# Is there serious racial discrimination against Asians in US college admissions? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 8, 2011, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481 "2011-12-08T06:37:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**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:** [December 8, 2011, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/41 "2011-12-08T18:59:52Z")
Also: [University of Florida:](http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=3001) 10% [University of Washington](http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?match=true&collegeId=3879&searchType=college&type=qfs&word=university%20of%20washington): 29% [U of Illinois at Chicago](http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=4038&type=qfs&skey=University%20of%20Illinois): 25% [U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign](http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=1192): 14% These might be flagship state universities, but they’re hardly “elite”. If anything, it seems like the Asian population correlates with the local Asian population density (there are almost certainly more Asians, as a percentage, in WA than FL or in Chicago vs Illinois in general). ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/42 "2011-12-08T19:40:45Z")
> [@nolonger\_lurking](#): > > Racism is generally a belief in racial characteristics and actions predicated on this belief. From the article in the OP: The way it works, the critics believe, is that Asian-Americans are evaluated not as individuals, but against the thousands of other ultra-achieving Asians who are stereotyped as boring academic robots. … Also, “when Asians are the largest group on campus, I can easily imagine a fund-raiser saying, ‘This is jarring to our alumni,’” Hsu says. Noting that most Ivy League schools have roughly the same percentage of Asians, he wonders if “that’s the maximum number where diversity is still good, and it’s not, ‘we’re being overwhelmed by the yellow horde.’” … ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/43 "2011-12-08T19:46:49Z")
> [@sachertorte](#): > > While it surely is a point of stress for current Asian high school students, I don’t feel that the racial discrimination against Asians is “serious.” As long as the reason for the discrimination is because the school is trying to be diverse, I don’t have a problem with it. It isn’t as though schools are rejecting all Asian students or even keeping the Asian population super low. At least in my experience, there certainly are more Asians at my undergraduate and graduate schools than there were at my high school. I grew up in Brezhnev’s USSR. The competition for the big colleges in Moscow/Leningrad was fierce. It wasn’t that those colleges were rejecting all Jews or even keeping the Jewish population super low. But they had quotas. If they already got their quota you wouldn’t have gotten in even if you were Grisha Perelman. We called it anti-Semitism. And left because of it. Now the same practice is going on in the place to which we left. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/44 "2011-12-08T19:56:48Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > That’s a ridiculous standard. The relevant population is college-bound seniors. Period. And even that’s a rather fuzzy population. > > “Qualified to be admitted to an elite university” is a subjective standard. Certainly there are objective elements (GPA, test scores, recommendations), but there’s no single objective metric to guarantee their “qualification”. > > If you’re saying that fully 1/5 of the college bound seniors in this country are Asian, then I’ve got this bridge you might be interested in. The relevant population is college bound seniors because all of them are qualified to go to an elite college? There are fuzzy margins but everyone knows that a prospective student with a higher GPA and a higher SAT score is better qualified and one with a lower GPA and SAT score. [In this study](http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/Opportunity%20Cost%20of%20Admission%20Preferences%20Espenshade%20Chung%20June%202005.pdf) (PDF) it was found that if asians were treated like everyone else they would go from 18% of the student body at elite universities to 23%. This is a increase of almost 28%. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/45 "2011-12-08T20:01:15Z")
If Asians can complain about not enough of them being let in despite good test scores (which are better than Average White Person) then Average White Person can complain about not enough of them (Average White Person) getting let in (despite their scores being better than Average Other Minority). I say let the Asians and Average Other Minority fight it out. Oh, and if you can’t communicate well in English and are bumped…too bad…IMO thats a legitimate reason for rejection. ---
**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:** [December 8, 2011, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/46 "2011-12-08T20:17:31Z")
> [@HazelNutCoffee](#): > > I think there might be a tendency to hold Asians to a higher standard, because of the “model minority” stereotype. I remember when I was in 7th grade that my math teacher threatened to kick me out of my advanced math class because I wasn’t “doing as well as you could do” even though I was nowhere near the bottom of that class. (And I wasn’t being lazy or causing problems either.) It’s like, because I was Asian she expected me to be consistently get 100%. You’re Asian and you weren’t consistently getting 100%? Whats wrong with you? ---
