The smaller gap between wealthy blacks and whites indicates that resources might be a factor.
What do you mean? Hispanics have been here a long time. Have they caught up?
Sure, its possible that I just want to believe it. But I am pretty sure that for many if not most black children, environmental factors are a significant factor in their lower IQ scores. I think it is hard to overestimate the effect that the relentless background racism has on black children as they develop. It is possible that blacks would underperform other races no matter what the circumstances because there is a genetic difference but whatever that difference would be, it is smaller than what we have now and to the extent that the difference is the result of 400 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow, I think remedial measures are justified.
BTW, I don’t know if you know what standard deviation means but almost every bell curve has a standard deviation and SAT scores have a normal distribution and a standard deviation, in the case of the SATs 140 points is the better part of a standard deviation difference.
because test scores are not the only consideration. If someone has little to offer but a test score, then a lower scoring applicant with other qualities can easily be more qualified than the applicant with the high test score but you have not shown that such a contrast exists. The disparity in admission rates exists even after correcting for everything from geography to athletic recruitment.
Your primary example seems to be recruited athletes but the espenshade study shows a difference in test scored even after correcting for athletes and legacies. You realize that we have statistical methods to correct for these things, right?
Why did the market reject the idea that integrated lunch counters led to more customers? Prejudice rarely makes sense. And what the fuck does the “market” have to do with it? Do you have any evidence that colleges held test scores in such low esteem prior to the influx of Jews and then Asians?
What? Can you rephrase that?
It is not my opinion that test scores correlate with better college performance, it is the college test company that tells us this. It is study after study that tells us that the combination of high school grades and test scores are the best predictor of college performance we seem to have. Its not perfect but I notice you have not presented a better predictor. You merely want us to set aside the best predictor we have in favor of “other factors” so that you can achieve a particular racial balance.
Its STILL the better part of a standard deviation. Seriously, do you know how standard deviations work?
No of course not but I think any large deviations from admissions that line up with objective criteria (including geography, socioeconomic status, athletic recruitment, legacies, etc.) needs a better explanation than “Just fucking trust us”
Earnings and career success? Are you just going to keep moving the goalposts until you find one that fits your argument? But fine, those are reasonable measures. now tell me which factors are better predictors of income and career success than scores and grades? Do you think there are any factors in expected earnings that might be sensitive to race and career success?
I mean right now you are proposing no criteria other than whatever the fuck the schools want. Its a black box. And when someone points out that the black box keeps spitting out acceptance letters for less qualified white students over better qualified Asian students, you basically tell us that we have to trust the black box.
Cite.
Really? You have a link to that study?
So the universities say they aren’t prejudiced? Well, I’m sure they have no reason to lie about that. I mean its not like they have ever lied before, just ask the Jews.:rolleyes:
Which college counselors? I linked plenty of college counselors that state that there is an Asian handicap.
So where are your studies? AFAICT, all you have is some bureaucrats that decided not to prosecute ivy league colleges for discrimination because there’s not enough evidence that they broke the law. BTW, its not just one study, there are several of them, almost any study that tackles affirmative action shows these discrepancies as a side note in their black white comparison. Its getting harder and harder to take you seriously on this issue.
The author warns us that he does not have conclusive proof. He says he cannot reach conclusions but he said that the data suggests that Asian applicants are at a disadvantage. The data speaks for itself, it doesn’t need an interlocutor to tell us that a 140 point SAT difference might mean something.
No we have several studies, Espenshade’s is merely the most extensive and complete. Other studies are by anti-affirmative action groups and get ignored based pretty much on that fact alone.
How many is enough? How many former admissions committee members have to literally blow the whistle on their own industry? Why isn’t one enough? Do you think she is lying? How much of a disparity must there be in objective measures? I mean seriously, when do you start to get suspicious that there might be some bias?
How you figure that none of this amounts to evidence (not proof, evidence?). Testimony is usually considered evidence. you can try to show us why the testimony is unreliable but why is the admission of an associate dean of admissions at an ivy league not evidence?
Its not baseless, its just not what I thought I remembered. It STILL doesn’t make the 140 point gap evaporate. I think it became obvious that the reduction of white students just at berkeley was not 2000 admissions as I stated. At Berkeley it was just over 50 and most of the Asian gains of over 100 admits (almost 200 if you include Indian and filipino students) at berkeley was at the expense of blacks and hispanics but I want to think about it more before I take a position against affirmative action generally. If you pushed me on it I would probably have to say that most of the anti-asian discrimination was the side effect of pro-black/hispanic discrimination and that whites seem to be pretty immunized from the effects of affirmative action because Asians provide admissions officers the room to admit more under-represented minorities by locking out some over-represented minorities.
The drop in white admissions was at the overall UC level. None of them are bad but not all of them are top schools. That is probably where I remember the more dramatic effects from.
So no, not baseless. But not dramatic enough to make the point i was trying to make. It turns out that affirmative action for URMs is also a largely at the expense of Asian applicants. Is that the argument you wanted me to pursue?
Yes there are always other explanations, even when admissions officers ADMIT to the bias, there are other explanations.
Right, so if the college counselor at Stuyvesant high school screams about bias, what is in it for him? Do colleges get shamed into admitting more Asians or do Stuyvesant grads suddenly find the value of their degree devalued or (most likely, nothing happens anyways)?
What exactly is in it for them? What incentive do they have to play cop on the beat?
Besides we STILL have an admission from an ivy league admissions officer who admits to the bias. Do you think she is lying?
We still have reams of counselors telling Asian high school students that there is in fact a bias.
The government didn’t find “no evidence of this”
Here are a few excerpts from the letter "clearing Princeton of discrimination charges:
“OCR determined that there was insufficient evidence to substantiate that the University violated Title VI or its implementing regulation with regard to the issue investigated. A summary of the relevant legal standards, investigative approach, and factual basis for OCR’s determination is set forth below”
“Thus, to achieve diversity, a university may consider individual applicants’ race and national origin as a factor in admissions decisions so long as that use of race and national origin is narrowly tailored.”
So its not that they didn’t find discrimination, they didn’t find illegal impermissible discrimination. And a lot of their analysis is so vague that thy could have come to pretty much any conclusion they liked.
