ATAR Notes: Forum
General Discussion => General Discussion Boards => Other General Discussion => Topic started by: ninwa on December 04, 2011, 05:59:30 pm
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Full article here
Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white.
"I didn't want to put 'Asian' down," Olmstead says, "because my mom told me there's discrimination against Asians in the application process."
For years, many Asian-Americans have been convinced that it's harder for them to gain admission to the nation's top colleges.
Studies show that Asian-Americans meet these colleges' admissions standards far out of proportion to their 6 percent representation in the U.S. population, and that they often need test scores hundreds of points higher than applicants from other ethnic groups to have an equal chance of admission. Critics say these numbers, along with the fact that some top colleges with race-blind admissions have double the Asian percentage of Ivy League schools, prove the existence of discrimination.
The way it works, the critics believe, is that Asian-Americans are evaluated not as individuals, but against the thousands of other ultra-achieving Asians who are stereotyped as boring academic robots.
Now, an unknown number of students are responding to this concern by declining to identify themselves as Asian on their applications.
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"My math scores aren't high enough for the Asian box," she says. "I say it jokingly, but there is the underlying sentiment of, if I had emphasized myself as Asian, I would have (been expected to) excel more in stereotypically Asian-dominated subjects."
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From what I hear, American universities often prefer diversity in their student bodies, in academics, background, and so forth. This is a bit of a whimsical and broad generalisation, but Asian students tend towards the same maths/science subjects (or perhaps economics...) in their studies - it would seem to undermine this principle of diversity if a top university were to accept, say, a very large percentage of Asian students intending to major in the same areas. Hence the need to distinguish oneself with higher scores, or to otherwise choose a completely different mode of study (primarily in the humanities?).
That said, this is all inference/hearsay. I'll leave someone more qualified/knowledgeable (eg. appianway, people applying/who have applied to America) to clarify for me - in the mean time, there's a temporary guesswork response. :p
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I've heard that as well. I think it is a population diversity thing, but it doesn't seem fair at all. That is, if the practice actually happens.
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Imposing racial quotas and a bamboo ceiling in Ivy League (American) universities has always been that elephant in the room. It turned out state schools tended to have a significantly larger asian representation compared to the top end ones. Some people have attributed this to the university politics and donations where parents are afraid of having the university asianified. As far as I know, there hasn't been enough material on the subject for it to move past statistics and news opinion pieces.
Here are a few more links I found on Steve Hsu's blog
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/02/08/do_colleges_redline_asian_americans/
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2011/04/17/high_achieving_asian_americans_are_being_shut_out_of_top_schools/?page=full
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well it's similar to gender quotas, there are arguments for and against, I had a discussion with a friend regarding whether we should make quotas 50/50 for genders so that there are no male dominated areas (engineering for example) and female dominated areas, IRS both fair and unfair depending on how you look at it
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I don't think it's fair at all
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I see how it's unfair, but having a 50/50 balance is also good, some areas are surely male/female dominated :S
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I don't think someone should be held to a lower/higher standard solely based on their gender or race
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yeah I agree with you, but is it discrimination, there might be certain reasons why it makes sense tonhave a balance
say medicine, you generally want a balance between male and female doctors, because there are illnesses where we prefer to go to a doctor of our own gender
similarly, having wide ranges of cultures in certain areas is also good, they bring a unique sense to the study and are able to make that study appeal to others of their culture
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Some things in life are just not fair but we tend to find other ways to make it work
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say medicine, you generally want a balance between male and female doctors, because there are illnesses where we prefer to go to a doctor of our own gender
I'd find this assumption to be too large to justify any form of discrimination. Regardless, if this happened, the market powers should be able to sort it out and affirmative action need not apply anyway.
similarly, having wide ranges of cultures in certain areas is also good, they bring a unique sense to the study and are able to make that study appeal to others of their culture
Sorry, I don't really understand your point. Could you elaborate on this?
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say medicine, you generally want a balance between male and female doctors, because there are illnesses where we prefer to go to a doctor of our own gender
I'd find this assumption to be too large to justify any form of discrimination. Regardless, if this happened, the market powers should be able to sort it out and affirmative action need not apply anyway.
similarly, having wide ranges of cultures in certain areas is also good, they bring a unique sense to the study and are able to make that study appeal to others of their culture
Sorry, I don't really understand your point. Could you elaborate on this?
I think he means that if say a school is like 50% dominated by asians, then other ethnic groups will not have much incentive to go to the school since their own ethnic group is represented as a small minority.
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I'm Asian and I have to sort of agree with this. I mean sure it's discrimination that a black kid who basically fails can get a free pass while some Asians with close to 100% can't get in but it would be so awkward if 90% of the students in top colleges were all Asian.