**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:** [December 8, 2011, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/47 "2011-12-08T20:17:56Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > Oh, and if you can’t communicate well in English and are bumped…too bad…IMO thats a legitimate reason for rejection. Agreed, though I don’t think that had anything to do with this thread. **monstro** was just injecting a tangientially related thought. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/48 "2011-12-08T20:36:25Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Colleges take more than just test scores into account, especially these days. If you have a bunch of extra-curricular activities, do volunteer work, play sports, or other things, this can affect your elligibility. Perhaps the Asian kids are not as “well rounded” as the white kids, and so don’t appear as desirable to the college at a given test score level. > > At any rate, any study that looks only at test scores is going to miss something because colleges don’t look only at test scores. I worked as a GA in the admissions office at a prestigious (ranked in top 25 in most rankings) university in the early 1990s. There was a scoring formula, which explicity incorporated diversity. Not only did you get points for extracurricular activities, but you got a lot of points for some and not much for others. Debate, hockey, swimming, fencing or chess teams, one point. Football and Basketball, 10 points. Wrestling, 3 points. The points system was fiddled around to reward the lowest correlations with SAT scores and grades. So if you had extracurricular activities that correlated highly with good grades, you got very little credit for them. Result was that white students had to score higher than African Americans to get in, and Asian students higher than whites. But the scoring system was technically race blind. The only correlations that were considered were with SAT and GPA/Class Rank. But the success of the admission process was definitely evaluated (in part) in terms of African American and Hispanic admissions, especially into the Engineering school. There was an over 50% drop out rate from Freshman to Sophomore year among African American and Hispanic engineering students, many times what it was for non-Hispanic Whites and Asians. In fact, a whole bunch of Asians would tranfer into Engineering at the end of the first year. So the water sort of found its own level. The math worked out something like this (this was back when the max SAT was 1600) 950 SAT (35 points) 2.8 GPA (30 points) Football varsity team (10 points) just beats 1150 SAT (40 points) 3.5 GPA (33 points) Cross Country team (1 point) And the school could say that they weighted academic achievement five to ten times higher than extracurricular activities. It was of course totally bogus, because to get a zero on the SAT, you would need to get something like a 500 score, close to mentally retarded! ---
**Author:** ![sachertorte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sachertorte/32/3727_2.png) [@sachertorte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sachertorte)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/49 "2011-12-08T20:44:02Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > I grew up in Brezhnev’s USSR. The competition for the big colleges in Moscow/Leningrad was fierce. It wasn’t that those colleges were rejecting all Jews or even keeping the Jewish population super low. But they had quotas. If they already got their quota you wouldn’t have gotten in even if you were Grisha Perelman. > > We called it anti-Semitism. And left because of it. Now the same practice is going on in the place to which we left. I don’t know enough about Russian colleges to comment. But the fact that you call it anti-Semitism is telling. I don’t feel that the situation in the US is anti-Asian bias so I don’t think they are equivalent. (1) I don’t believe US colleges and universities use quotas. (2) I don’t believe US schools turn down really fantastic applicant because he or she was Asian and they already had too many Asians. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/50 "2011-12-08T20:51:42Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I At my graduate school, there was definitely discrimination against Asian (specifically Chinese) students. The labs were full of Asians, as well as all the TA rosters. These were kids from overseas and their English was not great at all (despite having fantastic test scores, which is suspicious to me). Why is it suspicious? I know in China that English language tought in schools emphasizes (almost exclusively) being able to test well on TOEFL and language portion of the SAT. You practice for the TOEFL for 15 years it is not surprising that you might actually test well. TOEFL and SAT don’t test one’s conversational English skills (or at least they didn’t last time I checked). So, you end up with the best of the best coming to grad school in the US with great test reading comprehension and poor conversational skills - especially on specialist subjects. No great mystery or cause for suspician. ---
**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:** [December 8, 2011, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/51 "2011-12-08T20:55:49Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > There are fuzzy margins but everyone knows that a prospective student with a higher GPA and a higher SAT score is better qualified and one with a lower GPA and SAT score. > [In this study](http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/Opportunity%20Cost%20of%20Admission%20Preferences%20Espenshade%20Chung%20June%202005.pdf) (PDF) it was found that if asians were treated like everyone else they would go from 18% of the student body at elite universities to 23%. This is a increase of almost 28%. This shows the effect of removing certain considerations of race. If you want to define that as Asians being “treated like everyone else”, go ahead. I don’t agree with that characterization. For full disclosure, I am Asian, did have a high GPA, high SAT scores, had plenty of extracurriculars, and did attend a top tier university. And no, I don’t think test scores and GPA, on their own, are a sufficient measure for college admission. Besides that, I’d actually like to see the inner workings of their computer simulation. While it might be valid, it only shows good agreement with past data. Until/unless it can be tested for its predicative capability in a field trial, I’ll question any conclusions drawn from it. ---
**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:** [December 8, 2011, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/52 "2011-12-08T21:14:02Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I don’t know if this is racism, but it is a racial discrimination… > > I think schools certainly should look at non-merit-based metrics when evaluating students. I think diversity is good; a school with nothing but bookish valedictorians wouldn’t be a very interesting place. But I am uncomfortable with the idea of schools tossing applications in a wastebasket just because of the applicant’s last name or the box they check off. Someone’s gonna come along and say that there are other merit based factors (factors that Asians are very poor in) that go into the admission decision so we can wave away concerns of racial discrimination > [@John\_Mace](#): > > Colleges take more than just test scores into account, especially these days. If you have a bunch of extra-curricular activities, do volunteer work, play sports, or other things, this can affect your elligibility. Perhaps the Asian kids are not as “well rounded” as the white kids, and so don’t appear as desirable to the college at a given test score level. > > At any rate, any study that looks only at test scores is going to miss something because colleges don’t look only at test scores. Hrmmm, I didn’t think you’d be the one to carry teh water on this one. But let me ask you why UC Berkely went from 20% Asian when they were looking at names and races during teh admissions process to 40% Asian when they made the admissions process race blind? > [@Really Not All That Bright](#): > > **John** , IME Asian students are _better_ rounded than their peers (except athletically). The kids you’re talking about all play the violin and participate in student government and build backyard particle accelerators. I don’t see any meaningful way of controlling for extracurricular activities, anyway. I agree. These kids may be a bit overscheduled but they do not lack extracurricular activities. It is a lazy Asian parent that focuses solely on academics. > [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > “Diverse” means fewer whites. “Diverse” always means fewer whites. When admissions becomes race blind, the white population remains essentially flat, other minority populations drop and the Asian population rises. In other words Affirmative Action doesn’t hurt whites, it hurts Asians, Whites just like to complain about it so they can pretend their kids would have gone to Stanford if only those minorities didn’t steal their spots. > [@John\_Mace](#): > > I’ll see your one Asian perspective on that and [raise you two:](http://www.imdiversity.com/villages/asian/education_academia_study/voa_asian_achievement_1205.asp)…And again, just to be clear, I am only offering a possible explanation here. It would be interesting to see an analysis of teacher evaluations for student of different ethnic backgrounds. That may be true among the poor immigrant Asian community of yesteryear (and perhaps even now) but it is nowhere close to true for the children of middle class Asians. > [@Terr](#): > > From the article in the OP: > > The way it works, the critics believe, is that Asian-Americans are evaluated not as individuals, but against the thousands of other ultra-achieving Asians who are stereotyped as boring academic robots. > … > Also, “when Asians are the largest group on campus, I can easily imagine a fund-raiser saying, ‘This is jarring to our alumni,’” Hsu says. Noting that most Ivy League