I think I’ve answered this about a dozen times now. They do it to achieve a particular racial balance that they find desirable.
Of COURSE they are mitigating the number of Asians.
This study shows that the number of Asian admissions at some top schools would have gone up over 30% if race was not a factor in admissions.
Because the anti-Asian effect is a side effect. There is no intent to discriminate against Asians. It is a side effect of trying to achieve a particular racial balance.
Did you read the letter? Its only 20 pages. Its public, in fact its linked in the article you cited.
And I am asking you, do you seriously doubt that the number of qualified asian applicants has not significantly increased over the last 20-25 years as a percentage of the applicant pool? Are you seriously contending that the overall Asian population in this country can more than double over the last 20-25 years but the number of Asian remain pretty steady? Like I said, its getting harder and harder to take you seriously.
I guess I’ll keep saying it until you catch up (and seriously it makes you look weak in great debates to throw out insulting nonsense like that).
That person that I am citing also says that there is bias against Asians. The fact that she also notes other factors that might affect admission does not get rid of the bias that she ADMITS to. Something that you have been steadfastly denying exists.
Wait, so now this investigation is a study? OK, I guess you’ll grab onto anything.
Your cites don’t say what you think they say. See quotes from your cite above.
I don’t think anyone is looking the fool but it doesn’t look good when you feel like you have to constantly pepper your posts with slights like that.
It depends on the school. Sure, Texas A&M values football over things like fencing and lacrosse but I don’t think that is the case at most ivy league schools. Columbia cares more about their fencing team than their football team, don’t they?
And like I said before. HOW MANY RECRUITED ATHLETES do you think there are that this would explain the fairly huge disparity? I thought the notion was that whites were more athletic than Asians. Are there really enough white recruited athletes to explain away the difference especially when you have a scientific study that tells you that there is a disparity even after you correct for recruited athletes?
Wait. What? So if Asians are underrepresented among garbagemen, I don’t think that is the result of discrimination by waste management.
The law? What part of the law are Asians under-represented? They aren’t under-represented in top law schools. They are not under-represented at top law firms.
I suppose they are underrepresented on the bench and among law firm partners but the bamboo ceiling at the college level is the first step towards breaking the bamboo ceiling at the professional level.
WTF? Are you now just asking for cites to see if I can come up with any? If you think that Hillel is incorrect about the percentage of jewish students attending Ivies then go right ahead and provide a better cite but the fact of the matter is that Jews are another over-represented minority and they don’t seem to have the same disparity in objective critieria. Are they all recruited athletes or something?
Really? That’s all you’ve gotten from this discussion so far? Athletics are not a likely cause for the disparity in test scores between whites and asians (at least for males).
You do not find the statistical evidence meaningful at all? You do not find an admission from an associate dean of admissions at an ivy league college meaningful?
“Harvard reported that 45.0 percent of its undergraduates in 2011 were white Americans, but since Jews were 25 percent of the student body, the enrollment of non-Jewish whites might have been as low as 20 percent, though the true figure was probably somewhat higher.51 The Jewish levels for Yale and Columbia were also around 25 percent, while white Gentiles were 22 percent at the former and just 15 percent at the latter. The remainder of the Ivy League followed this same general pattern.”
Very effective argument :rolleyes:
What in the world are you talking about?
I suspect that this is more due to your inability to admit bias than my lack of evidence.
Cite? ISTM that this is not anything close to a consensus on this except in your own mind.
Cite? The government found plenty of evidence, what they didn’t find was evidence of illegal activity.
Yes it is tough to change a bigots mind but I’ve been trying for 122 posts now. Some day people will look back and talk about the bias against Asians the same way we talk about the bias against Jews in in the first half of the last century.
You have a weird method of argument. We have an audience right here on the dope and I don’t feel like are accurately reflecting the reaction to my posts. They’re not perfect but I think I have presented an argument and some evidence while you have presented sneering and jeering. You don’t seem to be capable of acknowledging that colleges could be engaging in bias against an overrepresented minority despite the fact that they have a history of doing exactly that.
Then tell me in your words what you think I said. The posts are right there for people to read. You are finding racism where none exists because you need accusations of racism to sustain your argument.
First of all I am not giving credence to anything. If you read the rest of the post you will note that I mention how people used to think of Asians as dirty foreigners (and many still do). Second of all, You were the first one to make note of the differences in education and income levels in post 88:
Of course I had to point out that the income levels of many Asians was just as shitty as Latinos and that Asians have snakeheads instead of coyotes. ISTM that you are at least as guilty of stereotyping a large diverse group as I am.
So when you say latinos are less educated and poor, its OK but when I say that latinos are less educated and poor its not OK? Its especially not OK when i point out that this socioeconomic difference is the source of most of the difference in prejudice against them versus Asians.
So explain to me again why Latinos should benefit from affirmative action based purely on race? Have we ever enslaved them? Were they more subject to segregation than Asians? Did we ever round up all the Latinos from some country and put them in internment camps?
You seem to be easily amazed.
Cite?
Because there isn’t proof, there is just evidence. The black box hides that proof.
So you have read the book and you still don’t think there is evidence of bias? :smack:
Well thats pretty much all I’ve got. If you don’t see evidence of bias with everything i have thrown at you, I don’t think you will ever see it.
Really? You think that Chief Pedant and i have been agreeing on a lot of things? You need to read for comprehension.
Yes, we know what a standard deviation is. The question, however, is how much difference in ability does 140 points represent at the top end of the scale?
For example, the range from 2220 to 2400 (180 point spread) represents the top one percent of all people who took the SAT. What is your evidence of different outcomes or different success rates between students who scored 2220 and 2390? Do students who scored 2390 have measurably better GPAs or graduation rates? Do they have more successful lives, in college or after college?
There’s ample evidence that students who score 2390 on average do much better in college than students who score 1390. Within that top one percent, however, how much difference does 50 or 150 points make? How much of the point difference, within the top one percent, is really a difference in innate ability, motivation, intelligence, etc., and how much is who got a good night’s sleep before the test?
Until you can answer these questions, your hyperfocus on the test scores is misplaced. “Better part of a standard deviation,” by itself and stripped of context, is not meaningful.
