Harvard and Princeton Targeted in U.S. Asian-American Discrimination Probe

Great Debates
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And what would those ratios be? How are they determined? Honestly, I get why you might think this, but doesn’t closer inspection of the data lead you to believe this is less a of an issue of some cabal deciding to hold Asian people down, and more about individual decisions made by different people, for a variety of reasons, that happen to have a cumulative impact that you disagree with.

The whole process is discriminatory. That’s the point.

The first link is mostly about expiring federal tax credits and subsidies.

Maximizing fundraising is not the same is profit-seeking.

Their endowment spending has been relatively static in recent years including those immediately before and after congressional scrutiny. During that time period, they spent about 4.4%. Now they spend around 5%. Hardly the actions of someone shook by a congressional inquiry. I fully admit the spotlight probably helps things along, but you are ignoring that various elements within the college have an interest in getting more endowment funds. So the balancing act was not without internal advocates on the side of looser endowment purse strings.

He is hardly a whistleblower. He seems more like a bitter, jilted ex.

Again, the whole process is discriminatory. They discriminate based on age, geography, parentage, athletic ability, sociability, etc. I am not sure how you can be okay with the process and not be okay with some discrimination.

Not really. I think it’s quite lazy actually. Doubly so if you truly believe that elite universities are discriminating in a way that results in less talented and capable graduates. The only reason such a practice would be defensible is if you thought the positive value of the brand was based a thorough and efficacious vetting process. You seem to not believe that.

Or, you could stop using college brand as a proxy for competence.

But you have no reason to assume it would. Full stop. You are also forgetting, as you have several times, that elite private colleges have very different criteria and admissions processes than public schools. So there is little reason to assume the rates at of Asians at other schools would increase, particularly if they are using different metrics. Also note that White applicants dropped to Berkeley and UCLA dropped long before the race-blind policies went into effect, it’s not entirely clear what the causation of the demographic shift was.

No, I don’t think that data is available. The reason for the cite was to highlight some valid reasons why a school might use race as a criterion. That said, the difference in White and Asian acceptance rate doesn’t need to be “explained”. It’s only a source of debate because you have assumed you know the criteria on which such decisions are based.

If work history were a valid criteria for the whatever decision you were making, and individual assessments of Black applicants by numerous interviewers led to a disparity in Black and White candidates, I would be fine with that. Seriously, do you think admissions people walk around with a clicker counting how many Asians are admitted? This isn’t some conspiracy.

I see it as a continuation of a trend that had been occurring there for a while.

You were making unsourced factual claims (eg. the chance of x is greater than the chance of y). I was answering your questions about possible rationales for a decision. That is an opinion. They require very different support/proof.

What is “native ability” in your mind?

Whose definition of merit do they have to use? Yours, or theirs. If you insist in them using yours to the exclusion of any of criteria they value, then I am gonna question why you get to make that decision. Again, if you insist on the process being a science, you don’t even need people, just have students enter their info into a computer and take the top x number of students you were planning to admit. Do you recognize why schools may not want to do that?

Repl

Why do you suppose it’s negative discrimination based on race? Let’s use an example. Let’s just say I go around promoting the benefit of ethanol fuel based on corn. Since this causes corn prices to go up, people stop eating corn on the cob as much because the price goes up. Would it be fair to characterize my ethanol evangelism as wanting people to eat less corn?

But that wasn’t your argument. You said:

That is not true. That said, even if you want to characterize the drop at Berkeley and UCLA as significant, it’s not entirely clear that the drop was solely due to a change in admission policies.

Perceptions are unfortunately not wholly guided by facts. The points is that there is a belief that those two UCs in particular are more for Asian people, not others.

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I’m saying that because spots are limited, any particular group(s) of students you admit will likely be seen as unfair no matter how you attempt to distribute things.

The selection process is honestly not that nebulous. It’s been explained clearly by admissions officers countless times – it’s just that some people don’t want to believe it, or they disagree with it.’

