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What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

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Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#61

Post by metaphorm »

School-Cotton wrote: post #19
crispyambulance wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admissions try to get a well-rounded student body rather than many well-rounded students but the Asian-American "tiger-mom" phenomena is not a joke for elite college admissions officers. They really do see large numbers of what are known (in derogatory terms) as Asian-clones: 4.0 GPA, violin or piano skills, and no authentic detectable motivation other than getting high grades for the purpose of becoming a doctor or…

So? If the 1000 best candidates are Asian then you should admit the 1000 Asians. I can see giving extra help to historically marginalized races at the expense of whites, but why ding Asians? They weren't responsible for racism in the US. They weren't the ones stealing resources from other people. Do correct me if I'm wrong but your post seems to amount to "a lot of Asians work hard and are smart, so let's have a quot…

the point is that what criteria are used to distinguish "best candidates" is not necessarily what those types of applicants are optimizing for.

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#62

Post by smallnamespace »

jseliger wrote: post #30
munin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and no authentic detectable motivation They're 18. What do you want? What authentic motivation did you have when you were 18?

They're 18. What do you want? What authentic motivation did you have when you were 18? Seriously. My thoughts exactly. There are obviously some 18-year-old college students who know exactly what they want (some of them are replying), but even many of those will change their minds. When I was 18 I had no idea what I wanted to do (except perhaps get laid), but it was clear that college was "the next step." On a tangent…

You can easily draw parallels between what people are made to write in college admissions and, say, modern electoral politics.

Prompts and questions are designed purely to give someone a chance to pander and make nice sounding things up, rather than say the bald, simple truth.

No wonder some people found Trump appealing -- at least his pandering and lying was refreshingly frank and direct.

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#63

Post by titomc »

xyzzy4 wrote: post #53
Flammy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lenders are not idiots. I'm very sure they either are signed by their families or they have other ways of enforcing collection.

A lot of lenders are idiots. My evidence is the 2008 subprime lending crisis.

2008 subprime lending crisis happened only in America.

Lets think outside of America for this one. Lenders outside America are not idiots. Most of them lend on a solid collateral and someone from the family will have to have co-sign the loan, especially if its a huge sum.

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#64

Post by metaphorm »

witty_username wrote: post #34
hatmatrix wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what is "best"? While their achievements are commendable, admitting all of them will lead to a homogeneous student body and presumably not the best outcome for the institution, its graduates, or society.

What is wrong with a homogeneous student body? Forced diversity is AS racist as discrimination against blacks.

> What is wrong with a homogeneous student body?

the same thing that's wrong with homogeneous anything: too focused on fitting existing patterns, and not very good at adapting to new situations.

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#65

Post by abiox »

Bartweiss wrote: post #32
BeetleB wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>None of this justifies discriminating against Asian-American students, which is truly unjust, and shouldn't be confused for justifiable discrimination. I keep hearing this (primarily from Asian Americans who feel they didn't get into their preferred top N school), and yet they never provide evidence to support it. They give me reason and logic , but no evidence. It is trivially easy to find counterexamples to all th…

I'm not sure I understand here: are you objecting to a lack of evidence that Asian-American students are penalized for their ethnicity, or a lack of evidence for the claim that this is unjustifiable discrimination? The first point is easy to prove - every admissions-rate breakdown suggests that many colleges apply a substantial penalty to Asian students, equivalent to ~100 points of SAT score. (Elite colleges also ha…

> affirmative-action-as-erasing-privilege (which shouldn't penalize Asian students)

under the usual AA paradigm, wouldn't an over-representation of any particular group demonstrate unequal privilege?