Then you can point to cites that show meaningful differences in college performance within the top one percent, right? I can’t find anything that shows test scores are good predictors with that level of granularity. None of the cites I have reviewed show test scores, alone or in combination with high school grades, are good at discriminating between the 99% and the 99.9% level. At gross levels (99% versus 80%, e.g.), yes, there are observable differences. Once we get into the tail ends of the curve, however, the evidence I’ve seen is far from clear. Have you seen “study after study,” or even one good study, that shows these differences with the level of granularity that would be required to distinguish students who are all among the top one percent?
I would also point out (I believe it has been mentioned earlier in the thread as well) that college want to have students who are interested in lots of different subject areas. They want to fill their engineering school, yes, but they also want to fill the journalism school and the history department and the theatre arts program.
Students applying to a college aren’t just competing against other students who want to attend that college; they are competing against other students who intend to select the same major at that same college. Asian students are more likely to select STEM fields than liberal arts; that means they are competing most directly against other students, themselves disproportionately likely to be Asian, who express interest in STEM subjects. Have you considered and accounted for this effect?
And yet, within racial groups the kids that scored 140 points higher on the SATs have significantly higher acceptance rates.
White kids with 2400 SAT scores have higher acceptance rates than white kids with 2260 SAT scores;
Asian kids with 2400 SAT scores have higher acceptance rates than Asian kids with 2260 SAT scores;
however Asian kids with 2400 SAT scores get in at about the same rate as white kids with 2260 SAT scores.
Why is that? Why are 140 point differences in SAT scores meaningful enough to affect admission rates when comparing two kids of the same race but not meaningful when comparing a high scoring Asian kid to a lower scoring white kid?
I don’t know if a study has been done that focuses exclusively on that e4nd of the curve. Is there anything other than your intuition that makes you believe that the correlation breaks down at that end of the curve?
140 points? Over a large population, you erase the effects of a bad night’s sleep (unless you have reason to believe that white kids are more prone to have a bad night’s sleep than Asian kids), when you talk about large statistically significant numbers the 140 point difference (which seems to persist from year to year) is not some fluke, it is a qualitative difference between populations. That qualitative difference may be the result of differences in innate ability, differences in effort, differences in parenting, other environmental factors etc. but the difference is not a fluke and it is not imaginary.
I used to teach SAT prep when I was in college and on a 1600 point scale and the difference between a kid that was testing in the 1500-1600 range and a kid that was testing in the 1400-1500 range was significant. They are both very bright kids but the kid in the 1500-1600 range might make a mistake or two while the kid in the 1350 to 1450 range is guessing on at least a few question in each section. I don’t know what real world difference this makes but the test scores were somewhat consistently higher for one group of student than the other.
The primary argument that people seem to make in defense of this huge difference in scores is that Asian students focus on test scores to the exclusion of all sorts of other things that would make them a more attractive candidate for top schools. But when we examine this claim we see that Asian students have just as many extracurricular activities as other students that apply to top schools. Then there is some argument about WHICH extracurricular activities. It starts to get ridiculous. Not only do we move goalposts, we keep narrowing the space between the uprights to keep the number of Asians that get admitted at a manageable level.
A secondary argument that I hear is that Asians all apply to the same majors and yet when THIS claim is examined we see that Asians are no more concentrated in applying to a particular area of study than any other race. In fact that many of the top ten majors are the same across virtually all races.
You make it sound like I am ignoring other factors.
Can we agree that all other things being equal, the student with the higher test score and GPA should probably get in more frequently than the student with a lower GPA and test scores? If so then what is the thing that is unequal between the Asian student and the white student that would explain a 140 point gap in SAT scores?
All I keep hearing is “holistic factors” and a few references to one holistic factor or another that in the end turns out to not be a source of any significant difference. Athletics? Not for Asian males. Leadership? Nothing but conjecture (and lets face it, leadership has been code for “not white” in plenty of instances in the past).
It really sounds like a bunch of excuse making by white people who don’t want to admit that they are the beneficiaries of a form of white affirmative action that gets them into schools ahead of better qualified Asian students.
Why would the correlation break down at that point? Is this like quantum physics where the normal rules break down when we get to the quantum level? Have you seen any studies that show that there ISN’T a correlation at that end of the curve? No? Then why not assume that the general rule continues to apply?
When you are talking about statistically significant numbers, why wouldn’t a 50 point difference result in a predictable difference in performance? Sure at the individual level a 50 point difference is meaningless and if there were only two applicants I would say that that you could probably ignore pretty large differences (probably not 150 points but certainly 50 points), but when you are talking about that sort of a difference across tens of thousands of applicants, then its not a meaningless difference.
Yes this claim was made before and I listed a chart of college majors broken down by race and it didn’t show the sort of concentration in majors by ethnicity that you are implying.
Yes. I think I presented a chart. The distribution of majors by ethnicities at most ivy level school is not what you think. First of all we have two really good colleges devoted to STEM Cal Tech and MIT and a shitload of other really good ones like Carnegie Mellon, Harvey Mudd and a bunch of schools with the word Tech in their name. The Asian kids that apply to non-technical schools are not grossly over-represented by STEM focused people compared to their white counterparts. Particularly at the non-technical schools.
BTW, would this sort of stereotyping be acceptable with any other race?
This is just sounds like another way of implying that Asians are fungible commodities, while whites are diverse snowflakes.
Because I’ve seen those correlations break down at the ends on other curves.
The example of basketball has been brought up before in this thread. Yao Ming, e.g., is a foot taller than Michael Jordan–that’s about FOUR standard deviations (and Jordan himself is about three standard deviations taller than the average American male). In a sport where height is a big deal, what does the relative height of those two tell you about their relative performance? Jordan is close to the mean for NBA players, of course, and within that select company, the evidence that another inch or three makes all that much difference is at best slim. On the other hand, there aren’t many NBA players who are shorter than the average American male–there seems to be a minimum threshold, but beyond a certain point, extra inches don’t correlate nicely to extra points.
You can look at other correlations: between crime rates and the number of young men in the population, for example, or home prices versus household income. The bulk of the data fits fairly neatly, but when you start getting into the long skinny tails, you are dealing with such small sample sizes anyway that random noise and outside factors can skew the results. (And at the tails, you are dealing with small sample sizes by definition. Even on the SAT, out of nearly 1.7 million who took the test in 2014, fewer than eight thousand scored more than 2300–that’s less than one-half of one percent. The number who scored a perfect 2400? A grand total of 583, including all races and however many religions and gender identities and socioeconomic statuses and other variables)
You are still assuming, without evidence, that 140 points really represents some meaningful qualitative difference in innate ability or other factors.