Again, I took the admissions officers at their face value and molded my application to maximize my chances, and bam, I got into every single Ivy I applied to. Much of the battle is knowing what they’re looking for instead of wasting time on things you THINK are important that may not be.

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not if the set of criteria is objective and transparent.

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It is fairly transparent. Again, it’s been explained, explicitly, multiple, multiple, multiple times. I don’t really know what you mean by “objective” though. Offering admission to someone is rarely a 100% “objective” process (e.g. get this score and these grades and you’re in). Judgment calls are being made with respect to character and quality.

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No, it isn’t. Diversity is not objective. “what they can contribute to the school” is not objective. How “interesting” they are is not objective. Etc. etc.

SAT score is objective.

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Except that SAT is not an objective indicator of the things that make a student great.

Colleges don’t want to admit people who are merely SAT-dominating, 4.0-grinding robots. They want students who can contribute great passions – who can work hard and use the university’s resources to generate a return in the form of new ideas, research, projects, entertainment, talents, breakthroughs, etc.

You can’t capture subjective criteria with objective metrics. Like someone else said earlier, admissions is discriminatory by its very nature.

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There is no objective indicator of the things that make a student “great”. So - if you want only “great” students, you will be using nebulous and opaque criteria that are ripe for misuse in order to discriminate against groups of people - such as Asians, for example.

In the US, yes. Almost everywhere else in the world - no.

Example: Oxford. As far as I can ascertain, there is academic testing, maybe some “written work” (academic, not general essay of “why I am so great”) and an interview. Here is what Oxford says about the interview:

*Purpose of the interview

The interview is designed to assess your academic abilities and, most importantly, your academic potential. It provides tutors with a valuable opportunity to assess your potential beyond your written record. The interview allows them to evaluate your understanding of, and aptitude for your subject, and to give you the opportunity to explain why you are committed to studying it. Tutors make their decisions based on your academic abilities and potential, not your manners or etiquette, appearance or background.
*

I would say that’s about as objective as it gets.

Now I wonder - do you think Oxford does not want “diversity”? Or “great passions”? or “generating a return”?

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Read this: A fair chance of a place at Oxford? - BBC News

Like I said, any approach you take is going to be unfair to someone. If you do it by numbers alone, you’re going to hurt those that can’t afford to be coached. You’re going to hurt people who don’t have the resources to hit the same levels of achievement.

At least the US systems try to allow a diversity of different socioeconomic levels and take a holistic approach to evaluating a student’s strength. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s a laudable attempt to make top schools accessible to anyone who wants a shot, regardless of background.

But this whole “Universities just want to discriminate against Asians” thing is just hogwash.

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Oxford’s approach is objective and transparent. If you don’t get in, that means you didn’t measure up academically. It’s not because your background is not pitiful enough to impress the interviewer.

You’re going to get the best academic results possible by accepting the best academically prepared students possible.

But in the US according to lots of posters here the university is not about academic excellence. It’s about diversity, passion, being “likable”, entertaining and “leadership qualities” etc etc.

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The entire concept of affirmative action is that, if you are in a group understimated in a population, you get a higher chance–if you are exactly equal in all other respects. The only reason that any person shouldn’t make it in because of their race under AA is if they are right at the cutoff, and there are other people of a different race who went in ahead of them.

I thus don’t see how AA is relevant to the OP. If anything, it sounds like we’re dealing with some sort of quota system.

Oh, and as long as going to Harvard means to the public that you are smarter than the guy who went to another college, then it very well should be based on merit and not on diversity. Since it is based on the latter, Harvard needs to be putting out press releases that tell this to people and try to change the erroneous public image of the institution. Otherwise they are being misleading, telling people one thing about those who graduate from them when the truth is another thing.

That said, how you define merit is not necessarily score based. For example, someone with high test scores but both a low GPA and few extracurriculars is likely not very motivated. These are the very same smart people who usually wind up dropping out of college due to the high workload.