schools have roughly the same percentage of Asians, he wonders if “that’s the maximum number where diversity is still good, and it’s not, ‘we’re being overwhelmed by the yellow horde.’” > … ☹ ---
**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:** [December 8, 2011, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/53 "2011-12-08T21:24:56Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > If Asians can complain about not enough of them being let in despite good test scores (which are better than Average White Person) then Average White Person can complain about not enough of them (Average White Person) getting let in (despite their scores being better than Average Other Minority). > > I say let the Asians and Average Other Minority fight it out. > > Oh, and if you can’t communicate well in English and are bumped…too bad…IMO thats a legitimate reason for rejection. That is essentially the effect of affirmative action these days. It transfers spots from Asians to other minorities. The level of white students remain fairly level when race is taken out of the equation. BTW, you know those TAs who speak poor english are mostly foreign graduate students right? Are you under the impression that an Asian kid that is raised in America speaks with an accent or something? > [@sachertorte](#): > > I don’t know enough about Russian colleges to comment. But the fact that you call it anti-Semitism is telling. > I don’t feel that the situation in the US is anti-Asian bias so I don’t think they are equivalent. > (1) I don’t believe US colleges and universities use quotas. > (2) I don’t believe US schools turn down really fantastic applicant because he or she was Asian and they already had too many Asians. I don’t think its racism but I think there is a quota being implemented where the schools are trying to engineer the racial makeup of their entering class. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/54 "2011-12-08T21:43:23Z")
> [@sachertorte](#): > > I don’t know enough about Russian colleges to comment. But the fact that you call it anti-Semitism is telling. > I don’t feel that the situation in the US is anti-Asian bias so I don’t think they are equivalent. > (1) I don’t believe US colleges and universities use quotas. > (2) I don’t believe US schools turn down really fantastic applicant because he or she was Asian and they already had too many Asians. When you take away the identification of students by race, colleges really struggle to calibrate their selection algorithms to get the “target” racial composition. When you allow them to see the race, then they can suddenly “improve” the algorithm. WTF is this if it is not a quota system. What is the difference between a quota system and diversity targets? ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/55 "2011-12-08T21:49:59Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > . > > BTW, you know those TAs who speak poor english are mostly foreign graduate students right? Are you under the impression that an Asian kid that is raised in America speaks with an accent or something? I generally agree with your other points. But what the heck makes you think I think that? (just to clear the record on that point) ---
**Author:** ![sachertorte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sachertorte/32/3727_2.png) [@sachertorte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sachertorte)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/56 "2011-12-08T22:09:30Z")
> [@Mighty\_Mouse](#): > > When you take away the identification of students by race, colleges really struggle to calibrate their selection algorithms to get the “target” racial composition. When you allow them to see the race, then they can suddenly “improve” the algorithm. WTF is this if it is not a quota system. > > What is the difference between a quota system and diversity targets? I just don’t slap on the “anti-Asian” bias label. It isn’t some hurtful or hatred for Asians that is driving the situation. You could make the same argument about quotas for making the engineering schools evenly male and female. It’s pretty clear that the same type of shenanigans happen based on sex, but I would not go so far as to say that these schools are anti-Men or sexist. I could very well be wrong. It isn’t something I’m particularly passionate about. I faced the same discrimination and I just don’t think its a big deal. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/57 "2011-12-08T22:34:28Z")
I don’t know whether there’s a tremendous amount of discrimination against Asian-American applicants to elite universities, but several people seem to be asserting that there can’t be because Asian-Americans are so heavily over-represented amongst those attending. However, if you look at the history of college admissions, that’s hardly compelling evidence of a lack of discrimination. During the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, Jews were heavily over-represented amongst Ivy League universities, but that hardly meant they didn’t face discrimination in applying. In fact, it’s been quite well documented that all the Ivy League schools had strict quotas limiting the number of Jewish students they could take in so clearly they did face quite a bit of discrimination. Whether this is also true of Asian-American students is something that I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/58 "2011-12-09T00:59:06Z")