Here’s a quote from the College Board itself (from a guide to interpreting scores, aimed at high school counselors–pdf)
Fifty points on one test = 150 points on the combined score, and the people who wrote the test don’t think this necessarily shows any difference in innate ability, so why do you believe it demonstrates anything meaningful?
You’re not comparing the same thing here. A 1350 on the old 1600 point scale is roughly equivalent to a 2000 on the new score, putting the kid in the 93rd percentile. The difference between 2250 and 2400 is about the difference between 1500 and 1600 on the old system. You need to be looking for statistically significant differences WITHIN the 1500-1600 range, among the people that you are treating as one group here. Forget about the ones who scored below 1500. Just looking at the 1500-1600 range, were there meaningful and statistically significant differences among the students who scored in that range?
When you are comparing RANGES of test scores, sure. When you are comparing individual test scores that are very close together (within the margin of error), not so much.
The correlation isn’t all that great in the first place. (It’s usually somewhere around .53, where 1.0 is a perfect correlation.) That’s not bad, but it’s not some wonderful thing either, AND those studies are all done with fairly wide bands of scores rather than precise individual scores. Kids who score in the 1300s tend not to do as well as kids who score in the 1900s, but there are not studies comparing scores in the 1200s to the 1300s, precisely because of the margin of error associated with the testing. Virtually all of the studies showing the correlations treat students who score within 200 or even 300 points of each other as “equal,” so exactly what general rule do you think applies?
It’s not even clear that a 50-point difference IS statistically significant in the first place! You’re skipping over that. If 50 points at the individual level is meaningless, then adding a whole bunch more people doesn’t magically imbue those points with meaning, or a predictable difference in performance.
If the difference between Allen at 2250 and Ann at 2300 is meaningless, then the difference between Allen at 2250 and Ananya at 2300 is likewise meaningless, and so is Allen and Ann and Amy at 2250 and Ananya, Akira, and Arnesh at 2300.
From the Cleveland Fed: among white students, history, English, and elementary education were among the top 10 most popular majors, none of which were among the most popular for Asian students.
For the Harvard computer science program specifically, 53% of undergraduate students with declared concentrations in computer science were Asian (East and South Asia, not including the Middle East). That is somewhat higher than the percentage of Asian undergraduate students at Harvard, is it not?
Slash, you are wasting your time. There is no amount of evidence to convince Damuri. It’s like talking to a wall that is just gonna keep asking the same questions over and over again while denying that of the multitude of people who have looked into this, none have found any conclusive or even convincing proof. Not the authors of the studies (who are the only people cited by anyone who argues for anti-Asian bias), not most college counselors, not the universities themselves, not the government who investigated Princeton, not anyone save a few conspiracy theorists like him/her.
This bias wasn’t exposed when prop 209 went into effect in CA, a state with more than double the population of Asians than almost every other state in the US. This is the perfect real world lab to test this theory. I linked to the raw numbers. There is almost zero change in the Asian percentage enrollment at the elite UC schools where such bias was alleged. You can even dig deeper. The percentage of Asian who were accepted actually went down you compare the last pre-prop 209 year, and the most current year on the data sheet. In '97, 29.6% of Asians who applied to Berkeley were offered admission. In 2013, 21.1% were. During this entire time, the percentage of Asian students was relatively constant. This largely occurred because Berkeley became harder to get into, and because far more Asians applied. I point this out because it largely explains why the percentage of the Asian populations at elite schools across the board have remained relatively static despite there being more Asian people in generally, and likely more Asian students applying.
But I digress. I am 100% certain all of this data and analysis will just be met with nonsensical claims and Damuri asking, once again what characteristic Asians lack. Don’t take the bait.
OK then provide the cite because right now all we have is a bunch of cites that says that the correlation exists and your word that it breaks down at the right hand side of the curve.
So you think that on average the average 7’ 6" tall person is not a much better basketball player than the average 6’ 6" tall person? Or are you saying that an amazing 6’6" tall basketball players can be a better basketball player than a 7 foot basketball player?
If you had to predict who would be a better basketball player and you had 100 random people who were 6’6" tall and 100 random people who were 7’6" tall, you don’t think there would be a difference between the two groups?
You seem to be saying that 17,000 SAT test takers (top 1%) and 17,000 ACT test takers (top 1%) do not make up a sufficient sample size?
I think you are addressing a different point that the one I am responding to. You stated that 140 points could be some sort of fluke or the result of a bad night’s sleep and my response was that you need an epidemic level of restless night among white students for this to be true.
You can’t just take the standard error for one part of the test and multiply by 3 and arrive at the standard error for a test with three parts. In fact your quote alludes to the fact that the standard error for a two part test is 1.5 time the standard error for a one part test (60 points for a 2 part test and it doesn’t seem to address the written part).
I think the differences noted by Espenshade was on a 1600 point scale.
See the part where I said all other things being equal? So all other things being equal, do higher GPA/test scores result in higher admission rates? We are not talking about individual snowflakes, we are talking about more macro things.
Wait. What? Are you saying that these studies clumped students into groups if they were within 200 or 300 points of each other? That is almost the opposite of what is going on. The students are already segregated by SAT scores because the students at a given school mostly have a score that fits within a narrow range, so any correlation we see is largely among people with SAT scores within a few hundred points of each other.
YOU can just google correlation SAT and college performance and the data is not as clumpy as you think it is.
Yes it does.
The college board seems to think that a 60 point difference on a 1600 point scale reflects a real difference in ability on an individual basis. When we are talking about larger sample sizes, it usually gets easier to say that a difference between populations reflects a real difference.
That’s not how standard error works. Differences that can be meaningless with one sample can become meaningful with large sample sizes. Standard error is a measure of how far the test score (in this case) is likely to be from the “true score” of the student (if for example they were able to take the test many many times). When you have large sample sizes to work with the standard error starts to shrink to almost nothing.
