Anonymous wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/opinion/is-harvard-unfair-to-asian-americans.html

Living with this kind of bias is exhausting. These schools are getting away with being racists and getting sued is a way that it brings attention to this problem.

I also feel that Asian Americans need to boycott such schools so that the Harvards of the world stop being Harvards.

Asian-American here, I give money to Cal and UCLA every time my alma maters hit me up (schools that do practice AA) and I write a note to them telling them where I sent the money instead.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/opinion/is-harvard-unfair-to-asian-americans.html

Living with this kind of bias is exhausting. These schools are getting away with being racists and getting sued is a way that it brings attention to this problem.

I also feel that Asian Americans need to boycott such schools so that the Harvards of the world stop being Harvards.

From the article above - " The real problem is that, in a meritocratic system, whites would be a minority — and Harvard just isn't comfortable with that."

If Harvard isn't comfortable with that, what's the rest of the country going to in 2050 when whites become a minority? Harvard is a lot more socially open and progressive than most of the country.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:College admissions in the US is not the gaokao and it shouldn't be. Testing is not everything and even the Chinese and Koreans and Japanese are debating how to reduce their reliance on college admissions testing because it stifles creativity and ignores the multiple sources of excellence.

As a first generation Chinese-American with two Ivy degrees, I am just fed up with the whining about admissions to the Ivies. There are simply no race based quotas. Since only 1 percent of college students can go to an Ivy, the debate is largely inconsequential to improving the life options of Asian Americans. Fight the discrimination that affects the other 99%.

After interviewing scores of applicants, it is pretty obvious that there are lots of students with good grades who test well, but have almost nothing else. The profiles are often remarkably similar: math/science excellence, limited intellectual depth in literature and the arts, few ECs besides classical music training and occasionally individual sports like golf or tennis. Worse, they present themselves as pretty ho-hum with no passion or excitement for learning. It is as if their parents are all reading from the same book on how to raise a child who gets in to Harvard.

Another thing to remember is that the Ivies are all liberal arts colleges! A hugely disproportionate share of Asian-American applicants are in the STEM fields. Since Harvard is choosing students to fill all its majors, Asians are largely competing against other math and science students applying to Harvard, not the historians, lit majors, artists, or football players. Which also means they are largely competing against themselves. That is why the test scores look skewed and why the admission rates are lower. Caltech does not need to find students to fill its philosophy department, while Harvard does.

Thank you for such a coherent discussion of what is a really going on. It is so easy to get caught up in numbers and test scores, when, as you so rightly point out, liberal art colleges, in particular are not simply about STEM or who is a math whiz.

Sometimes I think part of the problem and the onus behind this lawsuit is the intensity of the Asian obsession with the Ivy League. Certainly, they're not alone in this, but when I lived in China and India you would have thought that Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT and Princeton were the only schools we had in this country. Everyone, regardless of their background, needs to realize that only a miniscule fraction of kids who could succeed at these schools get a chance to go to them. It's a crapshoot regardless of your ethnicity and the numbers tell only part of the story. I'm constantly amazed that with so much obvious brainpower, Asia hasn't done a better job of developing elite institutions on par with Harvard et. al.

I guess it's not simply brain power. Think about jews are arguably one of the most intelligent groups, did they have any thing on par with Harvard?

Anonymous wrote:College admissions in the US is not the gaokao and it shouldn't be. Testing is not everything and even the Chinese and Koreans and Japanese are debating how to reduce their reliance on college admissions testing because it stifles creativity and ignores the multiple sources of excellence.

As a first generation Chinese-American with two Ivy degrees, I am just fed up with the whining about admissions to the Ivies. There are simply no race based quotas. Since only 1 percent of college students can go to an Ivy, the debate is largely inconsequential to improving the life options of Asian Americans. Fight the discrimination that affects the other 99%.

After interviewing scores of applicants, it is pretty obvious that there are lots of students with good grades who test well, but have almost nothing else. The profiles are often remarkably similar: math/science excellence, limited intellectual depth in literature and the arts, few ECs besides classical music training and occasionally individual sports like golf or tennis. Worse, they present themselves as pretty ho-hum with no passion or excitement for learning. It is as if their parents are all reading from the same book on how to raise a child who gets in to Harvard.