It's one of those shady areas. Just like why do indigenous Australians get all these benefits normal australians dont get u know?
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Just waiting for appianway to comment, so she could tell us about her Yale experiences.
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I think he means that if say a school is like 50% dominated by asians, then other ethnic groups will not have much incentive to go to the school since their own ethnic group is represented as a small minority.
That's what I meant :) but yeah, even though it's kinda unfair, I can sorta understand why universities want balance, it makes them more appealing to everyone!
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OK, I'm in finals mode, so this response is going to be very short.
With top colleges, there's the problem in that there are wayyyyy too many qualified candidates. Asian Americans are still well and truly overrepresented with admissions, but race and the opportunities that students have received doessss make a difference to admissions (if students have come from low income families, and haven't been able to afford special programs, admissions officers to take this into account, to the best of my knowledge). All of the african american and hispanic students I've met here have had fantastic qualifications (one of my best friends here is african american, and another one of my best friends is hispanic, and both got into every school to which they applied, including harvard, stanford...the list goes on). I can see that asian americans would be even more overrepresented at schools which are more score centric, but american college admissions are holistic - top schools don't just want a class of violin-playing-science-studying super high scorers (because most candidates are high scorers anyway), but they want students who will be leaders in their fields. Without meaning to sound racist, I think that a lot of white and asian students obtain high scores through lots of hard work, and the amount of time dedicated to get high grades and SAT scores (which causes the huge overrepresentation at schools that focus more on scores) means that less time is left for genuine pursuits. Just my two cents. (time to write a 12 page paper!)
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I think he means that if say a school is like 50% dominated by asians, then other ethnic groups will not have much incentive to go to the school since their own ethnic group is represented as a small minority.
That's what I meant :) but yeah, even though it's kinda unfair, I can sorta understand why universities want balance, it makes them more appealing to everyone!
I understand that universities are a business. However, they are sacrificing their integrity by barring people who are perfectly qualified on the basis of their race. I don't see why there should be some racial quota in universities of all places, it's not a nightclub
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It's not a quota as such; we're not used to it here down in Australia because in Australia uni admissions are effectively based on ATAR, whereas in the US it's based on the whole persona and circumstances. The unis are aware that a relatively high number of students with Asian backgrounds are highly focused on studies due to cultural factors, so unfortunately they think that it's kinda expected of them. Nevertheless I don't think that they're trying to actively discriminate AGAINST asians, but discriminate FOR other races which are somewhat correlated to certain cultures and socieo-economic backgrounds which make it highly difficult for such people to score well on paper or in the field. Victoria does have this to an extent too, but based on socio-economic background rather than race - Access Melbourne is an example.
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Anyway, US universities choose based on potential to succeed and proven success. Accomplishments matter. To put it in terms of Australian scores (as most people here aren't familiar with the SAT), if you had a student who scored 99.80 and played violin in their school orchestra, or someone who scored 99.60 whilst founding/running a charity, who do you think would be more likely to succeed in the future, and who would have accomplished more? Or what about a student who scored 98.50, but went to a school that was barely registered, whilst working ridiculous hours each week to support their family, and whilst completing research at a local university? It's subjective, of course, but success is more than your ATAR or SAT score.
I'm definitely not saying that asians (and whites) don't have these accomplishments - to the contrary, many do. But I'd say that the asian (and the middle class white) culture emphasises hard work to obtain good scores, and as a consequence, a lot of these students obtain better percentiles than they would place into if their pure intellect were considered. A lot of asians (and yes, a lot of whites) thus obtain very high test scores, but in reality, these aren't everything. They barely scrape the surface of success.
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It's not a quota as such; we're not used to it here down in Australia because in Australia uni admissions are effectively based on ATAR, whereas in the US it's based on the whole persona and circumstances. The unis are aware that a relatively high number of students with Asian backgrounds are highly focused on studies due to cultural factors, so unfortunately they think that it's kinda expected of them. Nevertheless I don't think that they're trying to actively discriminate AGAINST asians, but discriminate FOR other races which are somewhat correlated to certain cultures and socieo-economic backgrounds which make it highly difficult for such people to score well on paper or in the field. Victoria does have this to an extent too, but based on socio-economic background rather than race - Access Melbourne is an example.
Racial discrimination no matter how it's phrased undermines the entire notion of equality. Admittedly some races ie. blacks and hispanics are on average poorer then whites and asians, this still does not warrant racial affirmative action. In those cases, awards should be based on their individual SES not their race. Secondly, so what if working hard is ingrained into asian culture? They can hardly be faulted for that. Should a black person be detained without reason because blacks, on average, commit higher levels of crime?
Edit: fixed for clarification
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You're strawmanning/misunderstanding appianway's points, JellyDonut. Basically she's saying it's not race which causes the selection, but rather, certain factors which can be race (more specifically, culturally) related.
