# Harvard and Princeton Targeted in U.S. Asian-American Discrimination Probe **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 3, 2012, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636 "2012-02-03T06:06:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/101 "2012-02-06T04:59:08Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > Maybe most colleges are just a joke, then, since test scores seem to be a decent predictor of college success. I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Such people were of course admitted by the admission boards in question. What exactly is your criticism? ---
**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:** [February 6, 2012, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/102 "2012-02-06T05:08:31Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I don’t see **even sven** saying that there “must” be something lacking. Just that there could be. And has she provided a cite that supports her theory? > [@](#): > > Ya’ll are getting on my nerves here. If we were talking about black kids being rejected from schools, there would be absolutely no doubt that black kids were failing at something disproportionately. It would just be understood that systemic racial discrimination–while possible–would be unlikely. Pffft. So now you’re telling me how I would react to news that high scoring black kids were being accepted at one third the rate of white kid with the same scores? You think I would look for some way to explain away that apparent disparity? > [@](#): > > there could be cracks in the “model minority”, and that simply bringing this up as an as an explanation is racist or ludicrous. I argue that it is racist and ludicrous to believe that Asian Americans are infallible and that they don’t deserve the same level of scrutinity that’s applied to other non-whites all the freakin’ time. I sense a little bit of frustration against model minorities generally. You think we don’t encounter racism? That things are all peaches and cream for us? Are you under the impression that there are things being handed to us that are not being handed to you? Do I think there is malicious racism in top colleges to exclude Asians. Of course not. But, I do think that Asians are subject to a higher admissions standard because these schools feel like they already have too many Asians. > [@](#): > > I’m more willing to believe a university has this view about blacks or Hispanics than they do about Asians. Because the first two groups are seen as inferior in the educational system, while the last is not. If I were a university that had no qualms about playing into racial stereotypes, I’d be filling my brochures with plenty of Asians and whites. With only a sprinkling of pictures of “non-threatening” black and Hispanic students. Are you fucking kidding me? Is this upside down day? I don’t have a problem with affirmative action but there is there any doubt that there is an admissions preference for underrepresented minorities. Simply put, not enough blacks and hispanics (for whatever reason) so we lower the bar for them. Too many Asians (for whatever reason) so we raise the bar. Y’all are just pretending that its something more than trying to maintain some sort of racial balance and implying that "Asians are REALLLY nerdy and thats probably what keeps out the Asians nerds versus the smooth charismatic white dudes that get high SAT and GPAs. Puhlease. > [@](#): > > There’s no rule that they have to be consistent or fair. A student may have so-so grades and a so-so SAT score, but strike an interviewer as being extremely likable, full of leadership qualities that aren’t reflected in grades or SAT scores. They may find another kid who has so-so grades and scores very well on the SAT, and writes a hilarious essay that has the the admissions officers cracking up for days. What gives an outsider the right to say, “Hey, the one with the high SAT score would make a better student than that other other one.” What if the admissions officer feels like he’s tired of trying to distinguish a 99th percentiler from a 95th percentiler, and he’s ready to start weighing softer criteria more heavily? Ya’ll want to tell him he’s wrong to do this? We are not talking about individuals we are talking about applicant populations. And consistently over a large number of applications we see Asians being admitted at one third the rate that white with the same scores are admitted. You are effectively saying that these white kids are all pretty exciting and the Asian kids are all pretty boring. I’m saying THAT is bullshit. That over a large population I don’t think you can distinguish between Asians and white on soft criteria. > [@](#): > > It is not simple and everyone who is saying it is has obviously never had to evaluate candidates before, let alone college applicants. Who is saying that it is that simple? People are saying that all other things being equal, people with similar scores should have similar admission rates. But of course the admission rates are dissimilar and the only thing that anyone can point to is the difference in race. Sure Even Sven makes vague comments about some soft skills Asians may lack but I have yet to see a cite. For all the cites that I have provided, all I have seen in return is theory, hypotheticals and vague references to something that Asians lack. > [@Terr](#): > > 1. Asian students are generally and on the average lacking in the “softer criteria” department. > 2. The positive “softer criteria” include being non-Asian. I don’t see why people have such a problem admitting that Asians are being subjected to a higher standard because schools feel there are too many Asians. Its like we are afraid of hurting the feeling of white kids at these schools if we let them know that they were subject to a lower standard than their Asian classmates. Well either level the playing field or make white kids live with the same issues that black and hispanic kids have to deal with because everyone “KNOWS” that the black and hispanic kids aren’t as smart as the white kids. > [@monstro](#): > > But here’s the thing about the marketplace. You can do your research and decide what kind of school you want to go to. If you disagree with Harvard’s approach to selecting a student body, do not send your application there. Because they may just select you and you’ll have to be lumped in with the riff-raff of society! If you only want to rub shoulders with top SAT scorers, find a university that does not require essays or interviews and has a reputation for selecting top SAT scorers. So can Harvard select for race? Can a lunch counter do that too? I mean it is just the marketplace doing its thing right? Of course, Harvard doesn’t exclude Asians entirely they just make the door tougher to get through. > [@](#): > > Was I unqualified to go to my brainiac school? Should I have given up my spot to a kid who had twelve AP credits (my school only offered three) and a perfect SAT score? Are you the descendant of people who were brought over as slaves or lived in America during segregation? If yes then, no, Affirmative Action is made specifically for you. If not then, still no because racism works against a black child in this country in a way that it doesn’t work against almost anyone else, not immigrants, not latinos, not Asians and certainly not whites. I don’t care if you came from money or from the Caribbean. > [@](#): > > Why should I have done this, since I was fully capable of matriculating and so many kids who fit the “genius” profile did not? There’s a lot of people that can handle the material, thats not why you belong there. > [@](#): > > And a few of them had the balls to tease me about being an “AA baby”. And they never had to reconcile with the fact that they were three times as likely to get in as an Asian student with the same scores because people like to make excuses for why white folks get special treatment. > [@](#): > > So forgive me if I don’t think all this talk about “merit” and “qualification” is just a bunch of crybaby shit. You can think what you want but it wasn’t young Asian men acting like they were better than you because they were telling themselves they got in the hard way when they had a much easier time than the Asian students there. > [@monstro](#): > > Asian students are more likely to be the children of immigrants. Immigrants, in general, try hard to assimilate. Which often means pushing their children into areas seen as “high class”. Such as classicial music (rather than sports). Or academic excellence (rather than dance club). Asians don’t train their kids in classical music because they think its high class. Go to Korea or Japan or Beijing, anyone of means teach their kids piano and/or violin. Those kids may be over-scheduled but they are not unidimensional. > [@](#): > > …They are not to question your authority or ask “why” when you tell them to do something. Because this wasn’t how you were raised–you were raised to respect elders and be quiet when in their presence. Yeah, you try getting that to work on a kid that was raised in the USA. It might work in the old country but here, kids are kids and short of beating them, they’re going to act the same way their friends and peers act. > [@](#): > > The idea of being an individual is foreign to you, so you don’t raise your kids with a sense of individualism. So you discourage them when they want to depart from the path you have set for them. Any signs of “errant” personality, you squash immediately. The result is that you raise a very kind, respectful bunch of kids, but they do not make waves, good or bad, at school. Their teachers like them, but they don’t feel that there is much substance to them. Unlike that Harrison boy, who’s always charming the socks out of everyone. Or Temika, who everyone knows has an “attitude” but is still smart and has a heart of gold. OMFG. You have us down pat. That is exactly how we all are. We all want our kids to be docile, boring and unimaginative. We’re too fucking stupid to recognize that this might not be a great idea. No we build our kids from the ground up to be test taking machines and don’t understand why all the white kids are so fucking charming and the black kids have spunky attitudes and a heart of gold (ours are made of tin). > [@](#): > > So from this little story, I can pull out a number of things that may disadvantage Asian kids, as a group: Are you serious or are you just trying to get a rise out of me? > [@](#): > > You can keep believing that I’m just saying Asians are boring people, but you would be misconstruing everything I’ve said. I’m just actively trying not to simplify a complex problem by assuming that Asians are excellent at everything, and so disproportionate rejection rates must be a cause for the injustice alarm. Noone is asking you to assume