Asians may face tougher college admission process, study finds | Hacker News Reader

Asians may face tougher college admission process, study finds

dailyprincetonian.com

27 pointstokenadult60 comments

I find it darkly humorous that people express surprise that institutions which publish studies in support of racial discrimination, file briefs with the Supreme Court in favor of racial discrimination, write (and write, and write) in favor of racial discrimination, and have officers with six figure salaries put in charge of their departments of racial discrimination, might actually be engaged in racial discrimination.

I don't think it's so much that they are surprised it happens. They are just surprised to find they aren't considered a minority.

True and nicely put. But, I would say the "surprise" here is not that it's harder for Asian Americans to get in relative to African Americans. You'd think that if you are guaranteeing or biasing towards a certain number of select groups, then the unselected groups would be equally biased against. But that's not what this study is finding. It's pointing towards the possibility that Asians are not just disadvantaged relative to their fellow minorities; they are disadvantaged relative to whites as well.

That's an interesting perspective that honestly had not occurred to me. I've have an unhealthy interest with admissions policies for, crikey, more than a decade now. The fact that affirmative action would require a disproportionate discrimination against Asians was obvious from the public data, and much remarked upon, more than a decade ago. It was also frequently remarked that this concern was just a stalking horse for white Republicans, for what its worth.

Speaking of public data: universities have gotten very good at shutting it up like a drum because when it surfaces (in, for example, the Grantz vs. Bollinger litigation) it typically reveals that they are bald-faced liars on this subject.

Relatedly, Princeton's written Affirmative Action Plan is available for inspection only if you go to campus and read it in their presence, but you won't be allowed to make copies.

Schools are not looking to admit the best students - they are looking to admit the best class. That means that they have an idea of what the shape and character of that class will look like, after taking into account certain restrictions (legacies, athletes, the band needs a tuba player, whatnot). There are only so many slots for high-achieving student council presidents.

I look like every other Indian kid to the admissions committees; I needed to distinguish myself in other ways. If you're poor and Latino and you qualify academically, guess what, you've already distinguished yourself. Anti-Asian quotas aren't anti-Asian. They're anti-homogenous.

I would think a school wants more future billionaires and Nobel prize winners instead of cherry picking 10 whites 10 asians 10 hispanics 10 blacks majoring in Art History and Divinity.

This is certainly the image that Harvard et al. are cultivating.

Perhaps diversity is part of the education.

Diversity in what? Color of skin? What about political or Religious beliefs? Those attributes are a lot more definitive than skin color.

Absolutely. Elite schools are selling a product. And the product that Harvard, Yale, etc sell is the image that they create well-rounded future leaders who are going places.

There is an easy way to see whether you're part of the target market the school is selling to. Just look at how much financial aid they are willing to give you. If they are willing to give you generous financial aid, then you're part of the product being sold, not the target market. According to Harvard's current financial aid packages, if your parents make under $60,000, you're part of the product. If they make up to $120,000, you get steep discounts.

If you're honest, there is an even easier way to judge. When I was at Dartmouth College the figure I heard was that they got more in donations each year than tuition. If your family is able to make those donations, then you are really in their target market.

By that logic every school should admit as many males as it can. Let's not even get into race, you're cutting out most women of any color.

Turns out that making billions and winning the Nobel prize isn't what education is really about.

You are looking at it the wrong way.

There is a difference between simply selecting only white males and and simply selecting based on academic merit.

You are looking at it the wrong way.

I'm only looking at it through the lens you presented, which was maximizing the number of billionaires and Nobel winners. If I'm looking at it wrong, it's your logic that is at fault.

There is a difference between simply selecting only white males and and simply selecting based on academic merit.

You need to reassess the idea that selecting the most academically talented students will result in the most successful graduating class.

It is only by your own racist assumption that white males are the best for that.

Edit

This comment was at +4, but people are now downvoting it for looking like a non sequitur because tsally removed his racist comment.

It is only by your own racist assumption that white males are the best for that.

There are more male billionaires and Nobel winners than any other demographic in the world. If I wanted to maximize my output of these types of alumni in the short term, my class would overwhelmingly be male.

---

It's a subtle point, but this statement is far from racist. You should exercise more care throwing around such a serious term in the future.

EDIT: I'm going to change my statements to males in general, so you can't play the race card and obnoxiously ignore my point. Let the record show my original contention was white male, which I still stand by.

"There are more white male billionaires than any other demographic in the world."

