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Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

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Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#51

Post by tokenadult »

socratic wrote: post #39
BlackJack wrote: post #25

Full disclaimer: I'm a sophomore at Yale, my adviser last year was an admissions officer, and a friend of mine works in the admissions office. I'm also friends with the girl photographed, but that's irrelevant :) This is roughly how admissions works at Yale: 1. An officer reviews your application for 20-25 minutes. 1a. Some kids are clear rejects. 1500/2400 SAT and a 2.7 GPA, with no activities usually does the trick…

My understanding is that 0% of MIT admissions is non-academic admits (legacy, recruited athletes, development, under-represented minorities). Is that incorrect?

My understanding is that 0% of MIT admissions is non-academic admits (legacy, recruited athletes, development, under-represented minorities). Is that incorrect?

You are thinking of Caltech. MIT, by contrast, very vigorously practices affirmative action by race and ethnicity. (MIT filed "friend of the court" briefs in the last Supreme Court cases about affirmative action in college admission.)

http://mitadmissions.org/pages/policies

After edit: A kind reply just denied that MIT has "non-academic admits," and I agree with that denial. Everyone who is admitted to an undergraduate degree program at MIT (but also at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton) is plainly academically above average, generally qualified to be in an honors program in a strong state flagship university. So while everyone in MIT has strong academic credentials, there does seem to be a genuine admission advantage at MIT and several peer institutions correlated with "underrepresented ethnicity." Thanks for focusing in the reply on the language from the earlier post I was quoting. Yes, MIT has no admitted students whose qualifications could be called "nonacademic." But, no, Caltech differs from MIT in being genuinely more purely focused on academic qualifications rather than other student characteristics. (I know the whole family of a black woman who is an undergraduate at Caltech. She and her parents, and her sibling, are smart, period. I'm sure she had other college choices, and for all I know she found Caltech appealing because its admission policies make very clear that EVERYONE who comes in the door must meet a very high academic standard for admission.)

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#52

Post by waffle_ss »

fungi wrote: post #15
albemuth wrote: post #6

> "Not to really generalize, but a lot of Asians, they have perfect SATs, perfect GPAs, ... so it's hard to let them all in" Why is asking for ethnicity even legal?

ive never seen anything like it, is it a compulsory question? we often have "are you a aboriginal or torres strait islander" but that is always clearly marked as optional and only used for measuring progress in improving the absolutely disgusting state of education for indigenous australians. really i always thought america was better then this... TIL

They have always been optional in my experience (hence the whole point of the linked article). Perhaps you don't see questions like this as much because Australia is less diverse (92% white)?

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#53

Post by barrkel »

reinhardt wrote: post #20
sliverstorm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that they can tell the public, "Look! We're not racist!" Even though they are pretty much making racist choices, the public is happy with it. Look not without, but within, for the enemy is us.

Indeed, the myth of equality across racial and cultural lines must be protected at any cost.

The myth of equality of opportunity is indeed to be protected; but it is a myth, because uncountably more opportunities are afforded to the children of the privileged - things like affirmative action are tiny in the overall scale.

I really don't like what you are insinuating. You appear to be implying that some people are inferior due to the ancestry of their parents, or the daily practices of their parents.

You should learn something: that variance within groups is far larger than variance in the averages of groups; and thus race and culture are poor signals for use in judgement. To protect against this bias, we do hold to equality across racial and cultural lines; to do otherwise, is to be racist and simply morally wrong.

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#54

Post by andrewflnr »

cyrus_ wrote: post #41

Serious question: Is there any reason not to just lie about your ethnicity? Why not put "black" or "native american" on your app to really up your chances? I mean, I'm sure the school would reject you if they knew you were lying about it, but there really isn't any way for them to tell, is there?

They'll know when you show up for class. At best, that seems like a bad start for the year, if anyone from admissions happens to match your name and face.

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#55

Post by yummyfajitas »

BlackJack wrote: post #25

Full disclaimer: I'm a sophomore at Yale, my adviser last year was an admissions officer, and a friend of mine works in the admissions office. I'm also friends with the girl photographed, but that's irrelevant :) This is roughly how admissions works at Yale: 1. An officer reviews your application for 20-25 minutes. 1a. Some kids are clear rejects. 1500/2400 SAT and a 2.7 GPA, with no activities usually does the trick…

According to the article, it's closer to "Bob has a 2310, Melinda has a 1675" [1]. This is far more of a gap than you portray - do you really believe that both 2310 and 1675 are above the cutoff, and indistinguishable except via extracurriculars?