Another thing to remember is that the Ivies are all liberal arts colleges! A hugely disproportionate share of Asian-American applicants are in the STEM fields. Since Harvard is choosing students to fill all its majors, Asians are largely competing against other math and science students applying to Harvard, not the historians, lit majors, artists, or football players. Which also means they are largely competing against themselves. That is why the test scores look skewed and why the admission rates are lower. Caltech does not need to find students to fill its philosophy department, while Harvard does.

Thank you for such a coherent discussion of what is a really going on. It is so easy to get caught up in numbers and test scores, when, as you so rightly point out, liberal art colleges, in particular are not simply about STEM or who is a math whiz.

Sometimes I think part of the problem and the onus behind this lawsuit is the intensity of the Asian obsession with the Ivy League. Certainly, they're not alone in this, but when I lived in China and India you would have thought that Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT and Princeton were the only schools we had in this country. Everyone, regardless of their background, needs to realize that only a miniscule fraction of kids who could succeed at these schools get a chance to go to them. It's a crapshoot regardless of your ethnicity and the numbers tell only part of the story. I'm constantly amazed that with so much obvious brainpower, Asia hasn't done a better job of developing elite institutions on par with Harvard et. al.

College admissions in the US is not the gaokao and it shouldn't be. Testing is not everything and even the Chinese and Koreans and Japanese are debating how to reduce their reliance on college admissions testing because it stifles creativity and ignores the multiple sources of excellence.

As a first generation Chinese-American with two Ivy degrees, I am just fed up with the whining about admissions to the Ivies. There are simply no race based quotas. Since only 1 percent of college students can go to an Ivy, the debate is largely inconsequential to improving the life options of Asian Americans. Fight the discrimination that affects the other 99%.

After interviewing scores of applicants, it is pretty obvious that there are lots of students with good grades who test well, but have almost nothing else. The profiles are often remarkably similar: math/science excellence, limited intellectual depth in literature and the arts, few ECs besides classical music training and occasionally individual sports like golf or tennis. Worse, they present themselves as pretty ho-hum with no passion or excitement for learning. It is as if their parents are all reading from the same book on how to raise a child who gets in to Harvard.

Another thing to remember is that the Ivies are all liberal arts colleges! A hugely disproportionate share of Asian-American applicants are in the STEM fields. Since Harvard is choosing students to fill all its majors, Asians are largely competing against other math and science students applying to Harvard, not the historians, lit majors, artists, or football players. Which also means they are largely competing against themselves. That is why the test scores look skewed and why the admission rates are lower. Caltech does not need to find students to fill its philosophy department, while Harvard does.

Anonymous wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/opinion/is-harvard-unfair-to-asian-americans.html

Living with this kind of bias is exhausting. These schools are getting away with being racists and getting sued is a way that it brings attention to this problem.

I also feel that Asian Americans need to boycott such schools so that the Harvards of the world stop being Harvards.

From the article above - " The real problem is that, in a meritocratic system, whites would be a minority — and Harvard just isn't comfortable with that."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/opinion/is-harvard-unfair-to-asian-americans.html

Living with this kind of bias is exhausting. These schools are getting away with being racists and getting sued is a way that it brings attention to this problem.

I also feel that Asian Americans need to boycott such schools so that the Harvards of the world stop being Harvards.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just because you get a perfect Act score does not mean that Harvard is required to accept you.

Also, just because you are Valedictorian, Harvard is not required to accept you.

My sister was Val. of a great high school and had near perfect scores but she was not accepted. we did not read anything into this. She is blonde and blue eyed by the way. she went to Stanford and loved it.

There are many students who get perfect or near perfect scores on standardized tests.

This Asian applicant's "activities" were lacking. One sport and a couple of volunteer activities is underwhelming.

The Ivies are looking for a well rounded class of students and leadership qualities.

You're missing the point. Nobody is saying a school needs to accept anyone because they have perfect test scores or perfect gpa. The fact is that Asians have a higher bar to meet than any other race in all aspects of the application process including grades, test scores, leadership, activities, volunteer work etc... just as it's a fact that whites need to meet a higher bar than blacks. I have a feeling you don't disagree with the latter part.

Or maybe you're refusing to acknowledge that many Asian applicants often bring little to the table besides good grades and high test scores or that many Asians think that's all that should matter.