Your claim was (I thought) that Asians are all cramming into the same majors. I don’t see a single major where more than 10% of Asians are cramming into. I suppose Asians are the only ones with engineering as a top ten major with 1.7% of Asians majoring in Electrical engineering. You think THAT accounts for the large disparity in admissions statistics? Isn’t that a tail wagging the dog argument?
Yes, absolutely. Do you think that this means that 53% of Asians are applying to harder STEM majors? I’ll have to think about what effect if any the choice of majors might be having on Asian admission rates. I suspect that Asians are over-represented (relative to their population in the student body) in STEM subjects. So 30% of Asians major in STEM according to your Cleveland Fed link. That is almost double the frequency of Asians in the student population. Perhaps the percentage at top schools is higher or lower.
So your contention is that whites are three times as likely to be admitted compared to Asians with similar scores and grades because Asians are twice as likely to apply to STEM majors? I’ll have to think about this and do a little research.
There are things that would convince me. For example if it turns out that the rejection rate at the engineering school was significantly higher than the rest of the school and the disparity did not exist when applicants were broken down by major, then that would be convincing.
What would convince you? I mean we have statistics that correct for things like athletic recruitment and geography. We have an admission from an associate dean of admission at an ivy league school. We have a shit ton of articles by folks who have looked at the data and found an inexplicable disparity in admission statistics. So what more would it take short of all the admissions officers coming out and crying out in unison “we are limiting the number of Asians we let in”
It might help if you answered some of those questions. And if you can’t, then you might want to ask why the question is invalid or why you can’t answer the question.
Conclusive proof? No. Evidence, certainly.
But really, what more do you need than an admission from an associate dean of admissions from an Ivy league admission committee.
There are plenty of other studies but as I said, people ignore those studies because they are published by anti-affirmative action groups. The Espenshade article is important because it is published by a well respected academic who teaches at one of the institutions that seems to be subject to this bias.
Yeah, if by conspiracy theorist, you mean a LOT of Asians, a former associate dean of admissions at an Ivy League college, high school counselors, experts on higher education and a bunch of other people. Geez, its like you don’t have google.
The year prop 209 was implemented, the acceptance rate for Asians went from 29.58% to 31.75%, an increase of 7.3%. Their representation in pool of admitted candidates went from 29.48% to 31.51%, an increase of 6.89%.
If the schools in this article went race blind, 33% more Asians would have been admitted.
Right, because you can use personal theories to counter statistical evidence and then complain that I keep presenting the statistical evidence. :rolleyes:
Again, you need to justify your conclusion. It’s not other people who have to prove to YOU why something doesn’t exist. Further, there have been investigations into this. You just don’t like the results.
How about more than one study, or one that includes everything considered by admissions officers.
Again, this question has been answered by myself and multiple other cited parties including those you personally cited. Asians tend to suffer because holistic admissions devalues scores to some extent and because they lack “tags” (to use the language of your cite).
That same institution that was cleared of such bias. Strange how that works huh? Also strange he himself doesn’t say his work is evidence of demonstrable anti-Asian bias.
Hillarious. Let’s go through these one by one (and please learn to embed a site):
Already cited by you once. She says bias may creep in to “some degree” while also saying:
"In the end, holistic admissions can allow for a gray zone of bias at elite institutions, working against a group such as Asian Americans that excels in the black-and-white world of academic achievement.
This doesn’t mean that holistic admissions should be outlawed. I’m convinced that empirical benchmarks can’t be the only thing that matters in college admissions. Holistic admissions can be truly glorious to watch in action. To see an admissions committee admit a student for the story and background he or she brings is exactly what America, education and opportunity are all about."
Note she doesn’t admit to such biases herself, and still thinks holistic admissions are a good thing. Why would anyone who truly thought the system with allowing racial prejudice to become further entrenched STILL think the system is good?
Op-ed based largely on the findings of Espenshade.
Article from non-experts commenting on a lawsuit. Further it states:
“All three of these qualities do not uniquely disadvantage Asians - they simply help ensure a white majority at Ivy League schools. Recognizing that their traditional admission standards are unfair, Ivy League schools import diversity via affirmative action. They bring in black and Latino students to ensure that these minorities are represented. Because Asian Americans are a “model minority“ and tend to outperform other racial groups academically, they are deemed unworthy of affirmative action.”
Which is not anti-Asian bias anymore than saying the NBA favoring tall people is an anti-Japanese bias.
Op-ed by noted hack Ron Unz who used the wrong data. This debunking is actually included in one of the links.
Article discussing Unz’s work. Luckily, this includes a thorough debunking.
Article based on Espenshade’s work.
Another article based on Espenshade’s work.
Another article using the aforementioned lawsuit and Espenshade.
Not sure why you linked to this. It’s basically asking the quesiton, then quoting multiple people saying it doesn’t happen.
"However, according to Jason Lewis, an admissions expert working for InGenius Prep with several years of admissions experience at Columbia and Washington University, all applications in his experience are reviewed on an individual basis.
“There is no difference in the way applications are reviewed with respect to Asian Americans or any other race. “ Lewis said. “Although we’re aware of a student’s race when they choose to disclose it, there’s no difference in the review process.”
Jean Webb, former Director of Admissions at Yale Law School, agreed that each application is individually reviewed.
“Admissions officers would understand what the general scope of statistics are for all the different groups, but they would not look at an applicant in comparison with only other students within that group,” Webb said."
This is the same admission person as the first article.
This doesn’t speak at all to admissions bias. Only that tests show White people tend to frame merit based on race in some contexts.
Not bad. Has some anecdotal evidence, but doesn’t put the blame on admissions officers generally speaking. This greatly undermines the claim it’s rampant anti-Asian bias.
Op-ed citing Espenshade.
Kudos to you for proving the internet is an echo chamber.
And two years before prop 209, the acceptance rate for Asians was 33.8%. Three years before, it was 35.4%. Two years after it was 29.8%. Three years after it was 29.4%. Strange how you somehow missed that complete lack of any pattern whatsoever.
Ah, good old Espenshade again. There is absolutely no way to know what you are suggesting with any confidence.
But again, this is religion to you and your god is Espenshade. Let’s just stop wasting each other’s time.
