Want to go to a good college? Besides doing your homework, studying hard, and acing the SAT, it sure helps if you weren't born Asian.
While this isn't exactly a new phenomenon ("overachieving" Asians have been blamed for ruining the curve and the college admission "reverse discrimination" charge has been around since before I went to college many, many moons ago), this article by Kara Miller at The Boston Globe does raise an interesting question: is the "Asian ceiling" a necessary evil in order to maintain a racially diverse college environment?
Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade, who reviewed data from 10 elite colleges, writes in “No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal’’ that Asian applicants typically need an extra 140 points to compete with white students. In fact, according to Princeton lecturer Russell Nieli, there may be an “Asian ceiling’’ at Princeton, a number above which the admissions office refuses to venture. [...]
A few years ago, however, when I worked as a reader for Yale’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions, it became immediately clear to me that Asians - who constitute 5 percent of the US population - faced an uphill slog. They tended to get excellent scores, take advantage of AP offerings, and shine in extracurricular activities. Frequently, they also had hard-knock stories: families that had immigrated to America under difficult circumstances, parents working as kitchen assistants and store clerks, and households in which no English was spoken.
But would Yale be willing to make 50 percent of its freshman class Asian? Probably not.
Indeed, as Princeton’s Nieli suggests, most elite universities appear determined to keep their Asian-American totals in a narrow range. Yale’s class of 2013 is 15.5 percent Asian-American, compared with 16.1 percent at Dartmouth, 19.1 percent at Harvard, and 17.6 percent at Princeton. [...]
In a country built on individual liberty and promise, that feels deeply unfair. If a teenager spends much time studying, excels at an instrument or sport, and garners wonderful teacher recommendations, should he be punished for being part of a high-achieving group? Are his accomplishments diminished by the fact that people he has never met - but who look somewhat like him - also work hard?
Simple.
Just add Creative Writing, Visual Arts, Real History(not just reading paragraphs), Social skills, and any of the performed arts to the SAT and ACT tests.
We are simply refusing to measure ALL the endeavors of human knowledge and the test bias in favor of the pay-heavy fields that Asian families aim for is a side effect of that.
But, don't you ever discriminate the Whites.
Considering the disadvantage many indigenous Australians have in health care, education, etc... I think it's a great idea, however I also think that restricting the number of Asians from getting into a course just because of their race is unfair.
I suppose encouraging more Aboriginal people to go study at university isn't going to mean our universities will have "too many" Aboriginal students considering the small indigenous population, so that it won't hurt student diversity. However apart from this factor, essentially the two things are the same. Hmmmmm...
The Asian families are pushing their kids to achievements on behalf of social skills or other recreational activities. The teacher called us the other day to complain that our son's hand writing is not correct and we should work with him at home - he is less than 3 years old !!! I responded to her to leave him alone and let him play and paint otherwise we'll move him to another school.
The discrimination is appropriate and should serve as a message to asian parents to leave their poor kids alone.
Whites are being discriminated - it is easier for Blacks to get college education and jobs (affirmative action). So Blacks come first, then Whites then Asians. It blows my mind how this could be legal in USA where everybody talks about equal rights and our system is not supposed to discriminate, at least in theory. Contrary to what everyone says your skin color dictates how easy it will be for you to get education and to find a job. Now, I realize the need to elevate some disadvantaged races (in a perfect world there would be no need for this of course), but do it through special scholarships and additional education for minorities PRIOR to college entry exams to help them achieve higher scores. The actual exam should be scored equally and blindly - only the scores should count, not your skin color or ethnicity.
I think universities need to reevaluate their admissions process as a whole. I don't buy the argument that every tier one school would be chock-full of Asians if admissions officers were color-blind. Has anyone considered that perhaps more Asians are in the California universities simply because they know that they won't be discriminated against when they apply?
However, I'm glad at least some schools are willing to be honest now about how race is an obstacle for Asians applying to elite schools -- it seems that this has been an unspoken and unacknowledged truth for some time.
Time and time again I've heard admissions officers explaining why exceptional Asian applicants are turned down by claiming that they needed students who were more "well-rounded". As an Asian-American I found these explanations weak and mildly insulting -- why are people being led to believe that Asian students are not well-rounded (and I think Weoei's comments could speak to this)?
