The department’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating a complaint it received in August that Harvard rejected an Asian- American candidate for the current freshman class based on race or national origin, a department spokesman said. The agency is looking into a similar August 2011 allegation against Princeton as part of a review begun in 2008 of that school’s handling of Asian-American candidates, said the spokesman, who declined to be identified, citing department policy.
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A Chinese-American student, Jian Li, filed a complaint against Princeton with the Education Department in 2006, alleging discrimination on the basis of race or national origin. Li, who scored the maximum 2400 on the SAT and 2390 – 10 points below the ceiling – on subject tests in physics, chemistry and calculus, was denied admission by Princeton, Harvard, Stanford University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Wow. Basically perfect SAT and denied admission to all four. So - do you think Harvard/Princeton and others discriminate based on race? And if so - do you approve?
My solution would be blinding those who decide on admissions to the race/name/other such information on applicants. Remove all such information from the applications before they are reviewed.
While there may have been racism against the Chinese back in the Gold Rush era, and against the Japanese during WWII, in modern day I can’t think of any examples of negative racism towards East Asians in the US. On average, they’re doing better economically and in schools than whites.
So what’s the odds that FOUR different schools all employed a significant number of anti-East Asian racists? :dubious:
My guess would be that the kid scores well, but otherwise he’s an asshole and that became clear to the schools when they interviewed him.
I cannot quite manage to believe that scoring so well on the SATs should, anywhere, amount to automatic admission, or that subsequent denial in face of these tests point to racism, rather than any number of reasons why people aren’t accepted.
Maybe they’re doing a little too well. IIRC for purposes of equal opportunity statistics and grants, East Asians get thrown in with whites and aren’t counted as minorities, or at least rumor had it when I was in school. If whites have (at times successfully) sued for reverse discrimination in admissions, is it inconceivable that Asians might have a case as well?
As for general examples of negative racism toward East Asians in the US, three words: Korean shop owners.
ETA: and two more–“model minority.” In fact, I think you may be edging onto that view yourself.
Colleges and universities look at a lot more than test scores when admitting students, so you can’t look at that one factor (even if it’s a perfect score) and assume the student should be admitted.
But I expect most universities try to have a balance of students from different ethnic backgrounds, and if one ethnicity was significantly overrepresented using a certain suite of acceptance criteria, then they would tweak the criteria to correct for that. Not saying this is the case here, but I suspect it does happen at times.
Scores are only one part. What clubs did he RUN (not be a member of, run). How did his essays read? Was he an idiot in the interview? Does he do anything other than study? Did his teacher’s like him, or did he get slammed on his LORs.
Here is Stanford’s application page:
When all of these schools reject you, maybe it is you…
A hell of a lot more than SAT scores is asked for there.
As a Harvard grad (also accepted at Princeton and Stanford back in the day), I can tell you test scores aren’t everything. High scorers get rejected all the time. Scores are only one component of the application … you still need a top rank in your toughest courses, great recommendations, and stellar essays/awards/extracurriculars in order to to stand out… And like someone else mentioned, bombing the interview isn’t all that helpful, either.
When it comes to the top schools, scores only get your foot in the door. Doesn’t mean you’ll be able to actually walk through it.
I should also note that getting 800’s on SAT2 Math and Physics is really easy. At the Ivy level, such scores are a dime a dozen. Schools want to admit people who are more than just test-grinders. Students need to not only have good scores, but excel in other areas, too.
I can. It’s called affirmative action. I don’t have the percentages off-hand, but if colleges were free to admit only the “best-of-the-best”, they would be dominated by people of Asian decent. If an African-American and an Asian were to have the exact same grades, test scores and qualifications, and were to apply to the same school, the latter is more likely to be accepted than the former. There have been a few studies on this which show that Asians tend to have to score higher on tests and have something a GPA of like .5 higher to be on equal footing with Blacks, Hispanics and even Whites.
Exactly. Like FixMyIgnorance, I’m a Harvard grad. And my SATs were NOT perfect. Harvard rejects perfect SATs every year. Admission there is a function of a lot of different factors, not just test scores or GPA.
Omg, I’m sure we could wax poetic about the merits and demerits of affirmative action some time, but in this case, it wouldn’t address my post, which specifically mentioned automatic admission based on test scores alone, the implication being that colleges intentionally do not judge by such things absent other qualities, and that denial of a prospective student who happened to score well wouldn’t amount to racism. It’s not obvious how affirmative action fits into that tale.
The problem with this logic is that “the best of the best” doesn’t really have an objective meaning. There are few individuals that have all the same schools, teachers, classes, etc., so there is rarely a direct comparison that can be made. More importantly, college admission isn’t some reward for being really good at high school. They care about more than just grades or test scores because most universities don’t exist just to teach undergraduates. They lose money on nearly every one of them while they are in school, which is why they see it more as an investment in a person rather than as a duty to educate the “smartest” kids in the country.
204 students scored 2390 on the SAT in 2011. There were almost twice as many perfect scores, actually, and there were also more perfect scores than 2380s. Anyway, I would expect that all of the 2400s, 2390s, and 2380s got rejected by at least one school, and I’m sure several of them got multiple rejection letters. SAT scores aren’t everything, the schools listed in the OP see applicants with perfect and near-perfect SAT scores every year.
First of all over 100 kids get a perfect SAT score every year. Used to be 5 to 10 perfect scores every year but the SATS has suffered from grade inflation and a perfect score isn’t what it used to be.
Second, if we made entrance to ivy league schools race blind we would see Asians even MORE over-represented than they are now and noone wants that besides the Asians so fuck em.
We are not talking about racism but discrimination. In an effort to maintain diversity, a college doesn’t worry about having over 50% white students but it worries when their Asian population approaches 20%, its time to put an informal cap on the Asian population.
It happens all the time. I know they do it in their law school, presumably because a diversity of viewpoints and life experience is important to the discourse.
How much would you bet that a white student with perfect SAT scores and mediocrity in all other areas gets into at least one of those schools? Do you think its just superstition that makes Asian students fail to self identify as Asian?
It also helps if you aren’t Asian. Or do you think there isn’t a quota system in place?
It does if you are black or hispanic.
Yeah I agree the AP test scores are a throwaway fact.
I’m pretty sure you have in fact looked at the demographic breakdown of acceptance by race and test scores. Do you really think that Asians in today’s day and age are at THAT much of a disadvantage in extra curricular activities and interpersonal skills?
While not all Asians agree with me, affirmative action for poor black students doesn’t bother me, affirmative action for rich children of Harvard grads does.
A lot of Asians I know don’t like affirmative action because it keeps their kids out and like legacies because it only requires one or two generations to work its ass off and the following generations get to start on second base.
In the past, when admissions have become race blind, Asian populations increased largely at the expense of other minority populations.
If only there were some way of testing this provocative thesis! If only we could create a laboratory of college admissions to see whether this theory would be borne out!
Why, as it happens, we do have such a laboratory! It is called “the world we live in”! It happens to be a fact that no private college is compelled to practice affirmative action, which seems to me to mean that colleges are free to admit whomever they consider the “best-of-the-best.” Now, you might define this differently than they do, in which case, you’ll just have to go and create your own Omg A Conservative Ivy League Institution (… a/k/a Dartmouth).