Note to self: if I get an Asian girl pregnant, the kids get my name.

[1] Take the 450pt gap between blacks and asians on the 1600pt SAT and multiply by 2400/1600.

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#56

Post by WalterBright »

tokenadult wrote: post #51
socratic wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that 0% of MIT admissions is non-academic admits (legacy, recruited athletes, development, under-represented minorities). Is that incorrect?

My understanding is that 0% of MIT admissions is non-academic admits (legacy, recruited athletes, development, under-represented minorities). Is that incorrect? You are thinking of Caltech. MIT, by contrast, very vigorously practices affirmative action by race and ethnicity. (MIT filed "friend of the court" briefs in the last Supreme Court cases about affirmative action in college admission.) http://mitadmissions.org…

>"The California Institute of Technology, a private school that chooses not to consider race, is about one-third Asian."

When I attended Caltech in the 70's, I can vouch for them not considering race. They would go out and encourage underrepresented groups to apply, but to the admissions committee race was explicitly irrelevant.

Caltech has a very adult and enlightened attitude about the way they treat their students, the race thing is just a part of that.

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#57

Post by [deleted] »

jpdoctor wrote: post #36
anatoly wrote: post #32

I was 13, I think, when I went to compete in the all-Ukrainian math olympiad, back a bunch of years ago when it was called a "republican" olympiad because Ukraine was a republic in the USSR and not a separate country. It was a long event: delegations from all the regions came and were housed in a sort of summer camp for two weeks. As we were getting registered, one of the organizers who was getting everyone's details…

It reminds me: I believe in Feyman's day, Jews were fighting a similar problem to Asians now. I'm pretty sure that SAM (a Jewish frat?) was gone by the 80s at MIT, as a calibration point. Edit: I was a little confused, he was turned away from Columbia for being Jewish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota

[deleted]

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#58

Post by localhost3000 »

jklp wrote: post #48

> "Not to really generalize, but a lot of Asians, they have perfect SATs, perfect GPAs, ... so it's hard to let them all in," Olmstead says. I didn't know there was a quota on how many Asian students a college could accept. And besides, doesn't a college want the best students in their college, regardless of ethnicity?

'best student' != 'best score/gpa'

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#59

Post by blang »

BlackJack wrote: post #34
jpdoctor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your detailed description. I do note: There is a conspicuous absence of "legacy admit". That item is an even bigger injustice imho.

You're right. I don't know enough about how legacy/recruited athletes get admitted, so I didn't talk about it. They do, however, get admitted at higher rates, so let me edit that in.

I graduated from Penn a few years ago and have a couple varsity letters. It's similar for athletes, there is just an extra step/another person at the university arguing for you. You still go through the screening process like other applicants and get a ranking, I believe it was called your academic index. The difference is you have some kind of flag on your application that says once you get to the committee, they talk to the coach. Different schools do the flagging differently, not sure how it works now with online applications, but I've seen different colored envelopes, stamps on boxes, numeric codes on sections, or the coach just contacts the admissions office for the heads up. When athletes, like non-athletes, fall into the no pile they tend to stay there, but when you get to a maybe you can have a strong voice for you saying they will add a lot to the community. Each coach gets a limited number of people to argue for and varies depending on sport. One downside to being in the athlete pile is that if you fall in the middle you are very unlikely to get in if you are low on the coaches list. So basically it's another activity with some extra leverage.

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#60

Post by yummyfajitas »

barrkel wrote: post #53
reinhardt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the myth of equality across racial and cultural lines must be protected at any cost.

The myth of equality of opportunity is indeed to be protected; but it is a myth, because uncountably more opportunities are afforded to the children of the privileged - things like affirmative action are tiny in the overall scale. I really don't like what you are insinuating. You appear to be implying that some people are inferior due to the ancestry of their parents, or the daily practices of their parents. You shou…

You appear to be implying that some people are inferior due to the ancestry of their parents, or the daily practices of their parents.

No, the implication is that P(inferior | race X) != P(inferior | race Y).

...we do hold to equality across racial and cultural lines;

There are two types of equality under discussion:

a) Statistical equality - P(Q > cutoff | race X) == cdf(Q > cutoff| race Y), where Q is some quality measure which is not a function of race.

b) Equality of treatment - using the same cutoff value for race X and race Y.

Which type of equality are you referring to?

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