All one has to do is look at California to see that you are totally wrong (and probably a racist). The UC system has been practicing race-blind holistic admission for about a decade now, meaning they take everything, such as extracurriculars, socioeconomic status, etc, into consideration. Basically, everything is fair game except race, and Asian numbers at UCs have gone through the roof. This indicates that Asian kids are at the very least equal in "soft factors" to the rest of the college applicant pool in Cali. There's no reason to suspect that the overall situation would be drastically different anywhere else.

Some ignorant and racist people will continue to scream that Asians only have high gpas and high test scores. They would fit right in at UVA and Penn State.

+100

As an Asian american, i'm ok with the ivy league and other elite privates having de facto quotas, but then they should open up the admission black box and be more transparent somewhat so kids can be more realistic and focus on applying to the right schools.

25/75 ranges are useless. I believe it was duke that an adcom once said if you are not URM or you are unhooked, then you better be atleast 65-70th percentile minimum in stats or you are an auto reject.

The Opinion Pages | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Is Harvard Unfair to Asian-Americans?
By YASCHA MOUNK

NOV. 24, 2014


CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — NEARLY a century ago,Harvard had a big problem: Too many Jews. By 1922, Jews accounted for 21.5 percent of freshmen, up from 7 percent in 1900 and vastly more than at Yale or Princeton. In the Ivy League, only Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania had a greater proportion of Jews.

Harvard’s president, A. Lawrence Lowell, warned that the “Jewish invasion” would “ruin the college.” He wanted a cap: 15 percent. When faculty members balked, he stacked the admissions process to achieve the same result. Bolstered by the nativism of the time, which led to sharp immigration restrictions, Harvard’s admissions committee began using the euphemistic criteria of “character and fitness” to limit Jewish enrollment. As the sociologist Jerome Karabel has documented, these practices worked for the next three decades to suppress the number of Jewish students.

A similar injustice is at work today, against Asian-Americans. To get into the top schools, they need SAT scores that are about 140 points higher than those of their white peers. In 2008, over half of all applicants to Harvard with exceptionally high SAT scores were Asian, yet they made up only 17 percent of the entering class (now 20 percent). Asians are the fastest-growing racial group in America, but their proportion of Harvard undergraduates has been flatfor two decades.

A new lawsuit filed on behalf of Asian-American applicants offers strong evidence that Harvard engages in racial “balancing.” Admissions numbers for each racial and ethnic group have remained strikingly similar, year to year. Damningly, those rare years in which an unusually high number of Asians were admitted were followed by years in which especially few made the cut.

The most common defense of the status quo is that many Asian-American applicants do well on tests but lack intangible qualities like originality or leadership. As early as 1988, William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions, said that they were “slightly less strong on extracurricular criteria.”

Even leaving aside the disturbing parallel with how Jews were characterized, there is little evidence that this is true. A new study of over 100,000 applicants to the University of California, Los Angeles, found no significant correlation between race and extracurricular achievements.

The truth is not that Asians have fewer distinguishing qualities than whites; it’s that — because of a longstanding depiction of Asians as featureless or even interchangeable — they are more likely to be perceived as lacking in individuality. (As one Harvard admissions officer noted on the file of an Asian-American applicant, “He’s quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor.”)

The contribution Jews made to American life in the decades after they were maligned as unoriginal, grasping careerists speaks for itself. There is no reason to believe that today’s Asian-Americans will leave less of a mark.

For all the historical parallels, there’s one big difference. In the days of Lowell, Harvard was a bastion of white Protestant elites. Anti-Semitism was rampant. Today, Harvard is a patchwork of ethnicities and religions; 15 percent of students are the first in their families to attend college. In seven years as a student and teacher at Harvard, I have never heard anyone demean Asian-Americans.

So why is the new discrimination tolerated? For one thing, many academics assume that higher rates of admission for Asian-Americans would come at the price of lower rates of admission for African-Americans. Opponents of affirmative action — including the Project on Fair Representation, which helped bring the new suit — like to link the two issues, but they are unrelated.

Conservatives point to Harvard’s emphasis on enrolling African-Americans (currently 12 percent of freshmen) and Hispanics (13 percent) but overlook preferences for children of alumni (about 12 percent of students) and recruited athletes (around 13 percent). The real problem is that, in a meritocratic system, whites would be a minority — and Harvard just isn’t comfortable with that.As recognized by the Supreme Court, schools have an interest in recruiting a “critical mass” of minority students to obtain “the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.” This justifies, in my view, admissions standards that look favorably on underrepresented groups, like African-Americans and Latinos. But it can neither explain nor justify why a student of Chinese, Korean or Indian descent is so much less likely to be admitted than a white one.