And, no, race should never be a proxy for any of this, no matter how it factors in. If employers can’t discriminate by race, even if race is statistically shown to be a proxy for something important, than neither should colleges. The results are the same, just taken further back in the chain–the guy didn’t get in because of his race is not that different from the guy didn’t get in because he didn’t get accepted into the right school because of his race.

There’s no assumption involved in calling the above racism and therefore discrimination. It’s part of the definition of the concept. If something being true made racism not be racism, then, say, profiling black people because they are more likely to be convicted of crimes would not be racism.

And, really, you should be using as few proxies as possible anyways, as they are by definition less reliable.

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I don’t think its some shady cabal of admissions counselors who are colluding to maintain specific ratios. I think its a policy. I keep coming back to the difference in likelihood of acceptance between equally qualified whites and Asians and then I look at the shift in acceptance rates at Berkeley and UCLA and its hard to see how this all occurs randomly and yet seemingly consistently at schools that have relatively high Asian applicant pools.

For some more than others I guess.

Its still not con edison, its not duke energy. But like I said I don’t particularly want to argue this point. There are specific rules about what makes you tax exempt and if your main purpose is fundraising then for the same reason universities were threatened with loss of tax exempt status for hoarding their endowment, they would risk losing their tax exempt status if maximizing fundraising was driving them.

All I remember is that one day Harvard was getting hauled in front of congress to justify their tax exempt status and the next day they were promising full scholarships to anyone whose parents made less than 100K or something like that.

In what way is he more of a jilted lover than a whistleblower? Or does it make you feel better to just chalk up these complaints to sour grapes while at the same time admitting that discrimination exists (and it doesn’t have to, see, UC system).

What bothers me is that rather than simply admit that they don’t want too many Asians you are saying that they are using Asian stereotypes to exclude Asians based on that stereotype. That borders on racist.

That is the world we live in. Rather than tell every employer to disregard where an applicant went to college and dig real deep to understand each of them as individuals, it makes a HELL of a lot more sense to fix the filtering process rather have every employer reinvent the wheel and go through the filtering process all over again from scratch.

I sometimes get two hundred applications for one entry level job opening, it takes more than enough time to go through all those resumes, if I had to dig real deep into each of them without the benefit of a filter like college attended (among many other things) I would waste all my time interviewing people that may or may not be qualified when I can knock out anyone who isn’t top of their class or from a top school.

Thats not laziness its efficiency and it depends on a the colleges to do a lot of the filtering for us.

And you have no reason to believe it wouldn’t. Full Stop.

So your cite is doesn’t explain the discrepancy but you think it justifies the use of racial stereotypes to reject people based on race. Is that what you are saying, because that is what it sounds like you are saying.

Not literally a clicker but I think they keep track of how many Asians they accept to make sure they are not overweighted in Asians.

You think they’ve never done this before? Ask the Jews. It used to be policy.

It jumped in one year, the year they implemented race blind admissions. The trend was already there but that is part drove their discrimination, too many Asians.

A race blind one.

Thats what you keep trying to prove without actually proving. You say that the low acceptance rates of Asians compared to whites with similar scores is the side effect of other variables they are looking at while at the same time saying they are excluding Asians because there is a stereotype that says that Asians are missing some trait and then in the next breath trying to say its totally unrelated consequence.

I’m saying they look at their student body and say to themselves. We want a different racial balance in the student body, we can’t let in this many Asians, its changing the character of the school.

OK, well, I was talking about UC Berkeley and UCLA. Sorry for the confusion.

Sure it is (or at least mostly so, Asian applications at these two schools increased when Asians perceived that they would not be discriminated against in the admissions process and other applicants dropped when they realized they would have to compete with Asians on a level playing field but it seems clear to me that the increase in Asian admissions was greater than the increase in Asian applications), you would have to really stretch to reach any other conclusion.

UCLA has more whites than Asians and Berkeley’s Asian population didn’t exceed the the white population until AFTER the race blind admissions. As the undisputed top UC schools if white kids are self selecting out of applying to those schools, then perhaps its because they perceive their diminished prospects in a race blind admissions process. You really think they are avoiding the best public schools on the west coast because there are too many Asians there? is it racism or discomfort or the fear that classes will be held in mandarin chinese? what?