that Asians are great at everything. I’m just asking you not to assume that we suck at everything else without any evidence that we do. > [@](#): > > I am perfectly willing to admit that both racial discrimination AND cultural handicappers are at play. And what’s worse, they may be interacting with each other in a way that is hard to tease a part. Wait. WHAT?!?!? Then wtf is all the disagreement about. You agree that there is racial discrimination going on and yet you sit there and tell me to stop whining about the racial discrimination (which is can probably be explained by things other than race)? If your point is that perhaps SOME of the disparity might be the result of other factors. Sure, I can imagine that being the case but what I cannot imagine is that race is not a limiting factor for Asians at top schools. > [@Theobroma](#): > > I offer this quote from the Wikipedia page referenced above: He’s not trying to get into Princeton. He is trying to point out injustice and he has gotten hammered for it. The most recent lawsuit is by an Indian fellow. > [@](#): > > And yes, I understand that race is sometimes a factor in student admissions, presumably on the grounds that an entire student body with the same cultural background is not necessarily what the university wants or what they feel their students need. I get it. But this is not at all about getting into a good college or getting a fine education. It’s about the few available slots that offer absolute maximum prestige. I doubt those perfect scorers who are denied entry into their first choice university have the slightest problem gaining admission to excellent, top-notch universities anywhere in the U.S. I don’t think anyone believes that the discrimination is malicious but it exists. And we are not just talking about perfect scorers, we are talking about students at the margins. We are talking about students that are going to SUNY Stonybrook instead of Cornell, not Yale instead of Princeton. > [@FixMyIgnorance](#): > > What I am arguing is that top universities don’t compare 2400-scoring students against each other. It doesn’t work like that, and the more you keep arguing it, the more you’re going to confuse yourself, here… And what I am arguing is that you’re wrong. I recognize that admissions is a multifaceted rubics cube but with all things being equal, high scores are a significant enough factor that you would expect higher scores to achieve better results. Now of course all things are never equal but now we are left with the fact that there are some other factors that are leading to white students being accepted at THREE TIMES THE RATE as Asian students. So what are these other factors that can explain this sizable discrepancy? BTW if you think top colleges see 2250 as about the same as 2400 then I would suggest that you don’t know what you are talking about. > [@](#): > > They focus on keeping classes well-balanced and diversified with interesting people, and sometimes this means you’re going to wind up with a lot of one given race being rejected compared to others. Other than the notion that Asians are not interesting :dubious: You seem to be saying saying that in order to achieve some sort of balance and diversity “you’re going to wind up with a lot of one given race being rejected compared to others” Can we say that “you’re going to wind up with a lot of **Asians** being rejected compared to others” Because that is all I am saying. > [@](#): > > I’m not implying that all Asians, for instance, do nothing but study all day. But out of all the races you could point to, Asians have the greatest proportion of these types of students. Cite that this is true for the qualified applicant pool at top colleges. I doubt that Asians with stellar credentials as a group are noticably more “study all day” types than whites with stellar credentials as a group. > [@](#): > > To the point, it’s not like Asians are under-represented at the Ivy level at all. Relative to their ability, I say they are. I can point to the shift in population at UC Berkeley and UCLA as evidence of this fact. What can you point to other than stereotypes? > [@](#): > > Furthermore, top students who don’t get into Ivies still get into other top-notch schools anyway. So you don’t think that there are kids that would have gotten into Northwestern but ended up attending Northwestern but ended up attending NYU instead? Lower down the food chain the differences can be meaningful. Once again the attitude here seems to be “well you are going to do well enough so why does it really matter if you get into a crappier school than an identical white student would get into, you’ll still be fine” > [@FixMyIgnorance](#): > > Diversity means diversity along every metric you care to invoke. If you have too many of one type of student applying for admission, it’s going to be harder to gain a spot because you aren’t standing out against the baseline. And in this case, too many of one type of student means too many Asians. I can accept that schools don’t want to have too many Asians and therefore discriminate against them, I don’t like it but I can accept it. I can’t accept being asked for and providing cites that discrimination exists and when I ask for cites getting nothing but stereotypes, hypotheticals and unfounded theories. > [@monstro](#): > > I’m willing to bet my next pay check that the same inconsistency applies to Asian students to some extent. That is to say, Asians are not given preferential treatment as a minority group when it comes to hard sciences and engineering, but their “Asianness” is an asset in other contexts, such as law enforcement, education, or political science. So all this talk about “AA doesn’t benefit Asians”…I ain’t buying it. It may not benefit them in contexts that we associate Asians doing well in, but that doesn’t mean that programs NEVER recruit Asians. They can do this with or without calling it Affirmative Action. Well, I don’t know about law enforcement but I know that at law schools there is also discrimination against Asians in the admission process because there are too many Asians there too. But its good to know that you are keeping up on your stereotypes. > [@erislover](#): > > Who, in this thread, has promoted the hypothesis that only test scores matter? Noone. What’s your point? ---
**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:** [February 6, 2012, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/103 "2012-02-06T05:54:27Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > You keeping saying this like you expect people to go ":smack: Of course you’re right! I DO!!! It boggle my mind why people don’t look at that and say well gee, I can’t identify any other factor that would explain the huge fucking gap. Perhaps there is discrimination going on. Instead, what I get is a bunch of excuses based on stereotypes of Asians, unfounded theories and hypotheticals. GIVE ME A FUCKING CITE that explains away these disparities in test scores. I’ve provided cites re: scores and admissions. I’ve provided cite re: how hard it is to get top scores or perfect scores. I’ve provided cite about the shift in demographics after the UC system had to go race blind. So, PLEASE, give me a cite that confirms your collective theories, stereotypes and hypotheticals. > [@](#): > > But since SAT scores are just ONE metric used by colleges to evaluate students, it is unwise to use SAT scores as the basis of your argument for why this is absolute evidence of racial discrimination. OK then please just explain it and provide some supporting cites. Because over large populations I thin it is entirely reasonable to use SAT scores as the basis for this claim, especially considering we have seen how admissions change when the applications are scrubbed of all race identifiers. > [@](#): > > But I’m also saying that THERE IS NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION to rule out other explanations. Then you must have been ignoring the information I provided. > [@](#): > > Perhaps it is the scientist in me, but I like exploring all possibilities before jumping to a conclusion. So, when presented with evidence for hypothesis A, you conclude the hypothesis A is false without any evidence that hypothesis A is in fact false? Provide me with some evidence that this is not the result of discrimination. > [@](#): > > Nothing is ever black and white. NOTHING. Was slavery a bad thing? Yeah nothing is black and white, even the statement that “nothing is black and white” Are you really a scientist or do you just call yourself that because you have a science degree? > [@](#): > > Now it’s my turn. Cite? YOUR TURN?!?! When have YOU ever provided a cite? You want a cite for every statement I make and yet you feel free to state stereotypes like they are fact. I’ll give you a cite when you give me the cites I have asked for. > [@](#): > > Can I imagine that they are an disadvantage? Yes, I can. As I have said before, knowing how institutions work and how “diversity” is defined, I definitely believe it is likely that racial discrimination is occurring. I don’t know how many times I have to say this. > > Now do I think that disproportionate rejection rates of Asian applicants at Cornell is prima facie evidence that Cornell is anti-Asian? Hell no, as I’ve ALSO explained at length. Do you think it’s prima facie evidence? Do you think someone who thinks both could be at play is thinking less clearly than someone who thinks it’s an either/or situation? Can you break that down for me. You think there is racial discrimination but you don’t think that the rejection rate is evidence of that racial discrimination. So why do you think there is racial discrimination? And, hell yes I think the rejection rate presents a prima facie case Do you know what prima facie means? “Prima facie evidence need not be conclusive or irrefutable: At this stage, evidence rebutting the case is not considered, only whether any party’s case has enough merit to take it to a full trial.” -wikipedia > [@](#): > > You have no idea if this is the case. You don’t know if your high SAT and your being Asian made you more desirable than a white person with a high SAT. Rice told me that they sent me the offer based on my SAT score. Everyone at my high school with SAT scores over 1500 got the same letter. > [@](#): > > Well the Berkely case is certainly evidence that is persuasive. What isn’t compelling is a lawsuit brought by an individual who was rejected from his top picks, but accepted everywhere else, including Ivy Leagues. Yeah well, he’s not trying to get into Princeton, he is pointing out injustice. His suit was not to get accepted, his suit was to have the federal government withdraw federal funds until they stopped discriminating against Asians in their admissions process. > [@](#): > > Another line of compelling