# Asian American groups accuse Harvard of racial bias in admissions **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 16, 2015, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183 "2015-05-16T17:34:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 22
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2015, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/421 "2015-05-29T04:20:11Z")
NM. It’s just repeating the same things back and forth. FWIW legacies, 16% of the class with a parent who went there, are a bit higher in SAT scores currently. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2015, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/422 "2015-05-29T04:28:32Z")
“The average SAT score reported by legacy respondents was 2296, compared to a 2237 average for non-legacy students” to be precise for the class of 2018. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2015, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/423 "2015-05-29T05:31:08Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > “The average SAT score reported by legacy respondents was 2296, compared to a 2237 average for non-legacy students” to be precise for the class of 2018. Could you provide a cite for this? FWIW, not doubting, but would like to be able to confirm. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2015, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/424 "2015-05-29T10:00:06Z")
The one already provided in post #409. Over the graph of “GPA vs SAT score” (and under its heading) you can click on “SAT by Legacy”. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2015, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/425 "2015-05-29T10:46:26Z")
What happens when an elite school has admission standards based principally on academic merit is CalTech. Two things happen at Harvard: 1. A sincere effort to racially balance. Racially balance. What students look like, and what race group they identify with. 2. A near-complete lack of transparency around the admissions process and the actual quantified data by race. What Harvard has to do is find a way to matriculate only students who are highly qualified, but still maintain an overall race balance reasonably proportionate to the general population. Even when corrected for SES opportunity and “other,” asians would so dominate a general ranking of all admissions that no spots would be left for blacks. Therefore a defacto quota is maintained for all groups. This leaves asians feeling that there is a racial bias, because asians are denied admission while blacks with lesser qualifications are preferentially admitted on a race-alone bias. The process is complex enough, and soft enough, to make it difficult for any one individual to cry foul. The overall data are deliberately obscured from public transparency in order to prevent external analysis. In the long run, a straightforward, transparent, race-based AA quota system would avoid all of this hand-wringing, and that’s where we as a society need to go. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2015, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/426 "2015-05-29T10:50:52Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > “The average SAT score reported by legacy respondents was 2296, compared to a 2237 average for non-legacy students” to be precise for the class of 2018. Note that this survey was not responded to by 30% of the class, and that the respondents were not broken down. It seems naive to me to believe that a self-reported SAT score in an institution where such scores are highly prized means much of anything. Every student whose scores are below average is going to be inclined to exaggerate or decline to answer. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/427 "2015-06-02T16:43:46Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > And NONE of those things are related to race/ethnicity or gender. Which is the point. So - as I said, have your “holistic process” to find or select for those qualities. But remove everything gender- or race/ethnicity-related from it. > > The argument I hear is “if we did that, the majority of students would be Asians”. And my response is - so what? Are Asians less likely to be “leaders, connectors, techies, quants, activists, writer, politicians, and the whole range of ways that people can be successful”? I think what Even Sven is trying to say is that Asian students are frequently one dimensional grade grubbers who force themselves to get really good at a few extracurriculars and just happen to do well at standardized tests but the top universities are pretty good at picking out the good Asian students with great academics and extracurriculars from the bad Asian students with great academics and extracurriculars. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/428 "2015-06-02T16:47:52Z")
> [@Mr.Nylock](#): > > Those things all sound nice; but really they just want money first and foremost. Ultimately, they are businesses - these lovely things are just some of the intermediary steps that lead down the road to large alumni donations. > > ETA: I don’t know what my comment has to do with Asians now that I think about it. Well, these are supposed to be tax exempt organizations. Donations to them are tax deductible. They do not tax income taxes on much of their income. And as a result they cannot discriminate. If they are a for profit institution, they can be more discriminatory. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/429 "2015-06-02T17:34:22Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > How did everyone win when students graduated with “lesser” degrees and students at Berkeley and UCLA didn’t have the benefit of diversity? What is the benefit of diversity that it supplants the benefit of meritocracy? I support affirmative action (to a point) as do almost all the Asian groups mentioned in the OP. When Berkeley went race neutral, the numbers of African Americans in the entering class went from 250 to 125, the number of whites in the entering class dropped by many times that amount. And that’s not even counting the effects that legacy preferences (not present at Berkeley AFAICT) have on the admissions process. Perhaps its just a relic of cultural history but an anonymous standardized test was the primary method of intergenerational social mobility for thousands of years. And in that time, any attempt to make the test more subjective was much more likely inspired by a desire to reduce that social mobility. than a desire to better measure merit. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/430 "2015-06-02T17:51:52Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > The research on this subject might surprise you: > > [“The study, published in the journal Social Forces, shows that while a degree from an elite university improves all applicants’ chances at finding a well-paid job, the ease with which those jobs are obtained is not equal for black and white students even when they both graduate from an institution such as Harvard University. A white candidate with a degree from a highly selective university, the paper suggests, receives an employer response for every six résumés he or she submits. A black candidate receives a response for every eight.”](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/03/06/elite-college-degrees-give-black-graduates-little-advantage-job-market) > > [Where you go to collect doesn’t matter all that much. Except if you are black, Hispanic, or the child of parents who didn’t receive a college education. In those cases, you will earn more money by attending a more selective university.](http://cognitomentoring.org/blog/how-much-does-where-you-go-to-college-affect-earnings/) > > A black student who shoots for the stars by attending Berkley is making a wise decision. A degree from Berkley will provide a rare opportunity for him to offset the stigma of his racial background. If he has to drop out, he can always transfer to another school. No harm, no foul. But it would be foolhardy for him to not even try. > > I’m not ashamed to say I was admitted to my undergraduate alma mater with a below-average SAT score. How ballsy was I to enroll in an engineering school without even taking pre-calc in HS! Perhaps I’m not ashamed because I ended up graduating with honors, which is a lot more than I can say for most of my more “elite” classmates. But alas, those guys are probably making a lot more money than I am. A shit ton more. Which just goes to show how little academic merit matters in the long run. > > Personally, I’m glad my university recognized this by taking a chance on me and not reducing my worth to a bunch of numbers. Monstro, your position seems to assume that others do not have unquantifiable merits. If affirmative action gave you an opportunity and you made a better life for yourself than you would have if you had not had that opportunity I say good for you. None of the Asian groups in the OP are speaking out against affirmative action, the number of spots lost to Asians by virtue of affirmative action pales in comparison to the number of spots Asians lose to white because of an aversion to too many Asians on campus or legacy preferences (Asians can learn to play lacrosse just as easily as they can learn to play violin so athletic preferences only make a difference for a generation or two). I think the case for affirmative for blacks and American Indians is fairly easy to make (its a bit harder to make for latinos, ion what way are latinos any worse off today than Asians were ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/431 "2015-06-02T18:13:12Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > I’m always leery of simplistic explanations to complex phenomena. While it’s true that children of alumni have a far better chance of admittance than others under equal conditions, the reasons really have a lot more to do with the historical legacy of success I talked about than with any direct _quid pro quo_. Nor do I buy this “white supremacist culture” nonsense. How do you reconcile that with the accusations of “liberalism” that the right likes to hurl at all of academia? The reality is that the Ivy League culture will always favor the existing power base, whatever its color or racial makeup happens to be at any point in history. Historically legacy preferences were implemented for the much the same reasons that Jim Crow voting laws had a grandfather clause. Except you have to replace blacks with jews. Perhaps you are right and Harvard is measuring something other than objective academic criteria but no one has ever shown that Asian applicants fall behind their white counterparts along any other vector. Its like there is some inarticulable je ne sais quoi that they are able to sais well enough to admit whites at much higher rates than Asian with otherwise indistinguishable objective characteristics. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/432 "2015-06-02T18:15:41Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > As I mentioned before, it’s not even clear that does give you the most academically talented kids. The kid who has done almost as much with much, much less may well be more impressive on every axis–work ethic, native ability, intrinsic motivation–and may well be much more suited to make the most of an Ivy League education. > > It really can’t. How do you write about your decision not to wear a headscarf without talking about your race and gender? How do you explain how you balanced your parents’ expectations against your own dreams if you can’t contextualize those expectations? How do you talk about the discrimination you’ve faced, or the bigotry you’ve learned to recognize in yourself, or whatever without talking about race and gender? > > I do this professionally. I literally review and advise kids on dozens of these things each year. For probably 50% of kids, the events that have shaped their lives, that have changed their perspective and way of thinking, are rooted in race and gender. One of the best essays I saw this year was “How being a fat gay Mexican kid in a white middle school taught me to get over myself”. It was funny and heartfelt and showed a kid who was deeply insightful and had powerful gifts for analysis and language. There is no way any of that would have come out if he’d had to avoid all mention of race and gender. I agree that we can only do so much to scrub identifying characteristics. But are you saying that Asians generally write poor essays or are less endowed in some area outside of objective academic and extracurricular criteria that would explain their overwhelming disadvantage in the admissions process? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/433 "2015-06-02T18:18:29Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > You are thinking about it too literally. It’s not about hearing one interesting story-- it’s about the questions it would have never occurred to you to ask, the idioms and expressions you’ve never heard before, the concerns that wouldn’t have been concerns to you, and the connections you wouldn’t have made otherwise. > > Think of it like a dinner party. WIth a group of similar people, it will be fun but the conversation will be predictable. With a more diverse group, the conversation can end up anywhere, and more new ideas will come in to play. And of course Asian students are fungible. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/434 "2015-06-02T18:23:12Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Do you think the average black college graduate is less qualified than an average white high school drop-out? > > Do you think AA gives black people _that_ much of a boost? What are you referring to here? Do white high school dropouts have better socioeconomic outcomes than black college grads? Are they more employable? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/435 "2015-06-02T18:29:33Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I think the elephant in the room is this: Many people talk about the virtues of “diversity,” but they don’t mean just any kind of “diversity,” they mean a very specific kind of “diversity.” > They’re picturing a student body something like this: 50% white, 40% black or Hispanic, and 10% Asian and other races. > > What they don’t want is something like this: 50% white, 30% Asian, and 20% black, Hispanic and other races. That’s not the kind of “diversity” that they want. They would think that that ratio is out of whack. I think people are ok with the two options you present. What they aren’t comfortable with is a school that is 50% Asian 30% white and 20% other. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/436 "2015-06-02T18:31:09Z")
True, but most people are okay with the NBA being overwhelmingly African-American. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/437 "2015-06-02T18:32:50Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > What?? I’m not claiming that some form of discrimination did not and may not now exist in Harvard admissions. In the broadest sense of the word, a selection process is by definition discriminatory, whether it discriminates on intelligence, academic achievement, social status, race, or anything else. We can argue whether the particular form of selection as it presently exists at Harvard represents an unfair bias. We cannot argue, as you have been doing, that it’s based on a quota system, because it isn’t. Unless you have some evidence you haven’t shown us yet. The last link you posted directly contradicts your own claim. > > This is what bothers me about the complaint of the Asian group. They claim racial discrimination, but in point of fact Harvard is applying a set of long-standing criteria which may disadvantage them as a group, as indeed it may disadvantage many other groups on the basis of many other criteria. The question is, is this actually a problem, and why? What long standing criteria? Legacy preferences? That along with the “subjective” criteria were implemented to keep out the Jews. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/438 "2015-06-02T18:35:25Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I’m LOL’ing. > > If a school had that many black students, it would not be known as diverse. It would be known as a predominately black school and all the “good” white people would be running away from it. > > You might be interested in this figure: [Asian enrollment in elite institutions is between 20-30%](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/19/fears-of-an-asian-quota-in-the-ivy-league/statistics-indicate-an-ivy-league-asian-quota) > > If Asian enrollment was, say, 30% across the board, there would still be plenty of Asians getting rejected. Especially since there are so [many](http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-students-go-to-crazy-lengths-in-us-university-applications-2015-2) applying every year. And the percentage of Blacks and Hispanics at places like Harvard is 25%. I don’t see the good white folks running away from it yet? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/439 "2015-06-02T18:42:24Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > We can actually isolate how much of it is due to affirmative action at prestigious universities fairly easily. Because affirmative action affects things like university _admissions_ and blue-collar hiring. It doesn’t make the actual program of study any easier, and it doesn’t get you a job in a professional field. > > The growth in the number of black doctors, lawyers, economics professors, and CEOs can’t be attributable to affirmative action since affirmative action has never been used in moving people through medical school or in handing out law partnerships. The hurdle with medical school is getting in, not getting out. The drop out rate in medical school is incredibly small. Same with law school. How many black partners do you think there are at large law firms? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183/440 "2015-06-02T18:50:15Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > Why? Why in the world does that matter to someone considering his application to college? If the point is the ability to “write impressively and humorously” then any topic will do. If the point is that he’s a fat gay Mexican kid, then no, it should have nothing to do with whether his application is approved or not. > Yes, and if his identity is all locked up in his ethnicity or gender, then he is not that good a candidate. Good writing ability is pretty important to success. If you can write compellingly about one thing you can write compellingly about many things (its like method acting). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183.md?page=21) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asian-american-groups-accuse-harvard-of-racial-bias-in-admissions/720183.md?page=23)