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Look at the UC race blind system. They can’t discriminate based on race but they can discriminate based on parental income, coming from a high school that does not send a lot of kids to college, and how many college grads in your family. So yeah, you can strive for socioeconomic diversity without discriminating based on race.

You can figure out if someone is going to be an achiever without relying on the color of their skin.

Right because they have never done that before. See Jews.

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You keep ignoring the fundamental point that there are more qualified students than there are spots. It’s not just about “not measuring up academically.” There are literally not enough spots, so equally-qualified students will get rejected no matter what. Getting rejected does not necessarily mean you weren’t good enough.

And nobody is saying that it’s not about academic excellence. It’s about more than mere academic excellence. Have you ever actually been on an Ivy campus? Have you met the students? Have you looked at the stats? They’re brilliant people, and they do really interesting things with their lives – AND they have high stats. Which student do you think is a more worthwhile admit – the 2400/4.0 number-cruncher who doesn’t do a whole lot outside of school, or the 2310/3.90 student who’s heavily involved in his community, has glowing recs, has devoted much time and energy to hobbies of passion, and has an actual personality?

That’s what colleges look for. Having a 2400/4.0 doesn’t mean you’re a better student. You do realize that the 25th/75th percentile for the SAT at Harvard is something like 2090/2380, right? I had a 2400/2400/4.0, which is the highest you can get. Almost every single one of my peers was either a valedictorian (including myself) or at least top 5%. They already have stellar academics. But they also have more than that, and that’s what gets them in. Are you really going to argue that getting 2-3 extra questions on the SAT makes a student a more worthwhile admit than someone who has extensive credentials outside of class?

Colleges have realized that the SAT isn’t the best objective indicator of a student’s intellectual quality and ability to contribute to the community in some way. This is especially true when the SAT has been demonstrably shown to be coachable, which also means that lower-income students are at a disadvantage. This sort of claim is already well backed-up by the data, so forgive me if your guys’ argument-from-incredulity isn’t all that persuasive. The SAT is coachable. Fact.

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But don’t you think would have heard about a real policy like that by now? There a large number of people working in college admissions with all different politics, don’t you think if the provost or someone at an elite school was letting it be know that too many Asian people is a problem, that someone would take offense? You don’t think there are any Asian people who are themselves in admissions?

Again, even if a broad discriminatory policy or standard exists, it doesn’t mean and individual can assume it was the basis for a decision on an individual level. Can every short guy who gets cut by an NBA team assume it’s because he is short? Again, Asian people, in terms of raw numbers, don’t have a hard time getting into elite schools. The bigots are apparently doing a poor job.

That said, let’s look at this guy’s case. He has perfect SAT scores (1 of roughly 350 people), near perfect achievement test scores, 9 AP classes, and was in the top 1%. If we are to solely use the criteria you feel is relevant, there is no way he should be rejected from anywhere, right? There could not have been more than 1000 in the country with that type of testing/academic resume. Now, Princeton accepts roughly 1300 (in 2012, but probably a similar number in '05). He should have been firmly in that group academically, above not only the average person admitted to the school, but even far about the Asian person admitted. So what happened? Even if you assume it would have been harder for him being Asian, just based on those number alone, he should have beat most other Asians applying to elite schools. Yet, five school rejected him. FIVE! Did all five of these school decide not only to accept “less-qualified” non-Asians, but also less qualified Asians? I could see if it were one school, five. There is no reason to think it’s because he is Asian.

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And notice how the UC’s are primarily Asian-dominated? California has a large Asian population, financial aid is better for in-staters (and absolutely awful if you’re out of state), and admissions don’t really care about EC’s.

And seriously, this is what makes you a crackpot. The point of diversity-admissions isn’t to discriminate against Asians. If this is your belief, then you’re entitled to that opinion – but it’s unsubstantiated and frankly, wrong.