evidence would be if we could get our hands on college application essays, letters of recommendation, and recorded interviews. When the name of the applicant is hidden and no indications of the individual’s race are provided, are those softer criteria judged the same as when they everything is out in the open? This is not rocket science, scrounging up the type of evidence we would need to evaluate this objectively. Researchers could do this without much trouble at all. And a person like me, who is already suspicious of the system, would have no problem accepting their findings either way. Why would I? I have no dog in this fight. Well, you are black and when the discrimination against Asians go away it might go away in the form of the elimination of all race based admissions. In the UC system, this resulted in a significant drop in black and hispanic admissions, a significant increase in Asian population and almost no effect on the white population. I don’t mind affirmative action for underrepresented minorities, I mind that the entire burden for making room for underrepresented miorities is borne by over-represented minorities (this inclludes Jews) and not pro rata by Asians and whites alike. > [@](#): > > Yeah, the more you keep saying this, the more I doubt that you really understand what the hell you’re talking about. But keep beating this tired drum. I’m sure you’ll persuade others to join your side eventually. Please refer to my all other things being equal argument above. > [@FixMyIgnorance](#): > > Damuri, you keep ignoring the counterpoints to the extent that you’re at risk of labeling yourself a crackpot, here. There are no fucking counterpoints. There are allusions, stereotypes and unfounded theories. Show me ONE cite that anyone has provided for these counterpoints. Are my cites unreliable? Are my conclusions unreasonable? In what way am I a crackpot? What compelling argument have I been ignoring? > [@](#): > > It’s not just about scores. Asians, statistically, have higher SAT scores on average, yes. But as has been argued countless times in this thread, it’s NOT JUST ABOUT SAT SCORES. Once you’re past a certain threshold, scores stop mattering as much. Concede the point, already. cite please. Because it seems that within any population there is almost no better predictor of successful application than SAT scores and grades and there is a significant difference between the success rate of 2250 SAT scores and 2400 SAT scores. > [@](#): > > What would be considered fair to you? If you go by SAT scores alone, your top universities will be keeping out practically everyone other than Asians and Jews. Is that fair to you? Fair to me would be what they have in the UC system. A race blind admissions process. Its not like the UC system is entirely populated by Asians and Jews. I wold be OK with reserving 10% of the seats for underrepresented minorities and economically disadvantaged students. But that’s not what I am trying to achieve here. I am just trying to get people to admit that there is discrimination against Asians int he admissions process because it has been a doozy trying to pull just that one concession out of more than a few of you. > [@](#): > > That’s how you portray passion. It’s almost indistinguishable from obsession. How fucking ironic. > [@](#): > > And please stop with the strawmen arguments. … > It’s really rare for a stellar student to get universally panned for no real reason. I’m concerned about the margins. If the discrimination is great enough it might mean some kid that would have gone to Cornell if he was white ends up going to NYU. > [@](#): > > The problem is that at the end of the day, there are more qualified students than there are spots. Therefore, finding a completely fair method of admission is not really feasible, especially when you’re also juggling so many factors. I agree but we don’t have to tolerate gross unfairness do we? > [@An\_Gadai](#): > > I have zero familiarity with the US college application process. Do you have to state your race on forms? Can you leave that section blank? I know this wouldn’t mitigate potential discrimination as your name can often be a marker of your “race”. And for Jews and Asians this has been the case. A lot of Asians don’t mark their ethnicity. There is a Chinese mother in the article cited in the OP that went as far as to change her children’s last name to western names. California’s UC system scrubs all identifying information and gives every application a reference number and as long as your application doesn’t self identify through the essay or activities, they cannot tell your race. The experience in California has been a significant increase in the Asian population. Most people take this to mean that there was racial discrimination (well maybe not around here but most people). ---
**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:** [February 6, 2012, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/104 "2012-02-06T05:55:45Z")
> [@erislover](#): > > I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Such people were of course admitted by the admission boards in question. What exactly is your criticism? I think CP is skeptical of the notion that colleges diminish SAT scores in their decisionmaking process. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/105 "2012-02-06T06:31:50Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Well now that it is clear that you agree that these schools are in fact using race as a factor in denying admissions to Asians (if not that particular Asian), it seems to me that you are also saying that Universities do this because they believe that Asianness is a proxy for some other characteristics that they want to filter out. Wrong. And I am not even sure how you can jump to that conclusion. You need to recognize that being for one thing (diversity) doesn’t mean you are necessarily against another (Asians). If an effort to increase diversity hurts certain groups, it doesn’t mean that was their intent or goal. You seem intent on trying to find malice where there likely isn’t any. Honestly, if they were so intent on capping their Asian population, why are they okay with ~20%? I that like some magic tipping point where everyone starts mixing up l’s and r’s? Seriously, it’s just funny to me that you think there is some racist conspiracy in admissions offices where they go, you know I can tolerate 20% Asian, but not 25%. No fucking way. That would be complete bullshit. Twenty is cool, but the extra 5% would ruin everything. If they are trying to actively discriminate against Asians, they are doing a pretty shitty job. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > What do you believe those characteristics are? And just to be clear, you are defending the University’s decision to filter out Asians based on some perceived correlation between Asianness and some characteristic. You haven’t even shown that schools are trying to “filter out Asians”. Yes, they may have a harder time getting in, but that doesn’t mean that admissions people are sitting in a smoky room trying to cap the number of Asians they have. Just posting the relative difficulty of getting in tells us nothing about the underlying rationale or motivations of the people making those judgements. Their efforts are typically in the service of diversity, not (typically) systemic racial bias or animus. I know you seem to think the two are the same, but they are not. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > What special tax breaks, subsidies and monopolies do we give utilities? See [here](http://www.foxillinois.com/news/illinois/Tax-credit-expiration-could-slow-winds-rise-in-Illinois-but-still-plenty-to-export-138744734.html), [here](http://www.idigmygarden.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27334), and [here](http://business.marylandtaxes.com/taxinfo/taxcredit/utility/default.asp). There are far more, but I think you get the picture. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Tax exempt entities are not supposed to be profit seeking, they are supposed to be driven by things other than money. Sure these entities need money to survive but every last one of the schools we are talking about have enough of an endowment to last them decades even if they didn’t charge another dollar in tuition to its non-professional programs. They are not profit seeking. These sentiments really highlight how ignorant you are on these matters. Do you realize that most universities take a loss on basically every student they educate? Tuition, even at elite schools, does not usually cover the costs of educating the students, and maintaining infrastructure. At Harvard, it’s about 20% of revenue. Yes, they have big endowments in some cases, but they usually spend a decent amount of that endowment on running the school. Harvard aims to spend around 5% of it every year. Harvard only asks students of parents who make less than 180k to chip in 10% of tuition costs. Harvard had a $130MM operating [DEFICIT](http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/11/harvard-fiscal-2011-financial-report-shows-deficit) last year. They could probably a little looser with the endowment purse strings, but that has it’s own disadvantages. That said, are these really the actions of a profit-seeking entity? > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > None of the Ivy’s were built on academic selectivity but that is how they persist. To a degree. Either way, this is just a hypothetical. I don’t think the student quality would suffer too much. Again, we are not talking about the differences between geniuses and slow kids. It’s the difference between very good and possibly great. As much as you disrespect NYU, I would bet the majority of their students could hang with Harvard students in almost any real-world setting. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > [snip]…or do you think that general whining by Asians about this discrimination mean that the discrimination is probably justified? Well, I think that if your response to being rejected by a university is to try to sue them for racial discrimination, they are probably better off for not having invested in someone so thin skinned, presumptuous, litigious, entitled, and self-important. Especially when there is a line out the door of people just as capable as he is. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I have yet to convince a racist that racism is wrong. Right, because recognizing that there are measured, and substantiated correlations that can be identified using race as a proxy means you are a racist. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > All other things being equal, I will hire the Columbia grad son of a ditch digger over the NYU grad of a doctor or lawyer and we are pushing a lot of Asian students into less selective schools and while they tend to do well there, there is an advantage to being middle of the pack at Columbia over doing well at NYU. You do recognize that your laziness is just propping up this system you see as unjust? If you truly think elite universities are systematically discriminating against Asians, and that said discrimination results in them having markedly less talented and capable individuals, then why do you value the brand so much when you are hiring? Do you really think the value-added at Harvard is that much greater than at Columbia (it’s not)? Is it because you don’t think their brand suffers to any real degree? That the few dozen or so Asian people that don’t get in, that may be replaced by under represented minorities, doesn’t really amount to much wrt the overall quality of their graduates. It’s pretty ironic that you spout all this nonsense here, then engage in practices in the real world that are directly contradictory to your stance. I guess your firm commitment to justice (and quality) works better in theory than in practice. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Just like you think being Asian is a proxy for other characteristics, I think that graduating form Columbia says something about you. Its not always true but over a large population it tends to be true. What characteristics do you think tend to be true about Asians over a large population that makes race a useful proxy in the admissions process? To quote this [paper](http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/iej/articles/v2n3/SIJUWADE/PAPER.PDF): > [@](#): > > Peng and others (1994) have found that Asian students were more likely to participate in honorary or subject matter clubs than in vocational educational clubs, church activities or athletics. in addition, Asian children tend to make friends with people who have similar racial and cultural backgrounds, a tendency that becomes stronger with age So if I want to create a incoming freshman class where intramural athletics are popular and people have more of tendency to make friends with people from different backgrounds, I might want to avoid Asian students. > [@](#): > > In the areas of career choice, some variations are found between Asian and Anglo parents. nearly half of the Asian parents (46%) hope their children would choose the medical field compared with 29% of the Anglo’s. So, let’s just say I had too few spots in a science program. Admitting too many Asians might mean I would not have the resources to fit all of them. > [@](#): > > The extra-curricular activities listed by the interviewed parents are different for the Asian and Anglo children. Music lessons rank first among Asian sample followed by sports. Sports are first for the Anglo children followed by church activities. it appears that Asian children follow a more individualised pursuit while Anglo children lean towards group-orientated venture, such as drill > team, debate and swimming. Confucianism greatly influences the Asian culture, since it values the mind more than the body. efforts to refine an individual’s mind have won greater attention. Some intellectual pursuits of Asian children are related to their ethnic heritage. The Asian children’s individualised extracurricular experience may have a certain effect on interaction with friends after school. if the frequency of phone calls from or visits by peers is any indication, the Asian child has less social contact than the Anglo child. So if I want a class of people that are more sociable, I might not want too many Asians. These are all blanket statements that do not necessarily apply to any one individual, but the point is that there are many, many things that highly correlate with race that a school might have a valid interest in. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Again with the “provide a cite” while never providing any cites of your own. I can’t find a cite but this is my memory of the facts surrounding Berekley. I did however provide a cite that white students were THREE times more likely to be accepted to a college than an Asian student with the same scores. Is that not enough? No, it’s not because it doesn’t actually prove what you claimed. If you would like a cite on anything controversial that I have said, please let me know. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > 2350 is not achieved without native ability. Before law school, I probably taught hundreds of students at Kaplan and tutored dozens of kids and you don’t teach a kid to 2350, they teach themselves after you explain how the test works.] As someone currently working in that field who has taught more students than that, I can tell you you are greatly simplifying things. Even so your first statement is meaningless. Most scores are not achieved without “native ability”. If you are trying to argue that excellence on that level is only demonstrated by those with unique gifts, I would be happy to point you to tons of literature that posits that excellence is more a matter of hard work (10,000 hour rule), and practice than any special inherent ability. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > So in the context of this conversation where we are arguing about why Asians with similar scores and grades do not get accepted at the same rate as white kids you say this and then deny that you are diminishing Asian GPAs because their classes might not have been as difficult or something? Wrong again. I said: “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.” The point being that determining who is “better” is rarely an apples to apples comparison. It was not related to any defense of Asians with better scores being passed over or White kids. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Now go through the thread and try to pick up the posts that say that racism ISN’T the reason for the disparity, that its some subjective intangible virtue that white kids have a lot of an Asian kids don’t. And when pressed on this the Even Svens of the world evaporate. I am guessing because she realized that she is being a little bit racist. Why don’t you point them out since you seem to think they are so plentiful. And before you do so, please recognize that racial discrimination in its strictest sense is not racism. Discrimination is often no more than taking a factor into consideration. That is not racism in the pejorative sense you are using it. If it were, than it casting a movie about slavery with all Black people would be racist. Or McDonald’s airing an ad in Spanish only in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods would be racist. Just saying race should/could be a relevant decision making factor is not always racism. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I am a bit more concerned with the plight of kid who is going to attend NYU instead of Cornell because Cornell feels it has too many Asians. The discrimination doesn’t only exist at the top schools. It trickles down as Asian students who would have otherwise gone to Princeton end up going to Cornell which crowds out Asians that end up going to NYU. You seem to be OK with that. Would you also be OK with a system that makes your left handed kids 3 times less likely to be accepted than a right handed kid because left handed kids are an over-represented minority at top universities? Yes, I am okay with that if having a fewer left-handed people would result in a better overall environment. I am not sure why you aren’t. Is it that you question the benefits of diversity, or because you don’t like that it hurts Asians? > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Other than keeping the Asian population down to acceptable levels, why do you think they operate this way? I think most universities do it because they genuinely want a class that is wholly representative of the world their students may encounter. They recognize that in today’s society what you are can often speak louder than anything you said or do. They feel there is inherent value in bringing together these people who look, feel and act differently. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > The tests might be more difficult but the scores are still on a curve. Do you honestly believe that if you took the kids from my generation and made them take the tests today with the same preparation that they would do any worse than today’s kids? Kids haven’t gotten smarter, the test may have gotten harder and the curve looks a bit different but its easier to get a perfect score these days than it used to be. First, kids likely have gotten smarter seeing as IQs (assuming you want to use that as an indicator) keep going up. Second, my initial point was to refute your contention that things were so much harder back when you were in school walking up hill both ways, than they are now. I suspect that those kids who did well back then, given modern advantages would do just as well. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Only if you retract all the claims that you cannot provide a cite for because I might be misremembering this fact but you are making all sorts of claims that have nothing but your posts as cites. Examples please? > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > They all deny that they discriminate against Asians. They are not as sanguine about their discrimination as you are. Because colleges are generally not actively discriminating AGAINST Asians, they are advocating for others. Yes, the outcome may be the same, but it doesn’t justify your claim. Michelle Obama advocating kids eat better and become active, is not the same as her discouraging junk food and TV watching. Would a more active lifestyle lead to less TV watching? Probably. Just as advocating for admissions for Blacks and Hispanics may hinder some Asians. But, that doesn’t mean the process was created to mess with Asian people for overachieving. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/106 "2012-02-06T07:15:15Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Well, you are black and when the discrimination against Asians go away it might go away in the form of the elimination of all race based admissions. In the UC system, this resulted in a significant drop in black and hispanic admissions, a significant increase in Asian population and almost no effect on the white population. This is greatly overstated. See this [link](http://www.ucop.edu/sas/publish/aa_final2.pdf). On page 19, you can see a graph of the under-represented minority percentages over time. Applications went down .6%, admissions went down 2%. By 2002, four years later, application were up 2.4% from the '98 levels, and admission were up 2.5%. Also note that applications were falling BEFORE the changes went into affect for a variety of reasons. To quote the paper: > [@](#): > > Over the five years since race-neutral policies went into effect at UC, the trends described above have slowly reversed themselves. At the systemwide level, the overall number of applications received has continued to increase every year (to nearly 75,000 in 2002). As a proportion of the total, underrepresented applicants declined further in 1998 and 1999 (to 17.3 percent), but in absolute numbers they began to increase in 1998 and surpassed the 1995 figures in 1999. For Fall 2002, underrepresented applicants represented 19.7 percent of the total, surpassing their proportions in the two years immediately preceding the implementation of Proposition 209, but not quite reaching the 1995 percentage of 21.1. Preliminary counts of applications for Fall 2003 (submitted in November 2002) indicate that this will be the first year in which the proportion of underrepresented applicants exceeds the 1995 levels. These increases are consistent with demographic change among California high school graduates: since 1995, students from underrepresented groups have grown from 38.3 to 41.6 percent of California’s graduating public high school seniors.19 Hardly a significant drop. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/107 "2012-02-06T09:30:15Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > Hardly a significant drop. [http://www.browndailyherald.com/2.12237/without-affirmative-action-asian-admission-rates-rise-1.1671413#.Ty-dbORjErs](http://www.browndailyherald.com/2.12237/without-affirmative-action-asian-admission-rates-rise-1.1671413#.Ty-dbORjErs) In 1996, Californians adopted Proposition 209, which prohibited university admission offices from considering race, sex or ethnicity in its decisions. ## As a result, the number of black students admitted to the University of California at Berkeley dropped from 562 in fall 1997 to 191 in fall 1998. Hispanic admission numbers plunged as well, from 1,266 to 600. Since 1997, the percentage of black and Latino students admitted to the University has dropped 6.5 percent **while the Asian-American percentage has jumped 6.2 percent**. … Vincent Quan, a junior at Berkeley, said that even as an Asian- American student, “it was kind of a culture shock to see that many Asian people on campus.” Berkeley’s freshmen admits were 41.7 percent Asian American or Pacific Islander in fall 2007, according to a Berkeley brochure. … Affirmative action opponents had mixed reactions to the study. Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, an organization that lobbies against affirmative action, said since Asian Americans are “disproportionately well qualified,” he was not surprised that “a color-blind admissions process favors them.” oh and about that drop in Black and Latino enrollment: [http://www.cir-usa.org/articles/30.html](http://www.cir-usa.org/articles/30.html) The same mindset is in evidence at Berkeley and at UCLA, where colorblind admission practices were mandated by the 1996 ballot initiative known as Proposition 209. Enrollment of black and Latino students at the two elite campuses has since fallen roughly by half. While substantial, this drop corresponds to higher minority enrollment at other,less demanding institutions in the University of California system, such as Riverside. The scholars Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom have argued that this shift may be a blessing in disguise.\*\* Many students who used to be quota-ed into the two flagship colleges predictably flunked out. (The drop-out rate among black Berkeley students enrolled before Proposition 209 was an appalling 42 percent.) Now, under colorblind admission norms, minority students, like white students, are sorting themselves into institutions from which they are likely to graduate.\*\* ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/108 "2012-02-06T14:21:02Z")
Can you explain to me why you think editorials from the Weekly Standard, and a Brown university newspaper are more informative and telling than the detailed paper from the UC office of the President? Besides, you are focused on two UCs where trends of White and under-represented minority enrollment had been going down for years partly due to the real, or perceived notion that the school was for Asians. There is areason UCLA is know as the University of Caucasuians Lost among Asians. That said, there was a reduction of under-represented minorities at those two schools, but there are many reasons this was the case. ---
**Author:** ![FixMyIgnorance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FixMyIgnorance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FixMyIgnorance)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/109 "2012-02-06T16:30:32Z")
Damuri, I’m going to simply state this bluntly. Yes, it’s going to be, mathematically speaking, less likely for a particular race to get in (frequencies considered, variables controlled for) if there is a priority on bringing in other races on board. But this does not mean they are held to higher standards or discriminated against. Your use of words here is inaccurate, and that’s what people are arguing against, here. But if you want to try to figure out a system of fairness, you’re going to have a tough time arguing it. The current system is basically set up so the cream of the crop from a number of diverse groups have a chance of admission. Otherwise, you’re going to be catering to the affluent and coached only, further widening the socioeconomic gaps. “Lower down the food chain the differences can be meaningful.” Not really. Like I said, even if you don’t hit the Ivies, it’s not going to really matter much. Most of my friends from Ivies who landed big jobs after graduation came from affluent families to begin with. The biggest indicators for your future success are going to be things like the type of family you come from and who you know. Top schools will open doors for you, but it’s not like the doors opened at Ivies are really all that superior. Plenty of top firms recruit from more than just Ivies, and even if you don’t hit a top firm, you’ll still get a pretty good job for yourself. I have over 1500 friends on Facebook, most of whom went to top 30’s. Most of them are doing just fine for themselves. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/110 "2012-02-06T17:51:03Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > (The drop-out rate among black Berkeley students enrolled before Proposition 209 was an appalling 42 percent.) Now, under colorblind admission norms, minority students, like white students, are sorting themselves into institutions from which they are likely to graduate.\*\* Given that the general national drop out rate among white college students is around 40%, I think I’ll need to save the smelling salts for another day. What is shocking is those numbers. UC Berkeley is an enormous campus, with around 25,000 undergraduates. Are there really only 600 Latino students in California’s 13.7 million strong Latino population who can complete a UC Berkeley undergraduate degree without failing due to academic reasons? Really? That number is obscene, and an embarrassment to California. i couldn’t tell you where we are failing, but somewhere we are failing a lot of people. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/111 "2012-02-06T17:58:26Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Are there really only 600 Latino students in California’s 13.7 million strong Latino population who can complete a UC Berkeley undergraduate degree without failing due to academic reasons? I don’t know where the numbers in **Terr** ’s article came from, but 10 years on the undergraduate student body is 12% Hispanic (about 3,000 students total), versus the 36% Hispanic composition of the California population generally. Note that the article refers solely to students in the 1998 entering class, not to the student body as a whole. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/112 "2012-02-06T18:16:00Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Rice told me that they sent me the offer based on my SAT score. Everyone at my high school with SAT scores over 1500 got the same letter. Based _solely_ on your SAT score? If so, I’ll want evidence. I’m a Rice alum and have known the folks in the admissions office for a long time. While scores are certainly a part of admissions, Rice has always prided itself on consideration of things other than scores. It’s why the notorious “fill this box” part of the application is still there. It sounds like you’re putting your own interpretation on correspondence from the school. Your description of a “pre-acceptance” letter and “offers to fly you out” also sound suspect. There’s “Owl Weekend” which is a weekend in April when students can spend a weekend on campus (including 1 day of classes) with student hosts in the colleges before deciding on what school to attend. Students come for the weekend at their own expense. This does not sound like the Rice of the 80s at all. The Rice board was (and still is) tight-fisted and the admissions office operates on a small budget. There’s no way they approved the expenses to fly students out for visits. Athletics does so but out of their own budget. ---
**Author:** ![FixMyIgnorance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FixMyIgnorance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FixMyIgnorance)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/113 "2012-02-06T18:47:09Z")
No school does it based on SAT alone, lol. A friend of mine was invited to check out Emory and had airfare paid for, if I recall. They’ll invite students with strong academic credentials to come check the place out if their aim is to improve yield, but it’s not like they spend gobs of money on it or do it by SAT alone. ---
**Author:** ![FixMyIgnorance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FixMyIgnorance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FixMyIgnorance)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/114 "2012-02-06T18:58:47Z")
Anyways my point is you seem way too fixated on SAT scores and act like high scores imply the student is better or something (otherwise I don’t know why you keep harping on it so much). SAT’s _are coachable_. My 2400 SAT1 / 2400 SAT2 used to be something like 2120 / 2190 cold before I decided to study for them. SAT’s are also _poor measures of what a student can contribute to the school_. That’s why they look at things like essays and activities and recs and awards. All the SAT is meant to do is provide a statistical baseline for academic correlation, which gets verified/confirmed via the academic transcript. It’s meant to gauge whether or not a student could handle the work at the college/uni. ---
