I think it's interesting that the article is about the difference between the Asian avg. (1457) and the white avg. (1416), a difference of 41 points, and no one addresses the difference between the white student avg. and the black student avg (1275), a difference of 141 points.
What Harvard Owes Its Top Asian-American Applicants: Stephen Hsu
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Re: What Harvard Owes Its Top Asian-American Applicants: Stephen Hsu
#22I've read too many stereotypical comments today on this topic that I'm just going to unload my thoughts. If you want to argue that racial diversity is important for your 'elite' universities, that's fine. I can't argue with that since it's really a matter of opinion. However, if you argue that Asians as a group do not have leadership qualities, diverse extracurriculars, or do anything besides study, you're really jus…
Re: Leadership Qualities It strikes me as odd that so many high level tech execs/founders in SV aren't Asian, if only because so many engineers I've met are. I just assumed that with the % who get into great American schools (especially in CA), there'd be more Asian entrepreneurs/business leaders. Then again, I could be overestimating the number of Asian's seeing as how it's less than 10% of the U.S. demographic.
This could be due to a perceived lack of leadership qualities as much as a real one.
Re: What Harvard Owes Its Top Asian-American Applicants: Stephen Hsu
#23The author, Steven Hsu, is a physics professor at the university of Oregon. He has a rather informative blog [1] about physics, and lately genetics. In particular he has recently been doing a lot of work with BGI, currently the largest human genome sequencing company in the world.
Re: What Harvard Owes Its Top Asian-American Applicants: Stephen Hsu
#24Same guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62jZENi1ed8
The author, Steven Hsu, is a physics professor at the university of Oregon. He has a rather informative blog [1] about physics, and lately genetics. In particular he has recently been doing a lot of work with BGI, currently the largest human genome sequencing company in the world.
Re: What Harvard Owes Its Top Asian-American Applicants: Stephen Hsu
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re: Leadership Qualities It strikes me as odd that so many high level tech execs/founders in SV aren't Asian, if only because so many engineers I've met are. I just assumed that with the % who get into great American schools (especially in CA), there'd be more Asian entrepreneurs/business leaders. Then again, I could be overestimating the number of Asian's seeing as how it's less than 10% of the U.S. demographic.
This could be due to a perceived lack of leadership qualities as much as a real one.
I mean, that's a self-reinforcing situation.
Re: What Harvard Owes Its Top Asian-American Applicants: Stephen Hsu
#26How many times does the average Asian student take the SAT versus the average white/black/Hispanic student?
I honestly have no idea, but until we know that, statistics like "Asian students need to score 200 more points than white students" are meaningless.
This is entirely hypothetical: An Asian student takes the SAT 4 times and makes a 1500, A black student takes it once and makes a 1300--If the black student is accepted, on paper it looks like racial discrimination.
Personal anecdote. I took the SAT once, in 10th grade, and scored 1360/1600. If I had taken it again my senior year I probably would have scored much higher, but I got accepted everywhere I applied, and I had the highest score in my class, so why bother. Most of the other high achievers in my class took the SAT at least 3 times.
Re: What Harvard Owes Its Top Asian-American Applicants: Stephen Hsu
#27I've read too many stereotypical comments today on this topic that I'm just going to unload my thoughts. If you want to argue that racial diversity is important for your 'elite' universities, that's fine. I can't argue with that since it's really a matter of opinion. However, if you argue that Asians as a group do not have leadership qualities, diverse extracurriculars, or do anything besides study, you're really jus…
Re: Leadership Qualities It strikes me as odd that so many high level tech execs/founders in SV aren't Asian, if only because so many engineers I've met are. I just assumed that with the % who get into great American schools (especially in CA), there'd be more Asian entrepreneurs/business leaders. Then again, I could be overestimating the number of Asian's seeing as how it's less than 10% of the U.S. demographic.
There was an article here a few months ago by an Asian engineer about this topic. His theory was that Asian culture doesn't encourage one to be talkative when interacting with superiors--the Asian in the meeting is more likely to stay quiet and thus is overlooked by his superiors.
Re: What Harvard Owes Its Top Asian-American Applicants: Stephen Hsu
#28What university admissions choose to do is the university's own choice, particularly if the university is private, like all the Ivy Leagues are. If they want to accept lower quality applicants in the name of diversity, that is their choice. The highly talented students they reject can go elsewhere and raise the quality of the universities that do accept them. The brand of the undergraduate school is overrated anyway.
Problem is much more complicated than that. 1. Universities receive large amount of public funding. 2. Are you willing to let all private institutions, companies, individuals decide for themselves and have their own policy on serving what kind of people they want to deal with?
nah...even many public schools are allowed to balance themselves for diversity. If there is evidence that schools are being racist (the ugly side of the term), this is one thing. But I haven't seen evidence of this. They seem to be trying to provide diversity for all the right reasons. This is complex. Companies, and stuff that happens outside of school should be held to a different standard. Edit: big companies sometimes have open policies of trying to hire for disabilities. Even if it means an equally qualified person gets skipped so the blind guy gets the job.
Re: What Harvard Owes Its Top Asian-American Applicants: Stephen Hsu
#29Could it be that they are being screened out based on "intended major"? Attending Berkeley for my BA, where 20-30% of the school was Asian or Asian American, it seemed like a huge percentage of the Asian students were solely set on STEM and Bioscience majors. Maybe admissions realize that if they want to keep the Humanities, Arts and Social science depts around they need to admit fewer Asians.
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Re: What Harvard Owes Its Top Asian-American Applicants: Stephen Hsu
#30It's not the universities that are racial bias because Asians are overrepresented at Ivy League school.
The real question should be why is the SAT so racially bias?