from poorer backgrounds, irrespective of skin color, but not based on skin color alone.

You do get that what you’re dismissing as “skin color” has been associated with some pretty noxious forms of discrimination in this country, right? So, is your point that overcoming the impact of some significant barriers should never be considered as part of a school’s admissions process?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are not a monolith. Kids get into one and not another. How is that explained in the meritocracy.

Who says it’s a meritocracy? Private institutions don’t owe anyone anything

Private institutions that receive lots of federal funding, yes.

In the United States, colleges and universities are not, and never have been, "meritocracies" based on straight up numbers. Our secondary education system is too diverse and too unstandardized to allow for that, even if it were desirable, which obviously it isn't anyway. You are looking for true rankings in a country where they don't really exist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of very talented and high test scoring/high GPA Asian Americans who deserve to get into Ivy league schools but don't get accepted. It is what it is. It sucks for those who don't get accepted and it's probably not going to change (SCOTUS or not).

However, you're not going to change how it works because it's a zero sum game. You'd have to take something away from another racial group and that's not going to happen anytime soon. Asians are competing against themselves and the only ones complaining are the ones who didn't get accepted. It's not like there aren't any Asians getting accepted. IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT THE SCORES AND GPAs!!!

Also, if they made it harder for URMs to get accepted, do you really think they'd make room for more Asians? If you think that, then you don't know how society works.

I agree, it is what it is. The US finds social engineering acceptable in certain processes whereas many other western countries or developed Asian countries use pure meritocracy. Both have its pros and cons. I guess time will tell which one is a better system for achieving a ‘desirable’ society.

In the meantime, I will fight to end racial discrimination against Asian Americans.

So you consider not letting ALL Asian Americans who meet the minimum quantitative threshold (scores/GPA) to get into their college of choice to be racial discrimination? You're just throwing away all of the other criteria that factor into an admissions decision?

No, I do not. These schools should replace affirmative action only for blacks/Hispanics with a boost based on SES for all races. That would be infinitely more ideal.

Ideal? Ideal for whom?
Maybe you should define what you mean by “affirmative action” — so we’re all working with the same definitions. Since you seem to think it is “only for blacks/Hispanics” (sic), while I think it starts with legacy admissions and sports admits, we’re definitely not talking about the same thing, or, for the most part, the same groups of people.

[Anonymous]

At some point, civil rights went from “don’t discriminate against black people” to “we insist that you discriminate against white people.”

In a majority white representative democracy, it seems inevitable that this sort of guidance will result in a backlash. Affirmative Action supporters got too bold and are getting singed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of very talented and high test scoring/high GPA Asian Americans who deserve to get into Ivy league schools but don't get accepted. It is what it is. It sucks for those who don't get accepted and it's probably not going to change (SCOTUS or not).

However, you're not going to change how it works because it's a zero sum game. You'd have to take something away from another racial group and that's not going to happen anytime soon. Asians are competing against themselves and the only ones complaining are the ones who didn't get accepted. It's not like there aren't any Asians getting accepted. IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT THE SCORES AND GPAs!!!

Also, if they made it harder for URMs to get accepted, do you really think they'd make room for more Asians? If you think that, then you don't know how society works.

I agree, it is what it is. The US finds social engineering acceptable in certain processes whereas many other western countries or developed Asian countries use pure meritocracy. Both have its pros and cons. I guess time will tell which one is a better system for achieving a ‘desirable’ society.

In the meantime, I will fight to end racial discrimination against Asian Americans.

So you consider not letting ALL Asian Americans who meet the minimum quantitative threshold (scores/GPA) to get into their college of choice to be racial discrimination? You're just throwing away all of the other criteria that factor into an admissions decision?

No, I do not. These schools should replace affirmative action only for blacks/Hispanics with a boost based on SES for all races. That would be infinitely more ideal.

Ideal? Ideal for whom?
Maybe you should define what you mean by “affirmative action” — so we’re all working with the same definitions. Since you seem to think it is “only for blacks/Hispanics” (sic), while I think it starts with legacy admissions and sports admits, we’re definitely not talking about the same thing, or, for the most part, the same groups of people.

Academic exceptions for athletics overwhelmingly benefits football and basketball playing African Americans. Everyone knows academics are a joke to these programs and 80% of their rosters would not have gotten admitted to the school if it wasn’t for their ballin’ skills.