**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:** [February 6, 2012, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/115 "2012-02-06T20:40:06Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > You need to recognize that being for one thing (diversity) doesn’t mean you are necessarily against another (Asians). If an effort to increase diversity hurts certain groups, it doesn’t mean that was their intent or goal. You seem intent on trying to find malice where there likely isn’t any. I don’t think this is done out of a hatred of Asians. I think this is done because someone sees value in maintaining certain racial ratios in their student body and the race that these people think they have too much of is Asians. So they select away from Asians. I thought you agreed with me on that point at least. Isn’t that discrimination? > [@](#): > > See [here](http://www.foxillinois.com/news/illinois/Tax-credit-expiration-could-slow-winds-rise-in-Illinois-but-still-plenty-to-export-138744734.html), [here](http://www.idigmygarden.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27334), and [here](http://business.marylandtaxes.com/taxinfo/taxcredit/utility/default.asp). There are far more, but I think you get the picture. Tax exempt status is granted at the federal level. So I was talking about federal taxes. I mean heck, the local Costco or auto factory might get state or local tax breaks and I’m pretty sure they are for profit companies. I am looking for federal tax exempt status for utilities or phones companies or at the very least significant tax breaks. Because if your missions has become maximizing fundraising then I’m not at all sure why we provide tax exempt status. > [@](#): > > They are not profit seeking. These sentiments really highlight how ignorant you are on these matters. Do you realize that most universities take a loss on basically every student they educate? Tuition, even at elite schools, does not usually cover the costs of educating the students, and maintaining infrastructure. At Harvard, it’s about 20% of revenue. Yes, they have big endowments in some cases, but they usually spend a decent amount of that endowment on running the school. Harvard aims to spend around 5% of it every year. Harvard only asks students of parents who make less than 180k to chip in 10% of tuition costs. Harvard had a $130MM operating [DEFICIT](http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/11/harvard-fiscal-2011-financial-report-shows-deficit) last year. They could probably a little looser with the endowment purse strings, but that has it’s own disadvantages. That said, are these really the actions of a profit-seeking entity? I’m not the one that brought up fundraising as the driving force behind college admissions. I said IF that is what is driving them then why are we giving them tax exempt status. Its not really that relevant because I’m not interested in revoking tax exempt status for collegesand I don’t think they do it for future fundraising purposes (perhaps the legacy admissions and the admissions from the development office are fundraising, I don’t believe admissions committees are looking to pick tomorrow’s hedge fund managers, I don’t think they look at the admissions process as picking lottery tickets), I was just trying to point out that this is not really a valid selection critieria for admissions at a tax exempt school. The ONLY reason Harvard aims to spend 5% of its endowment every year is because they were scared that their tax exempt status would be revoked. Senator Grassley of Iowa proposed hearings on the tax exempt status of private universities based on the fact that they were spending so little of their endowments every year. The following week all the top schools started pledging to stop hoarding their endowments. So, these were not exactly voluntary actions. But you knew that right, because you wouldn’t go around calling other people ignorant without being reasonably well informed about these things. > [@](#): > > It’s the difference between very good and possibly great. As much as you disrespect NYU, I would bet the majority of their students could hang with Harvard students in almost any real-world setting. I don’t disrespect NYU, its a better school than most. BUT, there is a difference in the marketability of a Harvard diploma versus an NYU diploma. I am pretty sure NYU students would agree with you. I’m not indicting NYU students as people nor am i exalting Harvard students as people. I am saying that harvard and other top schools represen socioeconomic mobility (this is how most Asians see top schools AFAICT) and while I can grok excluding whites and Asians for poor kids (of any race) or underrepresented minorities, I cannot understand reducing access to Asians so that the campus can look whiter. > [@](#): > > Well, I think that if your response to being rejected by a university is to try to sue them for racial discrimination, they are probably better off for not having invested in someone so thin skinned, presumptuous, litigious, entitled, and self-important. Especially when there is a line out the door of people just as capable as he is. This guy is going to be out of college for years before this gets resolved. He didn’t do it for himself, he did it because he saw injustice. You are effectively bashing the whistleblower. > [@](#): > > Right, because recognizing that there are measured, and substantiated correlations that can be identified using race as a proxy means you are a racist. I probably shouldn’t have said that. I don’t think its racism and i don’t think you’re a racist but there is discrimination going on and you seem to be justifying that discrimination. > [@](#): > > You do recognize that your laziness is just propping up this system you see as unjust? If you truly think elite universities are systematically discriminating against Asians, and that said discrimination results in them having markedly less talented and capable individuals, then why do you value the brand so much when you are hiring? Do you really think the value-added at Harvard is that much greater than at Columbia (it’s not)? Is it because you don’t think their brand suffers to any real degree? That the few dozen or so Asian people that don’t get in, that may be replaced by under represented minorities, doesn’t really amount to much wrt the overall quality of their graduates. It’s pretty ironic that you spout all this nonsense here, then engage in practices in the real world that are directly contradictory to your stance. I guess your firm commitment to justice (and quality) works better in theory than in practice. I said “all other things being equal” I was trying to highlight how a good school opens doors for a poor kid that a privelelged background might not. Are you saying that you don’t think using the college someone attended is not a valid basis for hiring decisions? I suppose I could try to counteract the discrimination by hiring more Asians from less presitigious schools but the hiring decision is made by committee and frankly I would rather fix the college admissions process than reverse engineer the colege admissions process to try and figure out who should have gotten into which colleges. I don’t know how many Asian students are getting displaced but the Asian population at a lot of top schools caps at around 15% and the population at Berkeley is almost triple that. So at a school the size of Columbia it might be 5000 students (over 100 students per entering class). Of course I can’t prove that the acceptance rate at Columbia would match the rate at Berkeley but there is really no reason to believe it won’t either. > [@](#): > > To quote this [paper](http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/iej/articles/v2n3/SIJUWADE/PAPER.PDF): A cite!!! Finally. I have never heard of this publication or this guy and the articles has a lot of typos for a peer reviewed journal (if it is peer reviewed), but fuck it, its a cite. A study based on a survey of 60 kids in Texas. OK, so and you are saying that the differences pointed out by this article explains the differences between the Asian and white acceptance rates? > [@](#): > > So if I want to create a incoming freshman class where intramural athletics are popular and people have more of tendency to make friends with people from different backgrounds, I might want to avoid Asian students. You are using a racial stereotype to select away from one race. Seriously, what if I said I think blacks tend to have poor impulse control and undeveloped work histories so if faced with otherwise similar resume’s I’m going to select white candidates over black candidates three to one. Well, at least you have now presented a rationale for the discrimination, Asian kids tend to be less athletic and more insular than white kids (at least in Texas, although I wonder how diverse the white kid’s circle of friends are or is this a case of Asian kids hanging out with Asian kids is insular but white kids hanging out with white kids is just normal). And are you saying that this explains away the large discrepancy? How do you account for the change in Asian admissions at the UC schools when they went race blind? Doesn’t it support the argument that there were quotas or at the very least stereotyping? > [@](#): > > No, it’s not because it doesn’t actually prove what you claimed. If you would like a cite on anything controversial that I have said, please let me know. Your cite does PROVE anything either. But my cites (like yours) support my argument. I’ve asked for a ton of cites throughout this thread and I have seen ONE so far. > [@](#): > > As someone currently working in that field who has taught more students than that, I can tell you you are greatly simplifying things. Even so your first statement is meaningless. Most scores are not achieved without “native ability”. If you are trying to argue that excellence on that level is only demonstrated by those with unique gifts, I would be happy to point you to tons of literature that posits that excellence is more a matter of hard work (10,000 hour rule), and practice than any special inherent ability. Yeah, I suppose if someone spends 5 years full time studying for the SATS an above average student could become a savant in that area but in the context of kids that come to a kaplan course, noone gets 2350 without native ability. If your point is that for most intents and purposes there is little to no difference between a smart guy and a really really smart guy, then sure I agree. But unless you are saying that these school (these gateways of socioeconomic mobility) are not and should not be merit based, I don’t see your point. > [@](#): > > Wrong again. I said: > > “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.” > > The point being that determining who is “better” is rarely an apples to apples comparison. It was not related to any defense of Asians with better scores being passed over or White kids. ONCE AGAIN, in the context