Why do you keep ignoring all the data I presented? Some people would say that an admission from an ivy league associate dean of admissions is enough to justify the conclusion. Add about half a dozen studies that make it statistically impossible that the disparity between Asian students and white students is just coincidence and the failure to present any other plausible excuse and it is reasonable to conclude that the attempt to achieve some form of racial balancing is working against Asians. You keep asking for conclusive proof and calling anything short of that unreasonable. At some point you are just saying that nothing will convince you.
Sure, as soon as they release all the data necessary to do that. We are working with all the information that is being made available. Are you seriously asking for a study that includes what goes on inside the black box? For fuck’s sake, I am saying that the black box is being used to hide the data.
You mean the one where the admissions officer admits that there is a bias against Asians? We correct for whatever “tags” we have information on. We correct for everything from legacies to athletic recruitment to geographic preferences. The fact of the matter is that we have an admission from an associate dean and I don’t know what you have done to make that admission go away. You have not proven she is lying or even that she is mistaken. Just that she points out other things may ALSO contribute to the disparity in Asian admissions.
By cleared yo mean that are not being prosecuted for violating the law. The law permits bias, didn’t you know that? Schools are permitted under the law to consider race as long as it didn’t amount to a quota system (Bakke) to favor under-represented minorities. If you want to argue that the bias is not illegal then fine, you win but if you want to argue that the bias doesn’t exist, then i don’t think anyone believes you.
The fact that they reach their conclusions for the same reasons that I reach mine does not make their opinion disappear. These are all people who you are calling conspiracy theorists, that’s what you accused me (and anyone else that thought that bias existed) of, right. Being a conspiracy theorist. Well then these are some of the other “few” conspiracy theorists. Your entire argument at this point seems to be based on trying to trivialize the issue and asking for conclusive proof.
So? Is she a conspiracy theorist?
She also says:
"In all, holistic admissions adds subjectivity to admissions decisions, and the practice makes it difficult to explain who gets in, who doesn’t, and why. But has holistic admissions become a guise for allowing cultural and even racial biases to dictate the admissions process?
To some degree, yes."
A good first step would be to do as she suggests:
"Better yet, schools should also break down their admits’ high school GPAs and test scores by race and ethnicity. Knowing acceptance rates by identifiable characteristics can reveal institutional tendencies, if not outright biases; it can push schools to better justify their practices, and it would give applicants a look at which schools offer them the best opportunities.
Without more transparency, holistic admissions can become an excuse for cultural bias to dictate a process that is supposed to open doors. We are better than that. And our youth will demand that we do something about it."
But they don’t and I think the reason they are not more transparent is because it will provide all the data we need to establish an impermissible bias.
BTW, I never said lets throw holistic admissions out the window. I said lets remove race from the equation.
Yeah, and why does that matter? We are establishing that there are more than a "few conspiracy theorists that think there is a bias.
This article represents TWO people that you are calling conspiracy theorists. If you don’t think they believe there is bias against Asians then you need to read the article for content and not just for some nugget you can use. Seriously, you think your quote fairly described what is being said in the article?
Another conspiracy theorist. And can you cite where he is wrong? Is he wrong about the population of Asians in America over that time, the percentage of Asians enrolling in ivy league schools or the number of Asians enrolling in Cal Tech?
BTW, how is Unz a noted hack? I mean sure he hangs out with Nader but that doesn’t automatically make him a hack, does it?
He may or may not be a hack but he is another one of those “few conspiracy theorists” that think there is a bias.
ANOTHER consiracy theorist. What does the word “few” mean to you?
BTW, what debunking? I think you may be getting confused. Unz wrote ANOTHER article that compares Jews and Asians in the Ivy league. One of his statements in that article was that Jews are much more over-represented than Asians while also being less qualified. THAT has been challenged but the notion that Asians applicants have increased while the number of Asian students at Ivy’s has not does not seem to have been debunked.
And yet ANOTHER conspiracy theorist.
And ANOTHER conspiracy theorist. Seriously, if I had the time, i could probably link to dozens of articles by one of these “few conspiracy theorists”
And yet ANOTHER conspiracy theorist
" Harvard student Theresa C. Rizk ’17 said that she believes Asian-American applicants likely have lower chances because of both the higher quantity and quality of applicants within the racial group. " -conspiracy theorist
"Taken together, these facts have spurred worry among many potential Asian American applicants and their families that selective college admission is biased against students of Asian descent—that an already very competitive pool is made even more competitive because of their race alone. " All these conspiracy theorists. Geez, these Asians so crazy.
Written by YET ANOTHER CONSPIRACY THEORIST!!! Wow! So many “few conspiracy theorists”
Oh sorry I don’t know how that one slipped in there. I was looking for conspiracy theorists and what I found was a tendency for white people to really be into subjective test scores until you tell them that Asians are really kicking ass on those tests, then they start to emphasize holistic criteria like “leadership.” I wonder if white people have ever used vague criteria like “leadership” to exclude other minorities from areas where they were over-represented. Remind me again how many black quarterbacks in the NFL compared to other positions? Why is that again? Oh yeah whites are really good at leadership.:rolleyes:
“Admissions officers, while defending the overall integrity of the system, admitted that bias is a real problem.” Those admissions officers are fucking conspiracy theorists, don’t listen to them.
"Many counselors – during and after the session – said that they have little doubt that when applying for undergraduate admission to research universities, white applicants are getting admitted with lower test scores and grades than Asian applicants are. " Fucking counselors too? Fucking conspiracy theorists, can’t trust any of them.
And another conspiracy theorist. How many is that now?
Or that there may be more than a few conspiracy theorists that think there is a bias in the admissions process? I mean seriously, I can probably dig up a shit ton more of these “few conspiracy theorists” if you really need me to, I figured stopping with the first page of google results would be enough.
I am using the two most relevant years. If you want to do a statistical analysis of Prop 209 at one school to prove that prop 209 had no effect on Asian admissions, that’s up to you but I think these are the same years you were using (BTW, other people have done the statistical analysis on a wider scale without focusing on Berkeley alone). I was pointing out that this 2% increase in raw admission rates was an increase of 7% in the admission rate (if you get my meaning).
I think I have already admitted that these differences in at the Berkeley level are not what I thought they were, but we can try to tease out exactly how small or large the effect was (or if there was any effect at all) at berkeley.