Exactly. Trying to play the race card is just silly.

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This is likely your perspective because you are trying to take a macro perspective of something that is done on a micro level. The reason I linked to data substantiating some of those stereotypes is to show that individual admissions officers might notice those tendencies in individual Asian students.

No it doesn’t. Even if you “fix” the admissions process, employers are still substituting some unknown person’s judgement made 4 or more years ago based on little to no actual work experience, for theirs. That is not a better in any shape or form. Again, it’s just laziness plain and simple. Now you can argue that said laziness doesn’t result in too much blowback, but if you want a system where we actually evaluate people for competence, using where they went to college as a primary factor is completely unjustifiable. I think you know that too.

If you arguing you don’t have the resources or time to be better, I might be inclined to agree with you. That said, it doesn’t make your system any less ridiculous. It’s also pretty ironic that you are whining about not having the time to do any rigorous investigation, but you expect colleges to with equally scant resources, and far, far greater pool of students. Remember that they have to actually woo students (Asians and others) to apply to their particular school. I guess the takeaway for you is, colleges should not be lazy because then you can’t be lazy.

Especially since you seem to be taking a fairly hard line that systemic bigotry is going on. What you are doing is no better than the busdriver who enforced bus segregation in the civil rights era. Actually, what you are doing is worse because you are hurting yourself too, because you are throwing out resumes from more talented Asian people because they didn’t go to the right school.

Why should colleges be responsible for doing your job for you? I admit they have their place in our world, and receive benefits at public expense, largely because they provide a public good. That doesn’t mean their mission extends to helping private employers make better decisions.

There is plenty of reason to believe it wouldn’t. several states (eg. FL, TX, etc.) have race-blind admissions, and the increase in Asian enrollment has been inconsistent to say the least. There also the small matter that when CA’s race-blind policies went into effect, Asian law school enrollment WENT DOWN.

There is also the small matter that your beloved race-blind policies well generally help White enrollment numbers as they disproportionately benefit from other admissions preferences still in place (eg. legacies).

Lastly, the increase in Asian enrollment, in the places we have seen it happen, are on the order of 5% of the total enrollment. Do you really think people are creating these elaborate, clandestine systems to hold Asians back so that they “only” make up 38% of the enrollment instead of 40%. Some interesting notes on Berkeley here:

So a two percent difference. That’s what you are getting all worked up about? I get that those are real people, but let’s not pretend the issue is bigger than it is, or that the causation for increasing Asian enrollment in these schools is solely because of race-blind policies. As I have noted before, White applications to the elite UC schools had been down 40% in the decade prior to the changeover.

Yes, they did do that, and it was open and known. That’s why it worked. It’s hard to get everyone on board with discrimination if you have to just hint and imply that it would be nice if the were 5% fewer Asians here. When Jew were being discriminated against, you know what happened pretty often.

I will be behind you 100% when you find a smoking gun, or any kind of evidence that such things are occurring. It would be a shame if elite Asian student were forced to suffer the humiliation of going to NYU like that loser Jonas Salk. Maybe he could have accomplished something if he had gone to Yale.

Not really. See above.

Why?

Because there is overwhelming evidence from admissions people (some of whom I have known), that their criteria is far broader than just scores and grades. There is also the fact that even superlative Asian people (scores wise) are rejected in place of “lesser qualified” Asian people. If the discrimination worked the way you seem to imply it does, then why did Jian Li get rejected? Based on your criteria, he was better than the vast majority of people Asian or otherwise. Even if Princeton capped it’s Asian population, why didn’t he just push out some other Asian student since he would have more than likely surpassed their qualifications too? Maybe it’s because, as the schools themselves have testified to, they are using different metrics that do not tightly overlap with the ones you use. Should they release their methods? Maybe, but I can see why they wouldn’t given that it’s a subjective process with inherent privacy concerns, political implications, and institutional trade secrets. Not only that, but given the stakes, if they told you exactly how to get in, then everyone would adjust, making the process more difficult again.

