40% of UC students are asian (and it's higher at Cal, UCLA and UCSD (i.e. the better schools)).[1]
23% of Stanford students are asian (probably higher since that excludes "international" and "decline to state").[2]
26% of MIT students are.[3]
In other words, at (a small sampling of) the top schools, Asians are over-represented by anywhere from 400% to 1000%. It just doesn't seem like any sort of quota system exists, looking at the data.
[1]http://diversity.universityofcalifornia.edu/documents/divers...
[2]http://www.stanford.edu/dept/humsci/external/under/demograph...
This is a widely studied and easily Google-able topic. Private schools discriminate against Asian Americans is through the combination of Affirmative Action (favors non-Asian students), athletics (favors non-Asian students - completely bizarre to non-Americans) and legacy admissions (favors non-Asian students).
I attended a famous public high school where Asian girls (officially) had to meet a much higher grades+scores standard than others. Many lawsuits, so I'm not sure whether this is still in place.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/19/fears-of-an-...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California [2] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-08-25-SAT... [3] http://nationsreportcard.gov/hsts_2009/race_gpa.asp?tab_id=t...
However, this study appears to show a quota in place (starting around 2003) at the Ivy League schools.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-...
Note that Stanford's and MIT's percentatges are notable lower than UC's. Why?
California has this:
> California’s Master Plan for higher education, adopted in
> 1960, guarantees a place in college for every state
> resident who can benefit. The historic blueprint produced
> systems and programs that have served as models for other
> states and for countries across the globe.
This one might be incorrect, but California being on the west coast might mean that there are more Asians per person in California than in many other parts of the US, too.
Or alternatively perhaps the poster refers to latent preference for 'blue blood'-connected individuals and networks?
Private universities don't have to admit anyone if they don't want to. It's silly to talk about them, when they do all sorts of wonky things.
There is no doubt there exists discrimination against Asian-Americans in some American public universities.
I think the real question is whether or not there is a systemic or conspiratorial discrimination.
In the Soviet Union, where anti-Semitism in education was known to be organized, the State gave harder tests and used the poorer test scores as proof of legitimacy.
In the United States, Asian Americans perform above average (though not necessarily substantially so). It doesn't seem to match the character of a conspiracy, at least as we understand it historically.
Black students perform considerably worse than average on the ACT standardized tests nationally than Asian Americans perform better. They are underrepresented in college, overrepresented in poverty.
Black children, who cannot choose to whom they are born, are overrepresented in the worst school districts.
Our government's interests in affirmative action are incredibly complicated, much more so than in the Soviet Union. Recall that until 1954, less than one generation prior to the experience of the gentleman in the article, black students were generally not co-educated with white students in much of America.
Pre-Brown v. Board and Jewish Questions is the evidence of systemic, organized discrimination. Not excellent test scores. You and many of the commenters have the consequence of the evidence completely backwards.
There is a solution: We live in a free country. If Asian Americans are discriminated against in universities—which I remind you I believe to be true, just not in a conspiratorial way—the best solution is to found a goddamned university for Asian Americans.
That wasn't an option in the Soviet Union. Now do we all understand why the experiences aren't equivalent?
I'm not sure that I approve of ANY targeted racial goals for schools, though I'm generally in favor of class-based advantages for lower-income applicants.
I find it hard not to favor this. What's the point of encouraging diversity of skin color if you're not getting much actual cultural diversity? Students at top universities have much more to learn from the experiences of poorer students than they do from other upper middle class students who happen to have darker skin.