Are you kidding me, (see Table 2)? The article was published in social science quarterly and the peer review process is supposed to ensure that the methodology is sound. Its not infallible but its peer reviewed and I think that means you can’t just say that their findings are bullshit without something more than really really REALLY wanting them to be wrong.
You’ve basically lost and want to sneak away without admitting you might be wrong? OK, maybe you’ll come around after it percolates in the back of your brain for a while.
I have no reason to rehash the same old stuff when cannot even understand basic statistical arguments. Just grumbling 140 points and pointing to people who believe something in error does not a convincing argument make. It’s actually quite pathetic.
Right, because all I have is grumbling about 140 points.
ZERO studies show a lack of bias and half a dozen show statistically significant disparities in admission rates after correcting for everything from athletic recruitment to legacies to geography, what do you have left to correct for? Some vague je ne sais quoi that seems to consistently pick whites (and pretty much everyone else) over Asians.
Asians have been a steady percentage of the Ivy League population despite an increase in Asian population, Asian alumni, Asian everything is more than a coincidence.
When you remove race preferences you lose a lot of black and Hispanic students and 80 % of those spots go to Asians. You would think that the burden of affirmative action would rest evenly on the non-URMs but they don’t because the race conscious efforts to help URMs also allows admissions committees to limit Asians and protect whites from the burdens of affirmative action.
We have the admission of an associate dean of admissions at an ivy league school saying that there is a bias against Asians.
But this debate has been useful for me. I was confused about the prop 209 data and you made me take another look at it. I had not previously focused on the effect of choice of major being a significant issue but it seems like there is a significantly higher STEM focus (Asians enroll in STEM at something like twice the rates of every other race Education Pays – College Board Research) but the application rate may be much higher (or much lower). And I think engineering majors may be subject to higher admissions standards. I don’t think that explains all of the difference but it might explain enough of it that we can point to legacies and shit like that to make up the difference, not really sure.
First, Espenshade did not correct to geography. His study attempts to correct for legacy status and recruited athletics. He notes some of the things that he did not account for which admission officers look at include:
Additionally, in interviews he himself declines to assert there was demonstrable bias because he did not correct for:
He himself said, “more evidence is needed to prove that Asian-Americans are facing discrimination because the schools evaluate “soft information” such as essays and teacher recommendations.” He also stated that: “I stop short of saying that Asian-American students are being discriminated against in the college application process because we don’t have sufficient empirical evidence to support that claim,”
Note how the guy whose work people are largely resting their hat on says “WE DO NOT HAVE SUFFIENT EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THE CLAIM”? Yet, you persist. He is not being naive, conservative, or modest. He is accurately evaluating his work. Further, we don’t have to just look at his work for explanations. We can look at the real world laboratory that is CA, the anecdotal accounts from numerous people involved in the process, and the government investigating the very same university Mr. Espenshade works for. An examination of all the above yields very little evidence of such bias save one quoted admissions dean who, while in charge, and while denying being biased herself, says she observed these biases. Color me unimpressed.
And I am not the only one. Critiques noting these facts state:
This is where your issue lies. Numbers cannot demonstrate bias alone. They can suggest bias, or demonstrate a quantitative disparity, but they alone do not demonstrate bias. To use a less polarizing example, Black NCAA basketball players are more likely to be drafted into the NBA than White college basketball players are. I am sure if you equalized for height or points scored, the same would still be true. Does that mean that NBA clubs are biased against White people?
It’s not vague. You keep saying this despite numerous cites detailing how Asians fare worse in numerous areas admissions officers consider. Your own cite even notes this and goes one step further in saying that even when Asian students don’t lack those connections or attributes, they don’t utilize them. Why you KEEP saying you don’t know what these things are is just you being deliberately obtuse.
Again, this points to your not understanding the numbers. The broader Asian population and the percentage of Asians at Ivy league schools have little to do with one another. They aren’t going to track exactly for a number of obvious reasons. To analogize this, there are far more people on Earth who don’t live in the US, but that fact alone doesn’t mean we should expect the number of international students at the Ivies to track those numbers.
Further, as I demonstrated to you using the prop 209 data, we see the percentage of Asians at Berkeley post prop-209 has been relatively static despite the increase in Asian applicants. We can rule out overt anti-Asian bias for the most part, so why do these numbers not track the increase in the Asian population? It’s because the numbers have little to do with one another. This is a very simple concept that you keep misunderstanding for some odd reason.
First, that is not demonstrated by the numbers. It’s almost impossible to tell since the number of people who declined to state race rose by more than the number of students gained by Asians or Whites over the next couple years.
Second, there is not reason to think that such a burden should rest evenly given that the relative importance of other factors will shift as a result, and because the group themselves have different attributes.
She says this, yet doesn’t seem to admit she, while in charge, was guilty of such bias. Don’t you find that a little strange? I will bet any amount of money that the makeups of the classes she looked over is not at all significantly different than when she wasn’t in charge. Further, she doesn’t even disagree with a system she contends might disadvantage Asians.
You sounded pretty sure as you argued incoherently for multiple pages.
Yes, I agree he is not saying that he has conclusive proof of discrimination. You act like that means he is saying that discrimination doesn’t exist.
I notice you are no longer claiming that my position is held only by a few conspiracy theorists. I will just assume that this is the latest in the long line of things you simply drop because you are wrong.
Wait, what? You are saying that if the NBA was drafting black players with lower objective criteria (lets say by half a standard deviation difference), this would not be evidence of a bias?
And your failure to acknowledge that the same person saying these things acknowledges a bias against Asians demonstrates your inflexibility on this issue.
Wait, are you saying that the percentage of international students at ivies hasn’t been going up over time? There are obvious reasons why these numbers won’t track exactly but I thought there were more international students today than say 30 years ago.
Are you keeping track of the increase in other populations of applicants? Are you taking into account the other race blind measures that these schools have been implementing (mostly socioeconomic indicators) to increase diversity?
Sure, the burden might not be exactly proportional but you don’t think that its odd that virtually the ENTIRE burden is borne by Asians? How does that happen?
All your arguments here (and in the general argument about the disparity in admission rates) amount to a litany of excuses that could explain some differences around the margins not the gross differences that we see in real life.
Wait. What? She says that there is bias but does not admit that there is bias? What kind of horseshit is that?
