Didnt Fisher have like a 3.5? Lol what?, she should've done more.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits, Suit Says (NY Times) [Read OP]
- Thread starter Piecake
- Start date
Nope. A lot of schools recognize the differences in Asian populations.
The individual application is the responsibility of the applicant to covey any grit and struggle that they had to overcome for their given situation.
Which is why college admissions biggest blind spot is socioeconomic.
An upper class Afro-Caribbean immigrant counts the same for reporting diversity at elite law schools as working class African American student from Memphis.
I understand the cause here and am sympathetic but these soft admission caps hurt socioeconomic affirmative action for less wealthy Asian students, in addition to less wealthy everyone else.
Don't forget not well rounded. We just can't seem to get what it means to be well round. Is there a handbook out there with the guidelines or is it some hidden attribute that only Harvard office workers that never met us can decide.
If the onus is on the individual, then why take race into account?
That's a lot of heat. I have to wonder who it is you're the most upset at in this situation.
hmmmmmm.
Or so the admissions committee "says".
Medical school admissions is such a rat race of people who min-max the volunteer and extracurricular points. So many people who I know who got in came from wealthy families so they had time to go do all those frivolous things.
Yep, this is an issue that definitely gets underlooked and contributes to "stickiness at the ends" (the idea that the wealthy remain wealthy and the poor remain poor).
It's not, but shouldn't fight to push another group down.
Asian-Americans have the advantage of being over-prepared enough to apply to maybe all top 10 universities of their choice. You look at a hispanic/black student, they probably only apply to a few of their top priority colleges and a ton of backup colleges. Asian-american doesn't get into Standford?, they'll likely get into UCLA, Berkeley, or Irvine. They'll have a backup choice that will still be a top university. While the hispanic/black students only get into one of those if incredibly lucky. From what I've seen personally, Hispanics/Blacks are probably less likely to apply to a top university, and more likely to apply to one of the other "lesser" UCs or CSUs in California.
Let's not forget Hispanics/Blacks represent 30% of the population in the US, while Asian-Americans only represent 5% of the total population. Now look at poverty ratesby race (page 13), 40% of Hispanics/Blacks are in poverty, while only 11% of Asians are. And look at the post above, Asian-Americans represent up to 25% or higher of certain university populations. How are they losing? Now let's look at applications versus admission by race, more or the same number of Hispanics/Blacks are getting rejected from the same schools than Asian-Americans.
My point, let's not put people down, so that "our" team can climb higher. Why not elevate everything around us equally. If Asian-Americans are that well prepared, they're not skipping college if they don't get into Standford, they'll keep going strong no matter where they go. Where most Hispanics/Blacks are getting admitted into "lesser" UCs, and that's is likely their only choice.
Last edited:
First, I am Iranian so I was considered white or Asian for admissions purposes (they didn't have a middle eastern option).
And personally, I don't think somebody who focuses on quantifiable factors like test scores and grades is likely to be leadership material. Among the Iranian and East Asian students I knew, most just had the goal of being a pharmacist or software engineer. Now not all of us were like that but I think it's an issue of cultures that don't encourage risk and trying new things leading to teenagers that are afraid to explore new options.
This is all anecdotal of course. It might be better if there was some survey that showed what percent of different races try to go into entrepreneurial/creative fields.
What do you want to say?
When it comes to the affirmative action argument, I'm usually on the side against the people trying to tear it down. But what I find laughable about this thread is how easily people buy into the idea that Asians don't struggle.
In the United States, race is important and has real world implications and indications of access. It's perforctly ok to take it into account as part of the overall process. Although of course it should never be the sole factor in accepting or denying someone.
Not sure what you mean? On the undergraduate side, it is what it is. That's what I look for and what we are asked to highly consider. Yeah I'll consider higher someone who didn't know where their next meal was coming from yet still performed academically well or even a little "worse" versus someone who had their plan laid out for them with all the resources in the world. Notice there wasn't nothing about preference for any race there.
Grad/professional school is a different beast and yeah tons of colleges are obsessed with pure metrics like GPA and test scores. I can't explain that as I don't work in that area.
Working pizza delivery to put food on the table is never going to look as sexy as (unpaid) research in so-and-so big shot's lab.
Well don't be, say what you imply. Don't need to be passive aggressive.
Personally I'd love to hear why saying Asian Americans should not be paying for the sins of systematic racism set up by the white majority is racist.
Last edited:
That's your opinion. Because as an admissions officer, that's the stuff I look for. Both are impressive and both are important. And again it depends on the student's ability to convey the reasoning and importance with those activities.
But if someone also obsesses over the Ivy League and assumes they're the end all be all to elite jobs in certain fields, then that's also an unfortunate flaw and opportunity missed.
That's not what arguments means though. It's not about the specific but the general.
From what I saw personally (working with teams in undergraduate engineering program), Asians from a poor background were more likely to work harder and be more serious about their study. I would love to assume, that is something admissions takes into consideration. But I'm not 100% sure. In my experience I saw an equal 50-50 mix in income bracket from the people I personally worked with.
Chances are, candidates are unlikely to even put this stuff on their resume. Precisely because the perception exists, even if adcoms are taught to not bias against it. One of my friends was a single dad and didn't think it was anything special to put parenting on his application to professional school. I doubt students at less-affluent schools are getting the right coaching and guidance from school counselors to catch this sort of stuff. The counselors are probably happy enough if they get into community college.
Edit: Also, I agree with you that Ivys are not the be all end all. But they have unquestionably powerful effect on moving people up the income ladder. There's an entire exam prep industry that materialized to get students in the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in New York City - https://www.theatlantic.com/educati...igh-schools-stuyvesant-brooklyn-bronx/562772/.