Admission to elite colleges is a scarce good. Deciding who gets an offer inescapably involves trade-offs among competing values. Do we make excellence the only criterion — and, if so, excellence in what? Should we allocate places to those students who will profit most from them? Or to those who are most likely to give back to the community?

There isn’t one right answer. But that does not mean that there aren’t some answers that are unambiguously wrong.

It’s perfectly fair to consider extracurriculars as an important factor in admissions. But the current system is so opaque that it is easy to conceal discrimination behind vague criteria like “intangible qualities” or the desire for a “well-rounded class.” These criteria were used to exclude an overachieving minority in the days of Lowell, and they serve the same purpose today. For reasons both legal and moral, the onus is on the schools to make their admissions criteria more transparent — not to use them as fig leaves for excluding some students simply because they happen to be Asian.

Yascha Mounk, a political theorist and a fellow at New America, teaches expository writing at Harvard.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just because you get a perfect Act score does not mean that Harvard is required to accept you.

Also, just because you are Valedictorian, Harvard is not required to accept you.

My sister was Val. of a great high school and had near perfect scores but she was not accepted. we did not read anything into this. She is blonde and blue eyed by the way. she went to Stanford and loved it.

There are many students who get perfect or near perfect scores on standardized tests.

This Asian applicant's "activities" were lacking. One sport and a couple of volunteer activities is underwhelming.

The Ivies are looking for a well rounded class of students and leadership qualities.

You're missing the point. Nobody is saying a school needs to accept anyone because they have perfect test scores or perfect gpa. The fact is that Asians have a higher bar to meet than any other race in all aspects of the application process including grades, test scores, leadership, activities, volunteer work etc... just as it's a fact that whites need to meet a higher bar than blacks. I have a feeling you don't disagree with the latter part.

Or maybe you're refusing to acknowledge that many Asian applicants often bring little to the table besides good grades and high test scores or that many Asians think that's all that should matter.

All one has to do is look at California to see that you are totally wrong (and probably a racist). The UC system has been practicing race-blind holistic admission for about a decade now, meaning they take everything, such as extracurriculars, socioeconomic status, etc, into consideration. Basically, everything is fair game except race, and Asian numbers at UCs have gone through the roof. This indicates that Asian kids are at the very least equal in "soft factors" to the rest of the college applicant pool in Cali. There's no reason to suspect that the overall situation would be drastically different anywhere else.

Some ignorant and racist people will continue to scream that Asians only have high gpas and high test scores. They would fit right in at UVA and Penn State.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just because you get a perfect Act score does not mean that Harvard is required to accept you.

Also, just because you are Valedictorian, Harvard is not required to accept you.

My sister was Val. of a great high school and had near perfect scores but she was not accepted. we did not read anything into this. She is blonde and blue eyed by the way. she went to Stanford and loved it.

There are many students who get perfect or near perfect scores on standardized tests.

This Asian applicant's "activities" were lacking. One sport and a couple of volunteer activities is underwhelming.

The Ivies are looking for a well rounded class of students and leadership qualities.

You're missing the point. Nobody is saying a school needs to accept anyone because they have perfect test scores or perfect gpa. The fact is that Asians have a higher bar to meet than any other race in all aspects of the application process including grades, test scores, leadership, activities, volunteer work etc... just as it's a fact that whites need to meet a higher bar than blacks. I have a feeling you don't disagree with the latter part.

Or maybe you're refusing to acknowledge that many Asian applicants often bring little to the table besides good grades and high test scores or that many Asians think that's all that should matter.

All one has to do is look at California to see that you are totally wrong (and probably a racist). The UC system has been practicing race-blind holistic admission for about a decade now, meaning they take everything, such as extracurriculars, socioeconomic status, etc, into consideration. Basically, everything is fair game except race, and Asian numbers at UCs have gone through the roof. This indicates that Asian kids are at the very least equal in "soft factors" to the rest of the college applicant pool in Cali. There's no reason to suspect that the overall situation would be drastically different anywhere else.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just because you get a perfect Act score does not mean that Harvard is required to accept you.

Also, just because you are Valedictorian, Harvard is not required to accept you.

My sister was Val. of a great high school and had near perfect scores but she was not accepted. we did not read anything into this. She is blonde and blue eyed by the way. she went to Stanford and loved it.