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I wasn't responding to her. I was responding to Thushan but I was too lazy to quote
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The US system is different. Top colleges do not give out places simply based on a set of test scores (which, in my honest opinion, discriminates far more on class and race than the US system does). The US system rewards accomplishment. Accomplished asians obtain ivy league places. Accomplished whites do. Accomplished hispanics do. There's absolutely no question about that.
The problem that has been discussed is that asians with higher scores are equally likely to obtain places as black and hispanic students with lower scores. First of all, I'll say this - the cut off for the top 1% on the SAT is about 2200. Almost every african american and hispanic student I've met here had obtained a score above that limit. The differences in the scores might appear to be large, looking at the SAT score differences, but really, they're not that big in terms of percentiles.
And it's not about hard work being ingrained into asian (and, as I said, white middle class - heck, I'm white and middle class, and I admit it) culture. It's that this hard work leads to high test scores, which aren't the best metrics of achievement. In many cases, the emphasis on scores leaves little time to devote to doing other things. I'm going to be completely blunt and say that most people I know who scored high ATARs- white, asian or otherwise - would not have nearly the right accomplishments to stand out at these schools. Sure, you can get 99.95 and a bit of community service and some school clubs, but I honestly don't think that an asian or a white student with those scores is more deserving than a black student with a 99.00 who's also founded a business and been recognized on national television for being an entrepreneur, or even an asian student who scored 99.50 and has worked as a professional journalist (and yes, I know people who basically fit those categories). I feel inadequate about what I've done with my life, and I did well within the realm of things academically in Australia (IPhO, APhO, 99.95, writing/french competitions...).
To basically sum up everything, asian students and middle class white students tend to have higher test scores, but that doesn't mean that they're more accomplished or that they have more potential.
Sigh I hope I've tried to explain this well enough.
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well it's similar to gender quotas, there are arguments for and against, I had a discussion with a friend regarding whether we should make quotas 50/50 for genders so that there are no male dominated areas (engineering for example) and female dominated areas, IRS both fair and unfair depending on how you look at it
I haven't read the other posts, and this has surely been addressed... but
Think about children, males play with toys that involve construction while females play with fake babies and cooking sets.
I remember watching a documentary about a boy who, following a mistake in circumcision, lost his penis. His parents decided to raise him as a girl with him being none the wiser. It was quickly apparent that he was uninterested in girl's toys... so it isn't anything to do with how genders are raised.
It may seem somewhat sexist but to an extent... genders are suited to certain jobs by psychology.
So if there were to be a 50/50 distribution, there would surely be, in your example, engineers with lesser ability.
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So you're saying that it's a correlation between race and entry (caused by cultural factors) rather than a causal relationship?
That actually makes sense
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The US system is different. Top colleges do not give out places simply based on a set of test scores (which, in my honest opinion, discriminates far more on class and race than the US system does). The US system rewards accomplishment. Accomplished asians obtain ivy league places. Accomplished whites do. Accomplished hispanics do. There's absolutely no question about that.
The problem that has been discussed is that asians with higher scores are equally likely to obtain places as black and hispanic students with lower scores. First of all, I'll say this - the cut off for the top 1% on the SAT is about 2200. Almost every african american and hispanic student I've met here had obtained a score above that limit. The differences in the scores might appear to be large, looking at the SAT score differences, but really, they're not that big in terms of percentiles.
And it's not about hard work being ingrained into asian (and, as I said, white middle class - heck, I'm white and middle class, and I admit it) culture. It's that this hard work leads to high test scores, which aren't the best metrics of achievement. In many cases, the emphasis on scores leaves little time to devote to doing other things. I'm going to be completely blunt and say that most people I know who scored high ATARs- white, asian or otherwise - would not have nearly the right accomplishments to stand out at these schools. Sure, you can get 99.95 and a bit of community service and some school clubs, but I honestly don't think that an asian or a white student with those scores is more deserving than a black student with a 99.00 who's also founded a business and been recognized on national television for being an entrepreneur, or even an asian student who scored 99.50 and has worked as a professional journalist (and yes, I know people who basically fit those categories). I feel inadequate about what I've done with my life, and I did well within the realm of things academically in Australia (IPhO, APhO, 99.95, writing/french competitions...).
To basically sum up everything, asian students and middle class white students tend to have higher test scores, but that doesn't mean that they're more accomplished or that they have more potential.
Sigh I hope I've tried to explain this well enough.
Are you saying the unis in question place no bias and this illusion of bias is due only to how the students' extracurricular activities are looked at and considered? If so, why is anyone arguing? If not, then there is still bias and they clearly need to change the way they accept new students.