Schools need to call a spade a spade and admit that it's a race issue. At least once the admission is made, we can all discuss the problem openly.
I went to a very large university and there wasn't a single asian in my BFA (including art history) program of a couple hundred, nor was there a single one in theatre. Handful of just about every other skin color (black, latino, even eastern block) and culture, but not a single person of asian descent, not one. In fact the arts building that had hundreds of students going in and out it's doors was like western world, only time you'd see someone asian would be going in for music class.
The same can't be said when I had to fulfill my math requirement classes, I was the minority. Or any time I had to use the library at any hour there were tons, I swear they don't like to have lives.
On further reflection, I decided that I was being an idiot.
I had lived a comfortable middle-class life in a stable household, with parents who encouraged me to study. They also sacrificed many of their own comforts to provide books, magazines and time for this study. I cannot claim personal merit for my qualifications.
Would I rather trade a childhood of encouragement and opportunity for a one-shot scholarship at the end of my educational life? I had had the greater advantage given to me, or forced on me, when it counted the most: in my childhood. How can I begrudge anyone their small consolation prize?
An extra 140 points? Feh. My kids could do that in their sleep!
2) At Berkeley (someone commented on it, above), the cap is in place due to alumni contributions, which are tied to continued athletic achievement. By that, I mean the protests were about academically-focused admissions at the expense of the football team. (So, it doesn't target Asians, but it does limit how many students are admitted purely on the basis of their academics.)
3) I'm a Western European mutt. My wife's Filipino. My son often asks "am I Asian? Pacific Islander? White?" Now, at least, I know that he should put "white" on any college apps...
My children, since kindergarten, have been listed as a minority so they can reap the advantages later in life as un-WASPs.
FWIW, the university I attended for undergrad and grad school in music had a considerable Asian population. Many of these students spoke English as a second language and brought tape recorders to lectures and sought extra help with writing, on top of all of their musical studies. They put us native English speakers to shame. I think they deserve equal opportunity with anyone else without being denied opportunities just because there are other hard-workings students out there who happen to share genetic traits of hair and eye color with them!
@Weoei: I am Asian and I went to an art school. So much for your theory about Asians and the arts.
Boy, you must really hate Yoko Ono.
I'm not speaking in favor of putting too much pressure on your kids, or even disencouraging social skills, at all, but diminishing these effects of the ever increasing competition to get into good colleges is a matter for parents and society as a whole to discuss and act upon. But not by punishing kids who study, by all means!
Why not have programs that encourage social skills and general good mental health for kids and college students? Why not show kids that studying is fun and they can help the world become a better place by learning? Encourage kids that don't study to do so, and make sure you show kids that do study that they're good kids because of who they are as a whole, not because they get good grades. Stop the racism (because THAT is what this is), start acting to actually educate kids to become better, more comprehensive human beings.
Besides, what constitutes race anyway? My husband's heritage is Cuban (his parents both 100 percent pale-skinned European Spanish and upper class ones at that.) We live a nice oh, middle-upper class life. My daughter has a Spanish last name, should that give her some sort of edge -- or conversely, some sort of barrier to entry?
My son (who has a very English last name) is engaged to an Australian girl with a 100 percent Chinese heritage. Should his English/Irish/Polish/Chinese one-day children be less (or more?) discriminated against in that they will have an Anglo last name?
(And, just for the record, while his fiancee (who grew up in Australia) did study for, and works in, a high-paying, math-centric field, she is very well-rounded (far more so than I), participating in sports, traveling extensively, and has zillions of friends. Sweeping generalities are so often wrong.
Effort, ability and socio-economic factors make so much more sense as qualifiers than ethnicity or the "right" last name.
As for Joe's comment - I don't think you understand the culture, sure some parents push their kids and expect highly of them, but from my own perspective as the kid, we want to do well, and set ourselves high standards when we get older so that we are always challenged to better ourselves whether in arts, science, sport etc. But don't get me wrong, I'm actually Eurasian so I fully understand your cultural view too, but you shouldn't ever punish someone when they've worked so hard to achieve something... I would be livid!
I live 500 feet from a university that has been around for 310+ years and has yet to have an Asian tenured in their Creative Writing department. They are Ivy League.