of white kids being accepted at 3 times the rate of Asian kids, you bring up the notion that differences in schools, teachers and classes make it tough to do apples to apples comparisons. Sure, I understand that every white kid is a snowflake and every Asian kid is a cookie cutter automaton but unless you think Asian kids are taking unchallenging classes compared to white kids, why would you think that this inability to make apples to apples comparisons should favor white kids 3 times more frequently than Asian kids? > [@](#): > > Why don’t you point them out since you seem to think they are so plentiful. Replace the word racism to discrimination and see if that helps. Apparently racism is something more than negative discrimination based on race when we talk about Asians. > [@](#): > > And before you do so, please recognize that racial discrimination in its strictest sense is not racism. Yeah I don’t think it is either but when you start using the sort of stereotypes that people started throwing around as a basis for excluding Asians generally, then yeah thats a bit racist. > [@](#): > > Yes, I am okay with that if having a fewer left-handed people would result in a better overall environment. I am not sure why you aren’t. Is it that you question the benefits of diversity, or because you don’t like that it hurts Asians? I have said before. I can live with the discrimination in the interests of diversity, I support affirmative action for poor kids and underrepresented minorities but I don’t think that any of these schools really suffer from such a lack of white kids that they need to discriminate against Asian kids to maintain a critical mass of white presence, but thats white privilege for you I guess. What I can’t tolerate is this mealymouthed defense of discrimination as something OTHER than discrimination. Its like SOME white folks can’t admit that when they got into that college, they were the beneficiaries of affirmative action because the college chose them over some Asian applicants because they were white and they wanted more white kids. Its like their egos can’t handle it. But to your credit, at least you admit that there is discrimiantion, you explain it aay as justifiable in the intersts of diversity (I guess we need mroe white people in colleges). > [@](#): > > I think most universities do it because they genuinely want a class that is wholly representative of the world their students may encounter. They recognize that in today’s society what you are can often speak louder than anything you said or do. They feel there is inherent value in bringing together these people who look, feel and act differently. OK so the upshot of that is a desire to keep a lid on teh Asian population. For whatever virtuous reason they may have, ultimately they are keeping a lid on teh Asian population because they think there are too many Asians. Just say it, they don’t want that many Asians in their student body and they discrimiante against Asians in order to achieve that purpose. > [@](#): > > Examples please? Well it turns out that it wasn’t you I was thinking about. Monstro is the one that made all sorts of unfounded claims and hasn’t responded to requests for cites. > [@](#): > > Because colleges are generally not actively discriminating AGAINST Asians, they are advocating for others. Yes, the outcome may be the same, but it doesn’t justify your claim. Michelle Obama advocating kids eat better and become active, is not the same as her discouraging junk food and TV watching. Would a more active lifestyle lead to less TV watching? Probably. Just as advocating for admissions for Blacks and Hispanics may hinder some Asians. But, that doesn’t mean the process was created to mess with Asian people for overachieving. Like I said i don’t believe there is malice but i believe there is discrimination. Do we really need to discriminate against Asians vis a vis white kids? I would be OK with affirmative action for poor kids or underrepresented minorities but it seems a bit much to do it to maintain a high white population. ---
**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:** [February 6, 2012, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/116 "2012-02-06T22:31:24Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > This is greatly overstated. See this [link](http://www.ucop.edu/sas/publish/aa_final2.pdf). On page 19, you can see a graph of the under-represented minority percentages over time. Applications went down .6%, admissions went down 2%. By 2002, four years later, application were up 2.4% from the '98 levels, and admission were up 2.5%. Also note that applications were falling BEFORE the changes went into affect for a variety of reasons. To quote the paper: > > Hardly a significant drop. Accordin to your link, at Berkeley and UCLA the drops were large and persistent over the time frame. While UC schools could not discriminate on the basis of race, they could discriminate along other vectors such as income, coming from a family with few or no college grads, coming from a school that doesn’t have a history of sending a lot of kids to 4 year colleges the percentage of California minorities going on to 4 year colleges has diminished. trhe admission rate at Berkeley went from 26% to 11% and with the implementation of these other vectors, the rate has climbed to over 16% and holding steady. > [@brickbacon](#): > > Can you explain to me why you think editorials from the Weekly Standard, and a Brown university newspaper are more informative and telling than the detailed paper from the UC office of the President? Besides, you are focused on two UCs where trends of White and under-represented minority enrollment had been going down for years partly due to the real, or perceived notion that the school was for Asians. Your links seem to say much the same thing. > [@](#): > > There is areason UCLA is know as the University of Caucasuians Lost among Asians. That said, there was a reduction of under-represented minorities at those two schools, but there are many reasons this was the case. You know there are more white kids at UCLA than Asian kids, right? > [@FixMyIgnorance](#): > > Yes, it’s going to be, mathematically speaking, less likely for a particular race to get in (frequencies considered, variables controlled for) if there is a priority on bringing in other races on board. But this does not mean they are held to higher standards or discriminated against. Your use of words here is inaccurate, and that’s what people are arguing against, here. Wait. What?!?! First of all you’r not stating it bluntly. Lets use the words we mean and not some mealymouthed vague references to “a particular race” and “other races”. So the distinction you are making is that this isn’t discrimination against Asians this is discrimination in favor of whites, which just HAPPENS to result in fewer Asians being accepted but this doesn’t mean that its tougher for Asians to get in. Are the higher average scores and the disparity in acceptance rates between white students and asian students with teh same scores, just an unrelated coincidence. > [@](#): > > But if you want to try to figure out a system of fairness, you’re going to have a tough time arguing it. The current system is basically set up so the cream of the crop from a number of diverse groups have a chance of admission. Otherwise, you’re going to be catering to the affluent and coached only, further widening the socioeconomic gaps. So because we cannot achieve perfect we shouldn’t try for better? Take the UC system. They are race blind but they do select for students who come from high schools that do not send a lot of kids to 4 year colleges, they select for low income, they select for first in family to attend college and they end up with similar underrepresented minority populations in the system as a whole even if more of that population is not at UCLA and UC Berkeley. > [@](#): > > “Lower down the food chain the differences can be meaningful.” > > Not really. Like I said, even if you don’t hit the Ivies, it’s not going to really matter much. Most of my friends from Ivies who landed big jobs after graduation came from affluent families to begin with. The biggest indicators for your future success are going to be things like the type of family you come from and who you know. Top schools will open doors for you, but it’s not like the doors opened at Ivies are really all that superior. Plenty of top firms recruit from more than just Ivies, and even if you don’t hit a top firm, you’ll still get a pretty good job for yourself. > > I have over 1500 friends on Facebook, most of whom went to top 30’s. Most of them are doing just fine for themselves. Its not Ivy League per se. I include all top schools and if you don’t think that there is a difference between the opportunities available to someone who graduates from a top school and someone who doesn’t then you are cracked. > [@even\_sven](#): > > Given that the general national drop out rate among white college students is around 40%, I think I’ll need to save the smelling salts for another day. I think its closer to 21% but who gives a shit, the graduation rate in the UC system for underrepresented minorities started to approach the average graduation rate (note the UC system system admits the top 1/8th of california high school graduaates and the top 4% of any particular school, they are allocated to the different campuses on teh applciation process, so the applicant pool is not exactly random to begin with). > [@](#): > > What is shocking is those numbers. UC Berkeley is an enormous campus, with around 25,000 undergraduates. Are there really only 600 Latino students in California’s 13.7 million strong Latino population who can complete a UC Berkeley undergraduate degree without failing due to academic reasons? > > Really? > > That number is obscene, and an embarrassment to California. i couldn’t tell you where we are failing, but somewhere we are failing a lot of people. Is that really the critieria? Let in any applicants of a particular race that successfully graduate? If acceptance is not a direct metric function of scores and grades (as everyone here including you seem to believe), why would the graduation rate be? Their admission to and graduation from other schools like UC Davis seems to be pretty good. And I believe pepople have been making the argument that it doesn’t really matter what school you go to because they are all pretty much the same, they can graduate from Davis and they’ll do OK. Or do these concerns only apply to underrepresented minorities? > [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > Based _solely_ on your SAT score? If so, I’ll want evidence. Sorry its been almost 30 years, I didn’t go to Rice and I didn’t keep the letter. > [@](#): > > I’m a Rice alum and have known the folks in the