Did you read the claim? He said, “WE DO NOT HAVE SUFFICIENT EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THE CLAIM”. I am claiming that you and your cites continually citing Espenshade’s data, and concluding that anti-Asian discrimination exists is in error. He is specifically saying that his data is not sufficient to support the claim. Note he didn’t say “prove”, he said “support”. Therefore your continually citing him makes no sense as far as thinking that alone supports your conclusion.
No, I fully stand behind it. I didn’t think it necessary to repeat what is obvious.
No, it would not since a basketball player is not the sum of a few stats. For example, Ben Simmons will likely be drafted first in the NBA draft. His team had a losing record and didn’t make the NCAA tournament. His stats are good, but not the best in any given category. Is holding him in high esteem as a basketball player based on bias? Probably not. Another example would be Tim Tebow who was probably there most successful college QB in the modern era, but was drafted fairly low for a number of reasons. If you want to go to the group level, many Duke players are “under-drafted”. That is not evidence of bias against Duke per se, it’s valuing other things that tend to produce better NBA players.
I acknowledge it’s the same person. I just tend to disagree with her conclusion given my experience, and the other things I already mentioned. That is not the issue. The issue is that you keep saying, “what thing do Asians lack relative to Whites”. Multiple people provide you with measured or anecdotal evidence of those specific things, yet you just keep repeating the question as if no one named or cited those things. You can argue that you don’t think those things explain the data, or that your experience is different, but you cannot keep implying that NO ONE said what these criteria are, as you have done like a hundred fucking times.
There are more international students. My point was that the number of people in the world outside the US has almost nothing to do with the number who end up at Harvard or Princeton. If international students arguing Harvard was biased based on the fact that the world population is x times greater than it was 40 years ago, and that many countries now have superior primary educational systems to the US, you would be right in rejecting that claim just based on those numbers.
Hello!?! It is you who is not doing this or even considering the number of Asians applying to these schools. When you infer bias based on the fact that:
“Asians have been a steady percentage of the Ivy League population despite an increase in Asian population”
You are demonstrating a clear lack of how logical connections work. The rise in the Asian population is, at best, tenuously connected to the percentage of Asians in the Ivy League.
That doesn’t address the issue I raised. Look at the numbers. We have real world data. I am less impressed by a simulation than I am what actually happened. Especially since this simulation is not controlling for a variety of things. 2
Again, you don’t know what the split actually is. However, even if it is skewed towards Asians, I am not that surprised at they tend to have higher test scores.
Maybe i should use smaller words? I am suspicious when someone who basically says, this program I was in charge was biased, but I personally was not biased. I saw it creep in, but I never engaged in it, never rectified this issue, nor do I think the system which perpetuates this issue I have identified is bad.
You are kind of clipping the quote there are you? What he says is:
Does that sound like he is saying “hey guys there is no evidence of bias” or “I don’t quite have enough evidence conclusively say that bias exists”
And he has said that the main reason he can’t reach that conclusion is because there is a black box with information to which he does not have access. His data highly suggests bias in the admissions process and he acknowledges this suggestion in his study.
So the fact that I cited a dozen articles doesn’t change your mind about this being the stomping ground of a few conspiracy theorists? Well, I guess some people can never be convinced of anything.
Of course its the issue.
Every time I present evidence, you make up some excuse and when I present testimony from an associate dean of admissions at an ivy league school you say you know better than her. There is simply no convincing some people.
I’ve addressed everything you have presented that might explain the discrepency. Or did you forget where I showed you that Asian males participate in sports just as frequently as white males? Did you forget the study by Espenshade that showed a discrepancy despite correcting for sports?
I am pretty sure I have said that the explanations that have been presented do not explain the data. I am pretty sure that I have revealed most of the explanations to be mere excuses
So are you saying is that the number of qualified Asian applicants is not proportionally increasing with their increase in the general population? If not then wtf ARE you saying?
So wait. You still think that there is nothing fishy about the fact that the Asian population has doubled relative to the white population and their percentage of the entering class at places like Harvard has remained static? Are you saying that recent Asian immigrants are not as qualified as the Asian immigrants of yesteryear or are you saying that they aren’t applying to college? Of course neither of us can actually say if the Applicant pool reflects the changing demographics of the country as a whole because places like Harvard stopped publishing statistics on its applicant pool.
So don’t you have something to say about the Unz article that wasn’t debunked that you were so sure was debunked?
What real world data? What real world data controls for more things than this study? Are you talking about the UC Berkelely data? That cuts in my favor. It doesn’t cut in my favor as much as I thought it did but it still cuts in my favor.
Yeah, I have some level of certainty that the burden lays overwhelmingly on Asians. I can’t know for certain but it is statistically unlikely. how do i know that? Science.
And how do you figure that applicants with higher objective criteria are going to do worse when we give preferences for race? Doesn’t the bar rise across the board? Why would it particularly affect kids with good test scores (who also have pretty much everything else as well)?
First of all I think an associate dean of admissions reports to the dean of admissions but I’m not entirely sure. Secondly, where does she say that she was not personally biased? Where does she say that race did not affect her decisions?
"The most heart-wrenching conversations I had were with students who hit all the listed benchmarks and didn’t get in. I would tell them about the overall competitiveness of the applicant pool and the record low admit rate we had. But after I hung up the phone, I knew I wasn’t being transparent.
There was always a reason. …
Often, it had to do with the fact that the application had no “tag.”…
Tags alone are not the only reason highly qualified Asian American applicants are turned away in droves from elite private institutions. Nowadays nobody on an admissions committee would dare use the term racial “quotas,” but racial stereotyping is alive and well. And although colleges would never admit students based on “quotas,” they fearlessly will “sculpt” the class with race and gender percentages in mind."
IOW, these schools are using something like racial quotas to achieve a particular racial balance that they think will be good for the school.
She likes holistic admissions because it allows an admissions committee to “admit a student for the story and background he or she brings” but thinks that “holistic admissions can allow for a gray zone of bias at elite institutions, working against a group such as Asian Americans that excels in the black-and-white world of academic achievement” and in the end, she thinks they ought to “add more transparency to the process”
This way we would know what the Asians in the applicant pool at harvard increased more or less with the population of the college age Asians in the general population.