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#66

Post by csa »

School-Cotton wrote: post #19
crispyambulance wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admissions try to get a well-rounded student body rather than many well-rounded students but the Asian-American "tiger-mom" phenomena is not a joke for elite college admissions officers. They really do see large numbers of what are known (in derogatory terms) as Asian-clones: 4.0 GPA, violin or piano skills, and no authentic detectable motivation other than getting high grades for the purpose of becoming a doctor or…

So? If the 1000 best candidates are Asian then you should admit the 1000 Asians. I can see giving extra help to historically marginalized races at the expense of whites, but why ding Asians? They weren't responsible for racism in the US. They weren't the ones stealing resources from other people. Do correct me if I'm wrong but your post seems to amount to "a lot of Asians work hard and are smart, so let's have a quot…

Two points:

1. Most applicants to elite schools lack social capital and have not demonstrated the ability to develop it (imho, this is what "leadership" is the code word for, at least in part). The so-called Asian clones fit this description perfectly -- so do many whites, blacks, latinos, etc. I personally don't think it's a race thing, I think it's the universities understanding what got them to where they are (hint: it's their social capital). Most of the Asian-Americans I have met at elite schools don't really come across as tiger-mom clones at all. On a personal level, I found some of the prep school folks to be more like clones and much less interesting as a group (although they have their cool and interesting people, too) -- I assume that many of them are bringing substantial social capital to the table.

2. If someone wants to be a doctor who mostly sees patients, they probably shouldn't be going to an elite school. The trajectory for elite med schools is to do great research in medicine. As such, it is unlikely that you will have an appointment with these folks as a patient. There are plenty of schools that let in "smart and work hard" people who will become great practitioners -- please don't waste a valuable elite school slot on those people. Give it to someone who demonstrates a desire to advance the field (yes, even as an 18 year old, this is possible, these people exist, and many of them are incredibly cool people).

Overall, i feel like many of the people who complain about elite school admissions don't really understand what makes these schools tick. While there are certianly parts of the process that could be improved, chalking up rejections to ignorance or racism on the part of the school or the admissions officers just seems very far off the mark.

[edit: spelling]

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#67

Post by csa »

willhslade wrote: post #54
Naritai wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you look at the 3 links provided above? To quote from [3]: "They find that being Asian is the equivalent of a 140 point score penalty on your SAT when applying to top private universities. For example, a white student that scored 1360 on the SATs would be on equal footing with an Asian student that scored 1500."

Asking for a friend: how do they penalize half Asians?

They don't penalize Asians or half-Asians at all.

Be an interesting person, and your likelihood of getting into a given school increases dramatically, and the odds of getting into at least one of a few that your friend applies to approaches 100%.

Feel free to ask more about what "interesting" means.

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#68

Post by [deleted] »

vostok wrote: post #58
Retric wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On it's own SAT scores mean little to these schools. So, finding it does not correlate with admissions does not actually demonstrate discrimination from the school. The reality is they accept far more students from 'prep' schools than average and those prep schools don't have the same ratio of Asians as the Ivy applicants. ex: Harvard get's ~17 percent of it's students from New England even though less than 5% of the…

In my experience, prep schools have a higher proportion of Asians than would be expected based on the proportion of Asians in the US population. Of course I'm not adjusting for things like income. http://www.usaschoolinfo.com/school/phillips-exeter-academy-...

[deleted]

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#69

Post by Retric »

vostok wrote: post #58
Retric wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On it's own SAT scores mean little to these schools. So, finding it does not correlate with admissions does not actually demonstrate discrimination from the school. The reality is they accept far more students from 'prep' schools than average and those prep schools don't have the same ratio of Asians as the Ivy applicants. ex: Harvard get's ~17 percent of it's students from New England even though less than 5% of the…

In my experience, prep schools have a higher proportion of Asians than would be expected based on the proportion of Asians in the US population. Of course I'm not adjusting for things like income. http://www.usaschoolinfo.com/school/phillips-exeter-academy-...

It's also important to look at the ratio of applicants not the general population. Further, schools which give preference to 'legacy' students whose parents went there are not going to reflect more recent trends.

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#70

Post by csa »

lordnacho wrote: post #28

Regarding the children of famous/important people, perhaps someone can shed some light. How exactly do you specify on your application who your parents are? I remember the process at Oxford, there wasn't really a way to say "oh btw my dad is a rock star" other than the personal statement. And it's hardly going to impress the person who's interviewing you to blurt out something like that, because all the questions are…

In the US, there are at least three ways this is handled:

1. Parents are known. Think Chelsea Clinton.

2. Parents are known social elites within the school's geographic circle. Usually trustees will get involved, sometimes writing recommendations.

3. If parents are elites outside of the school social circle, this is often handled by folks on the local/regional admissions boards (the ones applicants interview with). They can provide a lot of insight in this area.

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