Reply to Harvard's odd quota on Asian-Americans

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A simple explanation of the admission rate differences is the fact that the vast majority of [b]Asian American applicants (nearly 90%) to elite schools are STEM oriented. As a group, STEM SAT scores and GPAs are higher than non-STEM students[/b]. So any kind of numerical target for the number of STEM students will increase the competitive pressure on STEM students and appear to function like a cap on Asians, since they almost all fall in the same STEM bucket.  The fact that STEM schools without strong arts, humanities and social science programs (MIT, CalTech) do not have the same admissions patterns as the Ivies.

If the Ivies were as anti-Asian as alleged, there would be a lot more they could do to discourage Asian attendance than just capping the [b]admissions rate at 10x the general population[/b]. Instead, you see tons of institutional support for Asian-American affinity and cultural groups, travel educational opportunities in Asia, [b]and plenty of Asian tenured faculty and senior administrators[/b]. [/quote]

Percentage of Asian Americans majoring in STEM at elite schools is not 90%. Many Asian American girls do not major in STEM although good portion of them major in biological science. Many Asian Americans major in business, accounting, finance, economics to go to Business School or Law School.

STEM SAT scores should not be higher since the SAT consists of Reading, Writing and Math sections. Humanities students should perform better than STEM students in reading and writing sections in general. In addition, some of the Asian students are 1st generation students who may not score extremely high in reading and writing sections.

Affirmative action does not play a significant role in admissions at Caltech as a general policy and it is separate from the fact that whether they have a weak or strong humanities program. MIT does consider race but not to the extent Ivies or other top schools do and thus they have somewhat more Asian American students. Asian Americans would not be complaining so loudly if Ivies used race as MIT does in admissions.

Admission rate for Asian Americans is not 10 times general population. We do not know what the admission rate for Asian Americans is and maybe we will find out. Asian Americans make up approximately 14 to 20% of the acceptances at Ivies.

There has never been "plenty of Asian tenured faculty and senior administrators" at elite schools or even at non-elite schools. [/quote]

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