Oh, I don’t know… because that’s what the fucking thread is about?
Yes, that’s what the thread is about. And my response to the thread is that it is foolish to care about discrimination against a group which is already overrepresented in elite universities to begin, especially when my group is excluded. So far as I’m concerned, the OP is whining.
No assertion without evidence is credible. Which is why I didn’t make one. You did.
The OP is not Asian. And your statements make no sense in light of your own “whining” about diversity meaning fewer whites. It does in some cases, but not all. Have you been to UC Berkeley lately?
No, you did. You are making the assertion that the reason Asians need higher test scores in admissions is to offset deficiencies in other areas of their application – a lack of “well-roundedness.” An assertion with no evidence.
Not sure if this was directed at me, but I believe, at that level, it is just a more “impartial” means of rationing. It doesn’t really separate the qualified from the under qualified, it just whittles the number of qualified people down in an efficient way. If the implication is that there is a meaningful distinction between the individuals in the “qualified” category, I would argue that as 18-year-olds, the differences cannot be readily measured, nor reliably accounted for given the metrics available. More importantly, even if they could rank applicants with that sort of precision, you would be missing the point that Harvard is not rewarding people for being good students by admitting them, they are attempting to create an incoming class that will positively affect the world, and who will show their appreciation by donating money as alumni. I don’t know why anyone would think that 100 SAT points would be a meaningful metric to judge such things by. That’s part of the reason it makes little sense to demean Yale for admitting someone like W over some “more qualified” Jewish guy. Despite being incompetent, he has strengthened their brand, and furthered their goals far more than some anonymous guy with great scores would have.
Also, those numbers are heavily skewed as a result of our reliance on them. Several high schools are known to inflate grades in an effort to appear better, and people collectively spend a billion dollars on test prep every year in an effort to “cheat” the test. This is even more apparent in other countries like Korea, where tutors are treated like rock stars. All in an effort to juke the stats. Sorry if I am not really crying for students who feel cheated because the system they helped undermine is viewed skeptically.
You are reading my post that way, but that is not what I am saying. I am simply asking the question if this is a factor. Sheesh. I would have thought that:
would have cleared things up for you.
And the answer is “There is no evidence of that.”
This may have been possibly valid 20-30 years ago (and I’d disagree with you even then), but it’s certainly not true now.
Take the simplest explanation. Asians represent 5% of the overall US population. I guarantee the Asian population at top tier colleges and universities exceeds 5%. So, apparently, they aren’t having a harder time compared as a racial grouping. Individual students may be facing steeper competition, but that’s not true for the group as a whole.
Actually, as a self-identified race group, Asians are over-represented at top universities.
Some numbers:
HarvardAsian 1st year students: 15%
Stanford Asian 1st year students: 21%
Johns Hopkins Asian 1st year students: 19%
Rice Asian 1st year students: 20%
The University of Texas at Austin Asian 1st year students: 17%
It’s a little like a lottery. All other things being equal, the chances SOMEBODY will win are very high. But the chances any PARTICULAR individual will win are low.
Cultural differences or not, Asians, as a whole, aren’t finding it terribly difficult to get into colleges.
Take the example of my own suburb of Houston (Sugar Land, TX). A census estimate from 5 years ago had the Asian population at nearly 34%, which would be overrepresented compared to the country at large. And this is typical suburbia with your better than average (and often very good) schools, involved parents, and lots of high achieving kids, no matter the race. And lots of 1st and 2nd generation Asian kids. In terms of extracurricular activities, there’s little difference between the Asian kids and everybody else. Lots of sports, marching bands, student government, volunteer work, etc.
Parents aren’t dumb, especially the type to emigrate to a radically different country. They know their kids have to blend in with the native population if they’re to advance.
And most kids aren’t dumb, either. Your note that parents’ priorities being culturally different certainly matched my case and those of some of my friends as 1st generation Americans 10-20 years ago. But we didn’t exist in a cultural vacuum. We did as many normal extracurricular as possible, often having to explain to our parents that things worked differently here and test scores weren’t the only important thing. And watching/playing more football than was probably good for some of us.
Oh and having siblings and brothers with disgustingly thick Arkansas river delta twangs. 
I’ll see your one Asian perspective on that and raise you two:
There is also the cultural issue of actively participating in class. Asian cultures don’t encourage that the way western cultures do. This could mean that teacher’s recommendations, another important part of the admissions process, would be different (on average) for top Asian students vs ethnically Western students.
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.
Way I see it, “racism” and “racial discrimination” are two very different things.
“Racism” is more in the way of a motive. It is the belief that certain favourable or unfavourable traits in people are linked to external racial attributes.
“Racial discrimination” is more by way of an action - taking measures to favour or disfavour certain groups, identified by racial characteristics.
Something could be “racial discrimination” but not motivated by “racism”. For example, the desire for diversity as a good unto itself.
That doesn’t of necessity make it right though. In my opinion at least, “racial discrimination”, while not of necessity based on “racism”, does a disservice to individuals by pegging their chances of advancement to a characteristic they have no control over - their membership in some somewhat-arbitrarily chosen group identity.
Isn’t that really 1 perspective? They had the same parents, after all.
