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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'

#151

Post by sirclueless »

BlackJack wrote: post #26
narkee wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand they're overrepresented. What I meant was why is that a problem? According to the article, that degree of over-representation (relative to population) is below what it would be, given a completely blind admissions process. So why not have 25% asian population? What's the problem? On the other hand, why isn't anyone saying there is a problem with ORM in football?

Ah okay, I fully agree then. One issue is that you want a "diversity of interests" on a college campus, but there is no evidence to convincingly say that schools would be more or less diverse if we admitted people in a race-blind manner.

Diversity of interests wasn't always a priority in college admissions though. Malcolm Gladwell has a good piece on how the current Ivy League admission focus on non-academic indicators was originally a racially driven policy. One could make a good case that "diversity of interests" is a policy put in place to ensure that highly performing performing demographic can dominate admissions. I imagine colleges con't want that to happen because it would jeopardize the long-term health of their institution.

Malcolm Gladwell's article is here: http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html

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

#152

Post by sirclueless »

forensic wrote: post #123
andrewflnr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This isn't true. Lots of people don't look their race for one thing

Not to mention how politically incorrect it would be to try to call someone out on it: "Hey, aren't you Louis Smith? You said you were black on the application, but you don't look black at all!"

I can't imagine it happening.

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

#153

Post by jinp6301 »

mehn wrote: post #134
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…

Do Africans count as an underepresented minority?I had a 2100+ SAT and failed to get into any top 100 school

I'm not sure from what you've written that you're applying from somewhere in africa but international students are considered on a completely different scale than domestic students.

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

#154

Post by sirclueless »

narkee wrote: post #8

I don't understand why they require ethnic proportions to stay close to population averages. They don't reject high-performance black athletes for lower performing, asian athletes. I've never once heard anyone complain that their university's football team had a disproportionate number of non-asian people. Serious double standard there.

When someone offers the opinion that rejecting high-performing Asians is a "serious double standard" I ask myself a few questions.

Do Asians have considerably higher academic performance than most other ethnic groups? Yes, they do.

Do I believe Asian people are inherently more intelligent and capable? No, I do not.

Do I think that colleges should admit students based on academic performance or intelligence and capability? I think intelligence and capability are clearly more important qualities.

The only conclusion I can draw is that academic performance is clearly a bad indicator in some ways, if it so severely favors one racial group. Therefore colleges' unwillingness to judge Asians with the same standards of academic performance is a reasonable policy to me.

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

#155

Post by rdtsc »

gbog wrote: post #92
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…

> I don't think checking "Asian" or "not Asian" makes a huge difference, Not checking this box shows an aspect of your personality, maybe the differenciator you're looking for.

Not checking also revs up the "race-based selector" in admission officer's mind. Now they imagine you having the most disadvantageous "race" for your admissions.

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

#156

Post by sirclueless »

This is what I would like to see: Two comparative histograms of SAT scores for Asian and non-Asian applicants to Ivy League schools. One for all applicants, and the other for those accepted.

Here is my suspicion (or what I would like to hear): Asian students are significantly higher-scoring, in both histograms. Such a result would go a long way towards vindicating the college admission process, and suggest that universities don't explicitly judge those who mark "Asian" by a different standard but rather choose to largely discount SAT scores (and by proxy academic performance).

Similar studies were used to discredit claims that engineering and science departments were practicing gender discrimination against women. Does anyone have a reference to a study on race in undergraduate admissions that takes this approach?

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

#157

Post by Willwhatley »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #141
camz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i definitely agree with patrick. every school clearly remarks similar policies and reviewing the statistics is pretty self-evident. i don't see why everyone is making an issue to explain away the current standards when they're pretty clear. i'm asian and it doesn't really bother me, since i've experienced similar situations in the "real world" during my career. i've dealt with the principals and superintendents in ny…

How is race irrelevant? If the goal of a University is to recruit those with the highest SAT scores, then yes its irrelevant. But if its to foster a diverse and intellectually stimulating environment, while preparing future leaders of the world, then race (as a proxy to diverse cultures and experiences), is very relevant.

What a pity (well, not really) that race, whatever that is, is a false proxy for the diversity of outlook desired. What a shame it is far more likely to be shown by e.g.: personality type, communication style, preferred role in group dynamics, rich/poor, city/country, literate/numerate/ten other things, musical/not, and so on.

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

#158

Post by forensic »

barrkel wrote: post #69
skeptical wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to take either side, but it sounds like you have a huge taboo that you want to put to bed by saying 'I don't like what you are insinuating'. I'm not taking neither reinhardt's nor your side. But this 'don't touch this subject because it's sensitive' strategy is getting old and pretty ridiculous to resource to. A few lines after you wrote this __You should learn something: that variance within groups is f…

I think taboos exist for very good reasons. The fact that something is a taboo does not, in and of itself, mean that it needs to be challenged. The problem is that very few people are rational. There are a lot of people who gain courage to do very unpleasant things once they've heard arguments that they can use as internal justifications, when they are not themselves sophisticated enough to understand how sound the a…

Basing your values on provably incorrect myths is building a house on the sand. Values must be fundamental and universal. They must be ends in themselves. They should not be based on trivia. They definitely should not be based on provably incorrect non-facts unless you plan on those values crumbling.

Good Value: All human beings deserve a basic, dignified standard of living regardless of their intelligence, who their parents are, or what their culture is like.

Stupid Value: All races deserve a basic standard of living because they have the same intelligence.

Fact: Jews score higher on intelligence tests than other races. Society widely agrees that intelligence tests measure intelligence. Therefore, Jews are more intelligent than other races.

If you base your values on stuff like "all races being the same" you are basing your values on non-truths and those values will crumble when faced with reality. Not all humans are the same. Not all cultures are the same. Not all biology is the same. Values should transcend petty questions about biology - they should be ethical value statements that recognize the value of all human life.

We should give minority groups fair treatment and a helping hand not because they "deserve" it but because it is fair and because we believe in the values of fairness and equal treatment for all human beings. Because we believe in the inherent value of human life - the sanctity of human life - and want to promote human life regardless of which culture it comes from, regardless of what biological quirks it displays.

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

#159

Post by forensic »

jwingy wrote: post #129
estevez wrote: post #126

Stories like this irk me, because they overlook the larger injustice of continuing to think about elite schools as meritocratic institutions, when they are plainly not. At Harvard, for example, the bottom half of the income distribution makes up 6.5% of students.[1] When we consider the most selective schools in aggregate, we see that nearly three-quarters of incoming freshmen at those schools are drawn from the top…

According to this study ( http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-... ), there's a clear correlation between students from high income backgrounds having higher scores versus students from lower income backgrounds having lower scores as well.

The idea that test scores are "meritocratic" is itself a myth. Wealthy people score higher on tests for very simple socioeconomic reasons that are not related to any innate merit but rather to the advantages conferred by an aristocratic upbringing.

Attendance at elite schools and the myth of the "meritocratic test score" is just the most recent form of upper class hegemony. It's a fiction created to justify hereditary rule. The far majority of wealth, power, and status is obtained through heredity and nepotism. The "meritocratic test score" myth is there to hide this simple fact.

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

#160

Post by reinhardt »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #148
JVirissimo wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you bothered when professional sports leagues are racially homogeneous? Would you prefer that they practice affirmative action?

Professional sports leagues aren't the keys to wealth and power in this country. That's why there's a big fuss over college admissions and not about sports.

No, there's no big fuss about sports because an affirmative-action-privileged race happens to be superior in this area.
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