Let’s assume they did do that. Don’t they have a point? Is it racism when countries limit immigration from certain areas? There is some truth to the notion that too many of anything can change the culture. Don’t you think if for some reason 50% of Princeton’s class played lacrosse, they might see a cultural change, say more date rapes :D?

That’s incorrect. In the years prior to the race-blind policies going into effect, Asian enrollment exceeded White enrollment by 10% at both Berkeley and UCLA. That said, it’s possible your supposition is correct, but I think the case is far more complicated than that.

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Actually, this is misleading. In the year immediately prior to the race-blind change, things were different. At Berkeley in 1997, Asian enrollment exceeded White by 7.6%, and at UCLA, Asian enrollment exceeded White by 2.5%.

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I can’t believe I missed this before.

Look, “the world we live in” is one where top applicants sometimes get unlucky and wind up not attending Ivies. Many low-income students are brilliant but don’t make their way to top institutions either due to lack of financial resources or plain old lack-of-spots or being slightly under par, but have plenty of skills to show for it on the resume and are worth interviewing for a particular firm. If you’re largely just filtering by school, you’ll be doing yourself a major, major disservice.

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Oxford disagrees with you. So does almost every other elite university in the world - except the US ones.

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I have spent some time on ivy campuses (for undergrad and law school) and I don’t recall people being anywhere near as interesting as you make it sound. They don’t form some melting pot of ideas where the students really get to understand the perspectives of people from different backgrounds. They form cliques, large and small, they hang out with their friends and they probably study more than most college kids.

I certainly didn’t notice Asian students being any more boring than the white students or the white students being more charismatic than Asian students. I didn’t notice much disparity in athleticism, or involvement, or diversity of interests (believe it or not there some of the Asian students weren’t math/science majors, wierd huh?). If the admissions committee is trading off objective criteria like grades, and GPA for soft criteria, this tradeoff was not apparent in the student population but thats just my experience.

Was this tradeoff apparent to you?

Because this if the tradeoff is not resulting in an apparent difference, then I wonder whether they are making a good trade.

300 points on the SAT is not 2-3 questions. I’m not saying that scores should be determinative but you are implying some pretty strong stereotypes to explain away the sort of racial disparities we see.

The coachability is limited. Fact.

School can correct for things like income and environment without discriminating based on race. Or are you under the impression that Asian kids tend to be richer than white kids?

Why would we?

We certainly have allegations. And now a federal investigation (which oddly resulted in higher Asian admissions at Princeton the following year

How do you explain the shift in demographics in the one year that admission to berkeley became race blind?

There are Asian people who support this practice. A lot of these schools have stated goals of promoting racial diversity, they are stating flat out, we discriminate based on race and while we had though this was a relatively benign exercise in giving an advantage to some underrepresented minorities, we now see evidence that this advantage ot underrepresented minorities is largely at the expense of the overrepresented minority. I would have NO PROBLEM with affirmative action for underrepresented minorities if the burden was borne by everyone but when the burden is only borne by Asians and the number of white seats doesn’t really change then it starts to smell.

The lawsuit isn’t at an individual level. They can never resolve this in time to reverse that one admissions. The litigant KNOWS that. This Jian Li fellow’s lawsuit also challenges legacy and athletic preferences.

/sigh. I don’t think there is malice. I have said that half a dozen times now. Why do you feel the need to mischaracterize my argument (is that a straw man I see?). A consistent 30% of Princeton’s entering class used to be minority. and Asians were consistently about half that number.

There are several studies that support the argument that Asians are effectively pooled against other Asians in the admissions process and this leads to tougher admissiosn standards for Asians at top universities.

No. No. A thousands times NO! I’m not making an argument about any one guy. Oviously you can’t interpolate an admissions policy based on one admission decision. BUT you can interpolate an admission policy based on thousands of admissions decisions that result in there being a three to one admissions preference for whites over Asians that have the same scores without any apparent difference between the two populations.