People care because it matters. An important excerpt I'm quoting from the article:
Last edited:
And you would be exactly right. This is why we account for this stuff in this process. I look at the school itself and partially judge a student on what's available at their particular school/environment. It's complicated. It's impossible to have a level playing field because education inherently is highly segregated and very different across the board.
There was nothing passive aggressive about it. The question was as clear as day light. From your mini rant, exactly who are you upset at for this situation?
Me being polite was me not cussing. It's that simple.
Letting the free market dictate things is how you get multiple recessions/depressions and the most egregious wealth inequality ever observed in the states.
Free market economics only works if people aren't irrationally greedy and malicious.
I don't believe so, most schools count international students separately
Maybe I misunderstood you then.
There's no who I'm mad at, im mad at the situation itself. I'm mad at the fact that my children will be place in a situation where it's legally encouraged to be unfair. I'm mad at the fact that when we complain about it people like to tell us to stfu and sit in your corner. I'm mad that Asian Americans are constantly told even by progressives like this forum how we should feel about racism.
So we're on the same page. Then I can ask you why you should feel some way about being several degrees apart from other minorities in this dilemma?
What does the academy have to do with the free market?
I can't say I'm mad, but I certainty think it's interesting how quick people are to use certain arguments as soon as it seems to be of immediate use to them.
Last edited:
So Harvard is selectively excluding students based on race by duking the stats of minority students due to concerns that the campus might become "too Asian", and it's being dismissed by a lot of (non-asian) people here. If it was black students being rejected because Harvard felt they were becoming overrepresented would you feel the same way?
How does something look in context if we remove the context? These are the same systems stopping elite schools from being lily white with a few East Asians. You can't turn this around and act like it's the opposite.
Last edited:
What's nuts to me is that we keep bring this to black peoples doorsteps. And exactly who of this "lot of" that is here dismissing any of this that you guys keep talking about? So far it's been a situation of lets just chop it up and see what we come up with.
Last edited:
Therefore, just go ahead and let others push you down, right?
Your "point" is nonsense and self-contradictory. You have already concluded that what happened is no problem and are backwards rationalizing it.
Guys, this thread isn't even about affirmative action. If you want to set entry quotas for diversity, go ahead. But you don't see how it's fucked up that instead of doing that, they just went ahead and used racist stereotyping to bar admission to one specific, targeted demographic? Come on.
I mean you can keep moving the goalposts all you want. These students have extra curricular, grades, all of that. A good gpa is class performance....
The fact is other students can't compete and these students are being punished for being smarter.
It is the opposite. The system is preserving a lily white majority. Admissions has their thumb on the scale because without it, Asian students would perhaps over time replace Caucasian students as the majority. As best, it's due to blind tribalism. At worst, it's due to an institutional xenophobic fear of an Asian future, or the feeling that white students are owed more spots.
Jesus this thread. Suggesting it's okay for Asian Americans to take the L for the good of the 'minority' team is ridiculous. Don't be mad you didn't get into Ivy League (for bogus made up 'personality tests), you will Still get into a state college!
What a perfectly reasonable response to an article shedding light on discrimination against a racial minority.
As fun as this assertion is you've again simply stripped it of its context by focusing on a white-asian dynamic instead placing it in the broader context of race dynamics in general in America. As long as race is a meaningful unit of analysis in this country such a system will be necessary. If anything it needs to be strengthened as African Americans and Latinx students are still very under represented at elite institutions. This is even more obvious when controlling for class and nationality.
There's room for improvement, but I'm seeing calls for ending it, not making it better.
Last edited:
Jesus fucking christ the blatant racism in this thread against Asian Americans is mind-boggling. It is also shocking that moderation is letting it go without a peep.
Highly qualified members of a minority group are being systematically rejected from prestigious schools because the schools don't want too many of them on their campus. Full stop. If you are okay with this you are okay with racism.
Highly qualified members of a minority group are being systematically rejected from prestigious schools because the schools don't want too many of them on their campus. Full stop. If you are okay with this you are okay with racism.
If the admissions teams actually took the time to review these personal facts (as in the geographical position/family history) then I'd expect there to be a dramatic increase in overall minority admissions.
And Asian-American students should relinquish the most spots and face harsher entry criteria because...
Do they? It's not particularly relevant to my point, that we need another paradigm than mindlesss "metiocracy," but I'm fairly sure in absolute terms white people would be the ones giving up the most spots. More important than choosing the metric most useful to your immediate argument is recognizing the principle at play here with taking race to be a meaningful unit of analysis for college admission. You don't get it both ways, it either is or it isn't, and we all know we looses if it isn't. You're of course free to think that it isn't, but that's fairly foolish from a broader sociological understanding and puts you in some bad company.
College admission, especially at the elite level, needs reform, but I'm not seeing much in this thread that would lead to reforn for the better.
This is a very complicated subject, and I see no evidence of ill-intent. Trying to create a cohort of Ivy League students who are reflective of real-world demographics, despite socio-economic backgrounds, is incredibly difficult.
Solution:
Increase the size of undergraduate spaces. Extend the campus size and hire more faculty. This would lessen the pressure on admissions.
Solution:
Increase the size of undergraduate spaces. Extend the campus size and hire more faculty. This would lessen the pressure on admissions.
What you're calling pressure on admissions is there by design. It also doesn't address people's fundamental problem here which is mostly about competing visions of fairness.
Whether its systems like Affirmative Action that seek to increase enrolment regardless of test scores, or systems such as this that attempt to stifle it despite test scores, we are inherently socially engineering based on race. And yet the two systems are contradictory - you are penalising one group while elevating another. Cocaloch was absolutely right to term this debate as one of fairness.