admissions office for a long time. While scores are certainly a part of admissions, Rice has always prided itself on consideration of things other than scores. It’s why the notorious “fill this box” part of the application is still there. Now that I think about it the letter probably didn’t include the offer of a free plane ride but when I called them, they offered to fly me out (a couple of colleges offered to fly me to their campus but I didn’t really want to visit Texas) and when I asked more about it they said that it was my SATs. Now they may have been reluctant to tell me it was my race or my family income or geography (although I don’t know why they would have trouble getting applicants from NYC) but thats what they told me. I got sebveral letters offering admission and a free ride (a lot of kids I went to school with got these letters) without ever having sent in an application (and remember this was back in the day when every school had its own unique application) and Rice was one of them. Maybe you should ask them how they operated back then. I never applied so I don’t know what the “box” is but they might have made me fill out an application if I decided to pursue it. > [@](#): > > It sounds like you’re putting your own interpretation on correspondence from the school. > > Your description of a “pre-acceptance” letter and “offers to fly you out” also sound suspect. There’s “Owl Weekend” which is a weekend in April when students can spend a weekend on campus (including 1 day of classes) with student hosts in the colleges before deciding on what school to attend. Students come for the weekend at their own expense. > > This does not sound like the Rice of the 80s at all. The Rice board was (and still is) tight-fisted and the admissions office operates on a small budget. There’s no way they approved the expenses to fly students out for visits. Athletics does so but out of their own budget. Well like I said it was almost 30 years ago so I might be misremembering but I am pretty sure they offered me a full ride without my ever having even seen an application and I’m pretty sure they offered to fly me out if I was serious about attending, I certainly couldn’t have afforded to fly out on my own. > [@FixMyIgnorance](#): > > No school does it based on SAT alone, lol. > > A friend of mine was invited to check out Emory and had airfare paid for, if I recall. They’ll invite students with strong academic credentials to come check the place out if their aim is to improve yield, but it’s not like they spend gobs of money on it or do it by SAT alone. Does Rice really need more Asians? Or poor children of immigrants? Or kids from NYC? My GPA was just average but I had a pretty good SAT scores. The only other thing i can think of is that I was a national merit scholar but I think that was just from getting good PSAT scores, there might have been a one page application or something to actually get the scholarship money. But I wasn’t Westinghouse or anything like that. > [@FixMyIgnorance](#): > > Anyways my point is you seem way too fixated on SAT scores and act like high scores imply the student is better or something (otherwise I don’t know why you keep harping on it so much). > > SAT’s _are coachable_. My 2400 SAT1 / 2400 SAT2 used to be something like 2120 / 2190 cold before I decided to study for them. > > SAT’s are also _poor measures of what a student can contribute to the school_. That’s why they look at things like essays and activities and recs and awards. > > All the SAT is meant to do is provide a statistical baseline for academic correlation, which gets verified/confirmed via the academic transcript. It’s meant to gauge whether or not a student could handle the work at the college/uni. Of course they are coachable FOR YOU. Take a 1800 test score student and try to coach them to 2400. There is a limit to the coachability. They are the only objective measures that we have and when the admission rates diverge considerably from what you would expect based on the only objective measures you can get your hands on, it raises questions. When the disparity is so great between similarly credentialed kids of different races, you can’t help but suspect that maybe race has soemthing to do with it. When teh state of California school system admissions process goes race blind and the Asian population increases significantly as a result that tends to confirm your suspicion. Noone seems to be able to identify anything objective (like recs essays activites and awards) that would explain the skew. The ony thing we have is a cite to an article that concludes that Asian kids engage in more individual rather than group or team activities and they tend to hang out with other Asians. Hardly the sort of thing that you would expect to lead to such large disparities. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/117 "2012-02-06T23:03:05Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I think its closer to 21% but who gives a shit, the graduation rate in the UC system for underrepresented minorities started to approach the average graduation rate (note the UC system system admits the top 1/8th of california high school graduaates and the top 4% of any particular school, they are allocated to the different campuses on teh applciation process, so the applicant pool is not exactly random to begin with). You realize that there are other reasons for people to drop out than “they are too dumb,” right? The big obvious honking one is financial concerns. Specifically, having to work part or full time to cover living expenses is by far, one billion percent, the number one reason why people drop out of college. People who have to work to survive do not finish college at the same rate as those who have the option concentrate on their studies. People who have to pay their college expenses on their own (or rely on scholarships and loans) and do not receive family support drop out in droves. Six out of ten college drops outs do not finish college because they cannot balance work and school- which it turns out is a feat few people can pull off, brilliant or not. The second most-cited reason is that they could not afford tuition and fees. Most people who dropped out had significant financial difficulties in their first year. Classes being too difficult actually comes in dead last for why people drop out. This is not why people drop out. Now let’s throw family responsibilities, cultural adaptation, family support for education mobility and academic support networks into the mix. Which demographic groups do you think have a larger chance of running into a non-academic predictor of dropping out? ---
**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:** [February 6, 2012, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/118 "2012-02-06T23:17:36Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > You realize that there are other reasons for people to drop out than “they are too dumb,” right? The big obvious honking one is financial concerns. Specifically, having to work part or full time to cover living expenses is by far, one billion percent, the number one reason why people drop out of college. People who have to work to survive do not finish college at the same rate as those who have the option concentrate on their studies. People who have to pay their college expenses on their own (or rely on scholarships and loans) and do not receive family support drop out in droves. > > Six out of ten college drops outs do not finish college because they cannot balance work and school- which it turns out is a feat few people can pull off, brilliant or not. The second most-cited reason is that they could not afford tuition and fees. Most people who dropped out had significant financial difficulties in their first year. > > Classes being too difficult actually comes in dead last for why people drop out. This is not why people drop out. > > Now let’s throw family responsibilities, cultural adaptation, family support for education mobility and academic support networks into the mix. Which demographic groups do you think have a larger chance of running into a non-academic predictor of dropping out? Yeah I understand that money is probably a much more likely cause of dropping out that academic ability especially when the UC system already has filters. I was just saying that the exact percentage is not so important as the fact that the drop out rate of underrepresented minorities is converging towards the mean. If I was spitballing I might say that its really tough to compete academically at UCLA while working, perhaps its more difficult there than trying to pull this off at some other UC school. Perhaps the fact that the average icnome of the students at UCLA is higher than at other schools means that your fellow students don’t have that problem and its harder to keep up. In any event, we are race blind in the UC system and we also have non-race based affirmative action for low income, few college grads in family, high you went to doesn’t wend a lot of kids to college. The total underrepresented minority population at the UC schools is about where it was before Prop 209 and the graduation rate is significantly higher at all campuses. I would say that is at worst a neutral develoment. But if you can come up with a way to select for a slightly higher population of underrepresented minority, I think it is a worthy social goal and leads to positive social effects. What I don’t like is coming up with ways to select for higher white populations at the expense of an overrepresented minority when the white population is still the majority at almost all of these schools (I think Cal tech might be the only exception). ---
**Author:** ![FixMyIgnorance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FixMyIgnorance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FixMyIgnorance)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2012, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/119 "2012-02-07T00:02:14Z")
Anyways my point is that any selection metric is going to be unfair for the sole reason that there aren’t enough spots. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2012, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636/120 "2012-02-07T00:56:13Z")
> [@FixMyIgnorance](#): > > Anyways my point is that any selection metric is going to be unfair for the sole reason that there aren’t enough spots. Huh? Just because everyone doesn’t get in you think it’s unfair? It is “unfair” because the selection metric is so nebulous and subjective that it can be used to blatantly discriminate against any group and then be able to retreat behind the “you don’t understand the criteria we use” shield. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvard-and-princeton-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe/611636.md?page=7)