Yeah, the “overrepresented” argument is a poor one. I wouldn’t use the underrepresentation of black people in STEM fields as prima facie evidence that there is racial discrimination in admissions and hiring. It certainly could be evidence, but not necessarily. And the same goes for “overrepresentation”. All it indicates is that lots of Asian kids are going to school. It doesn’t mean that all of them who qualify are getting accepted. > [@China Guy](#): > > Why is it suspicious? I know in China that English language tought in schools emphasizes (almost exclusively) being able to test well on TOEFL and language portion of the SAT. You practice for the TOEFL for 15 years it is not surprising that you might actually test well. TOEFL and SAT don’t test one’s conversational English skills (or at least they didn’t last time I checked). > > So, you end up with the best of the best coming to grad school in the US with great test reading comprehension and poor conversational skills - especially on specialist subjects. No great mystery or cause for suspician. It wasn’t just that they couldn’t speak. They couldn’t write either. Perhaps it’s not a big deal in biochemical/molecular fields, but if you can’t write a decent paper in an ecology or evolutionary biology class, you are screwed. My [suspicions](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43915697/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/t/online-cheating-answer-some-taking-grad-school-exam/#.TuFciNXDDdk) were actually not unfounded. But this really is a tangential point, and I don’t intend to hijack the thread further. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/59 "2011-12-09T01:56:13Z")
I think the numbers speak for themselves. > [@](#): > > According to Espenshade and Radford, to have the same chance of admission as a black applicant with an SAT score of 1100, an Hispanic applicant would need to score 1230, a white applicant 1410, and an Asian applicant 1550. It’s discriminatory and racist on all kinds of levels, including the groups this is supposed to help/protect. The flip side of this is saying, “Whites and Blacks aren’t as smart as Asians, so we have to reserve spots for them” or “Blacks aren’t as smart as everyone else, so we need to give them charity seats. 16 on the ACT? Poor SAT Score? Whatever! [Come on in](http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2010/03/winners-losers-in-race-to-top.html)!” I don’t think you can asses the OP’s question without looking at admissions for whites, blacks, and Hispanics. And when you do, the answer to the OP’s question seems not only to be “yes”, but the rest of the data is glaringly uncomfortable. ---
**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:** [December 9, 2011, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481/60 "2011-12-09T02:05:46Z")
So here is a related question. I study international development at one of the top schools for that discipline. When you hear about people doing AIDS outreach in Africa, setting up refugee camps after a disaster, building schools in Afghanistan, distributing food during famines…a lot of those people come from my school, or the handful of other schools (maybe ten at most) that specialize in this. It’s a small industry, and a certain education is absolutely necessary. In 15 years, it will be my cohort who is running this entire industry. Last year, we had about six men in an incoming class of around forty. This year, the incoming class had two men. Two. This is a problem. A handful of schools make up the bulk of the field on the US side, and almost all of the leadership. Things like culture, gender, working with different types of people, getting different perspectives, etc. are extremely important. But we don’t hear from men. We don’t talk to men. We don’t hear their perspective on things like the trend toward only offering micro-finance to women, or how to promote condom use among gay men in Manila, or approaches to family planning in Tanzania, working with the US military to improve the way they implement aid projects in places like Afghanistan, or how to convince fathers to let their daughters go to school. All of this is being discussed without a male perspective. Soon, there will be millions and millions of dollars in programs on these subjects being run by us- without even a bit of male input. We asked our department about this, and they said that they tried and tried and tried, but the men applying simply cannot match the quality of the women. It’s a tough program to get in to, and the score and experience it takes would make you a candidate for top business schools, among other things. People walk into our school with top GREs, undergrad honors, AND resumes that say stuff like “I founded an NGO in Liberia.” It’s also a pretty poorly paid and often unattractive field. The qualified men do something else. This has to change. We can’t run this industry without men. We can’t do our job right without men. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-serious-racial-discrimination-against-asians-in-us-college-admissions/605481.md?page=4)