There are many students who get perfect or near perfect scores on standardized tests.

This Asian applicant's "activities" were lacking. One sport and a couple of volunteer activities is underwhelming.

The Ivies are looking for a well rounded class of students and leadership qualities.

You're missing the point. Nobody is saying a school needs to accept anyone because they have perfect test scores or perfect gpa. The fact is that Asians have a higher bar to meet than any other race in all aspects of the application process including grades, test scores, leadership, activities, volunteer work etc... just as it's a fact that whites need to meet a higher bar than blacks. I have a feeling you don't disagree with the latter part.

Or maybe you're refusing to acknowledge that many Asian applicants often bring little to the table besides good grades and high test scores or that many Asians think that's all that should matter.

They just published this year's Rhodes Scholars. There were a lot of Asian sounding names on there, more than 2 at least. I didn't count them all, but I think Asians are over represented in the Rhodes Scholar list as well as a % of the population. So, there are plenty of Asians that are bringing more than just good grades to the table. It would be interesting to see how many more Asians you would see on this list if the so called elite colleges had the same criteria for Asian students as they do for white students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:White girls get the biggest boost in hiring and promotions under affirmative action.

And yet, it's still top heavy with white males.

It will take time to mitigate the effects of centuries of white male privilege.

Which is why Aff. Action is still needed. There are more women than men getting higher degrees for the past several years, and more and more non-whites as well. Yet, positions of power are still mostly in the hands of white males.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Arab-Americans are discriminated against, but there are no preferences for them in college. So are Jewish-Americans in many instances. I would imagine that it's difficult to achieve as a Muslim-American woman in the US. I think that's why it's problematic to only identify certain groups as worthy of a second look, different standard and not others. Any kid who has ever had a teacher unable to pronounce his name, been compared to Osama Bin laden, laughed at because she had an accent, etc. should perhaps get that look.

Are they underrepresented in higher education? If yes, then they should get a second look. If no, then they shouldn't. Of course there are particular instances, but if you're looking for a bright-line rule, then that's the only one that seems coherent.
If there's some "I was discriminated against as an Arab-American woman, and my mom couldn't go to school in her home country" background, then that should definitely go in an essay.
I wonder what people make of the "discrimination" against girl applicants. After all, it's harder to get in as a girl than a boy, all other factors being equal. So is that a lawsuit we need to start?

Women are given preferential treatment in admission to the MIT, CalTech, etc schools.

Great. How about all the other non-tech schools.

which is why on page one i said white girls should be on the side of asian-americans on this.

Nah. I'm a white girl, but I still think racism matters and URMs should get a bump.

If racism matters, then racism against Asian Americans matter as well both racism in general and the racism in college admissions.

Yes but since Asians are not underrepresented, you're not showing racism that impacts educational attainment.

If we are going to go back to the proportional representation, we have to be consistent and talk about proportional representation in other areas as well.

For example, Asian Americans should make up 6% of the Judges in this country. Asian Americans should make up 6% of the politicians in this country. Asian Americans should make up 6% of the CEOs of fortune 500 companies. Asian Americans should make up 6% of the actors in movies and TVs. Asian Americans should make up 6% of the professional athletes in this country etc. The list is almost endless.

The point is, why is it that one area (academics) where Asians apparently are "over-represented" a major problem but the fact that Asian Americans are severely "under-represented" in virtually all other areas never a problem?

The proportional argument should be applied consistently for all areas not just one or two.

Because we value education differently. And because we are talking about education here. If Asians are underrepresented as ceo's or judges that's an issue, but not related to college admissions.

Education is certainty valued by Asian Americans as well. The other areas are mentioned only in response to the usual proportional representation argument. We do not live in a vacuum. Education and eventual accomplishments and success are all connected. In fact, extreme under-representation of Asian Americans in all areas except college student populations demonstrates extreme discrimination and obstacles.

Can we also say that it's ok to have under-representation of blacks in education since blacks are over-represented in sports, music industry etc.? We are still talking about education.

If blacks made up 36% of the NFL players, we could say they are certainly still over-represented compared to the general population of about 12%. In reality, blacks make up about 70% of the NFL players. That is what Asian Americans are saying: Yes, 18% of the top colleges is greater than 6% but it would be closer to 36% without the discrimination and quotas.

+1000