But that IS NOT THE POINT.
The fact that tests are showing a bias is the point.
This has been the case for Decades but we refused to do anything about it when it was harming people of color and ethnic Americans.
People all over the USA excel at a lot of areas that don't fit into MATH or VERBAL. The SAT only measures those areas and as a result the Asian Ceiling has come into being.
Thomas Edison was NEITHER math or verbal.
I don't care how close you live to the "310 year old university". Unless you are sitting at the doorstep of every Arts and Humanities class tallying people by race, your statements are worthless.
Ever consider the reason for that is the top asians, who has to beat their peers, are the ones with SAT scores taking multiple AP classes (aka non Humanities). Why you don't see enough asians in the Arts and Humanities courses? Their asians who attend those classes have been rejected due to the discriminating acceptance ratio.
(last sentence, sorry :) )
The real question is: why do they (Princeton et al.) oppose the Greater Prosperity? ;-)
>>fixed.
Why would SATs hurt people of color or ethnic Americans? SATs are not racially biased. Unless you have a study done on which ethnic groups are mentally superior.
If I was born in Africa (I'm white) and came to USA...could I get benefits like "African Americans" do?
When will we all WAKE UP and stop putting each other in catagories?
Or maybe a catagory...such as...WORKS HARD...STUDIES ALOT...DOESN'T RELY ON THE GOV't FOR EVERYTHING?
Maybe then we can move on!
I'm Asian-American, born and bred in the USA, graduate of UCLA and a lawyer, not an engineer, CPA or math professor. I majored in religious studies and minored in business administration. Well-rounded Asians do exist :). At UCLA, being Asian was not unusual, although in hindsight I don't think there were many Asians in my higher level religious studies classes. At law school, I was surprised to find that there was an affirmative action program for Asian students, although I didn't find out about it until after I was admitted.
@Weoei: tenure isn't the proper metric for determining if there are Asian students in the humanities programs. Professorial positions are a pretty rare beast and tenured positions even more so. Jac's right in that you'd have to get the class rosters to determine the actual percentage of Asian participation. Eyeballing it is hardly conclusive.
@esu, you're right that the SATs are not racially biased but, at least when I took them 25 years ago, they were culturally biased. Being a completely Americanized Asian, I had more trouble with the quantitative portion than the verbal, ironically. I guess they've been periodically updating the verbal portion of the test to try to remove the cultural bias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#Cultural_bias) but I believe it would still make a difference to students who are recent immigrants. There are significant differences between Asian and western cultures, extending beyond the language difference; the Asian emphasis on education is only the tip of the iceberg.
I don't think additional subjects on the SAT will make a difference. From a practical standpoint, I don't know if high school students are ready a multi-day bar exam type ordeal plus it would increase the costs of administering the test which would drive up the fees and perhaps prevent some students from taking it. Besides SAT prep courses will simply add materials covering these new subjects and Asians again will study twice as hard. I doubt a test can be designed for which a prep course can't prepare a student. The fact that you get a score means there's an answer that's right or at least more right than another, which means you can learn what that answer is beforehand. If you make it a subjective assessment, we're back to cultural biases unless you add non-white evaluators and get the tests of the non-whites in front of them. And it just gets messier from there. You've increased the costs of the test and the prep courses and ended up in the same spot.
This isn't preventing specific people from getting into college. I mean, you might as well get pissed off that they can only allow so many people in general to attend in any given year, because that's also arbitrarily restricting access. In the end, you're still competing on merit, and an exemplary high school student is not going to have any trouble getting into college. It just may not always be Yale.
i'm an m.d. and i'll tell you right now it's not hard to get accepted / get a degree if you are black. at least back in the 80's. the asians are discriminated against.
i think we should just dump ethnicity as a factor. if 50% of yale is asian? good for them!
who cares what color the dog is in the race?
marc
These are things worth looking into but it doesn't change the fact that there should be zero adjustment in the curve, if the Asian kids are scoring higher then they should get everything they deserve. If it's time for the German, English and Irish immigrant kids to step down and let the next batch take over, then that's entirely in accordance with the ideals that America is founded on.
Maybe this is just a sign of a superpower in decline grasping at straws, striking at the "enemy" within, cowering in the shadow China's towering financial phallus.