The article seems to include a fair amount of selection bias and personal observation with few objective facts about child rearing differences.
How much of this would have people nodding their heads in agreement if you replaced Asian with Jewish?
I understand you are offering a “what if” (and one that’s sounding more and more forced) but kids emulate those around them. If you see the kids around you participating, you will do the same. My own observations (taken for what they’re worth) is that Asian kids participate as much as their peers. The lazier ones do not and the overachievers participate more. Nothing particularly different about them. Certainly, this was my own experience.
My family did emphasize good grades (1st generation Asian, BTW), but they didn’t care HOW that came about or what else I did as long as my grades were good. That meant I could do whatever extracurriculars I wanted as long as my grades didn’t drop.
That statement is not factually correct.
First, assume you consider “race” to be an important factor in diversity (I’d disagree, but college administrators are very simple creatures who like very simple categories and they won’t budge.). In North America, by virtue of being both dominant group in terms of both numbers and power, of course domestic whites are going to be the one group that won’t be brought in to diversify the pool. But foreign white students are still brought in for diversity (as well as the extra fees they pay). Other students mentioned above who happen to be rural or out-of-state are brought in under the heading of diversity regardless of their race, which may well be white.
Further, there are historically black colleges who practice diversity-based admissions.
In short, “diverse” is not always code for “non-white”. I’ve seen it used that way myself, usually by clueless but well-meaning people, and there’s no shortage of people who think “diverse” = “different skin tones in the same space.” Most of the time, though, “diverse” simply means “diverse.”
Asian parents, in general, absolutely do emphasize education above all else, but that isn’t exactly something that is going to hurt for college admissions. If your idea of well-rounded is pursuing everything under the sun versus “a handful of extra-curriculars” then thats where our disagreement hinges. I don’t see anything detrimental to college admissions from “limiting to a handful of extra-curriculars.” Limiting to a handful isn’t the same as none and it doesn’t preclude well-roundedness. Personally, I think doing a handful of extracurriculars well would make a stronger application than a boatload of half-assed extracurriculars. But that’s just me.
Great Antibob makes excellent points as well.
Same here.
Just to add more confusion to the discussion the experiences of my brother and cousins add more weirdness.
My parents also emphasized good grades for my brother, but he really just couldn’t hack it. He had above average grades (3+ GPA) but didn’t match up with mine. So, they did berate him constantly over it, but they also kind of understood he wasn’t capable of more. Worked really hard but was never a great student. He still got to do whatever extracurriculars he wanted and got to goof around quite a bit. They were a bit disappointed he went to the U of Arkansas (and that he’s a rabid Razorbacks fan), rather than a top tier university, but he’s doing just fine.
My cousins are a mixed bag, running the gamut from drug abusing felons to medical doctors. Their parents emphasized good grades, too, but they were all too busy trying to make a living in an incredibly racist Arkansas to really oversee their kids. These were people with small businesses working 70+ hours a week, so it was hard to be Tiger parents under the circumstances.
My cousins were all pretty normal. Three of my cousins were starting offensive lineman in high school (and big 280+ lb linemen, too), one was a cheerleader, and they were all fairly popular in their respective college fraternity/sorority scenes (at least the ones who went to college). Actually, come to think of it, as pretty much the only stereotypical ‘nerd’ type, I was actually the odd one out.
So, cultural differences may play a role, but I’m wondering how much of it is just the overachieving nature of immigrants. You have to be self-reliant and capable to pull up roots and resettle thousands of miles away. You see similar things out of 1st generation African immigrants. It’s just that there’s fewer of them.
Something to consider is that this type of preference also hurts people from Southeast Asia, who tend not to be as overrepresented as people from China, Korea and Japan. My university has an admissions policy specifically including Southeast Asians- but NOT East Asians- as disadvantaged minority students for certain types of scholarships/ admissions preferences. Schools/organizations that have a less discerning policy may be more likely to discriminate against people from Southeast Asia- an interesting result of this policy.
I can also second monstro’s experience regarding the TA situation- in my case, this was in the Department of Biostatistics. Of 34 TAs, 29 were from China, and 2 were from Korea. My TA was a very nice guy, but had poor English skills.
That’s also a very good point.
In college I was friends with several first generation European-Americans. One Italian-American’s father was much more grade driven than my parents. He said that an A- means room for improvement.
As for TA-s with thick Chinese accents, we had them too, but I didn’t have trouble understanding them as much as my non-Chinese classmates
They are only overrepresented if the population is taken as a whole. That makes no sense as university admissions are taken from a much smaller population. The relevant population is high school seniors that are qualified to be admitted to an elite university. Asians accepted in to elite universities are way underrepresented if you taken into account the relevant population. This is done because they are being discriminated against on the basis of their race. The motivation may not be racism but rather the feeling that the racism of the people who want to send their kids to an elite college is so strong that if an elite college had a student body that reflected merit based admissions that rich white people would no longer want their kids to go to these schools.
This is like business owners during Jim Crow who may not have been racists but were so scared of offending racists that they discriminated too.
I read articles like the one in the OP that claims asian parents value education above all else, but if that is the case why are they meekly allowing their kids to be discriminated against? If they stood up against this as a voting bloc they could get it changed.
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.