So "billionaire" is a good statistical predictor for being male. That does not imply that "male" is a good predictor for being a billionaire.

I'm not going to get into correlation does not imply causation bullshit with you. I understand statistics very well. Point is, admission committees don't care about statistical relevance, they care about simple measures. Since when was your GPA between the ages of 14 and 17 a predictor of success?

I've talked to a few admissions staff and they want nothing more than to find a better predictor of success than GPA.

It is certainly not perfect, but its still better than nothing, which is why it is usually supplemented with SATs and interviews.

I'm not talking about correlation vs. causation. Considering correlation alone, "most billionaires are male" does not mean that selecting only males will help maximize the number of billionaires you pick, especially since billionaires are a small group while males are a large one.

Suppose 1% of males are billionaires and 0.1% of females are billionaires. (Then if the total population is half male, this means 89% of billionaires are male.) Eliminating females from your sample will increase your "billionaire rate" from .55% to 1%.

Now suppose that 10% of billionaires are children of billionaires; half of those are male and half female. Let's say 1% of both males and females are children of billionaires. Suppose your college has two applicants, a male child of a billionaire, a female child of a billionaire, and a male child of non-billionaires. Which has a better chance of being a billionaire?

In this (totally contrived) example, "child of a billionaire" is a better predictor for "billionaire" than "male" is (even though "billionaire" a predictor for "male" than for "child of a billionaire"). The college that wants to maximize billionaire alumni should not select only males. Instead, it should choose children of billionaires over all others. Then the rate increases to 5.5%.

Your point is well taken. There are certainly far better predictors than gender. I chose to use male as my example because it is (1) Simple (2) Something the admissions committee has access to (they may not have access to the financials of the parent) and most importantly (3) It fits within the broader discussion of race and gender.

> There are more white male billionaires than any other demographic in the world. If I wanted to maximize my output of billionaire alumni in the short term, my class would mostly be white males. Old money has proven to be the most effective route here.

That is short sighted.

1. Old money does not last as frequent revolutions and redistribution of wealth have shown throughout history. By gradually enrolling minorities as they come into power, Universities hedge against their current positions.

2. The color of your skin is a worse predictor of Nobel prize winning capability than your academic performance.

> You should exercise more care throwing around such a serious term in the future.

And you should exercise more caution in down voting and throwing out 1 line knee-jerk comments and then totally rediting both your comments after being downvoted yourself.

Anyone who's been in a conversation with me before knows I always edit my comments after I post them. Nothing wrong with it, and I clearly acknowledge my change. I hardly care about down votes. I care about being clear about my position.

Let's get back to the original point. You claimed that Universities should be more concerned with making billionaires and Nobel prize winners than having diversity. It's an incorrect claim and I tried to show you how silly a class meant to maximize that potential would look.

You also were an idiot and called me a racist, because you seem incapable of addressing the complexities that go along with a discussion about race, gender, success, and the works. I took race out of it, and maybe you wont be able to avoid what's actually being said.

> You claimed that Universities should be more concerned with making billionaires and Nobel prize winners than having diversity. It's an incorrect claim

How can this claim be incorrect? You might not share his goal, but does that make it "incorrect"?

Fair question.

If you're running a University as a business to make money, it's incorrect because attracting highly talented students capable of such feats is expensive. Far better to find less talented students that will attend and pay tuition.

If you're running a University as an educational institution it's also incorrect. Your students are not going to become deep, consciousness thinkers in a homogeneous group. Also, as an educational institution is it your goal to improve society as a whole through education? If there are minority students capable of finishing your degree program, giving it to them is going to have a far greater impact than giving it to a slightly more talented member of the majority. Minorities do not have the support structure that the majority does. They are less likely to have both parents around, less likely to have parents with degrees, and less likely to have parents with money and connections.

> If you're running a University as a business to make money, it's incorrect because attracting highly talented students capable of such feats is expensive. Far better to find less talented students that will attend and pay tuition.

That depends. Isn't it possible that you'd get more money by investing in attracting the highly talented students and reaping the later benefits, like large alumni donations?

> If you're running a University as an educational institution it's also incorrect. Your students are not going to become deep, consciousness thinkers in a homogeneous group.

I hear this very often and it sounds like wishful thinking, not fact. Usually it's heard in the context of justifying race-based admissions.

> Also, as an educational institution is it your goal to improve society as a whole through education.

Are you stating this as fact? I'm honestly not sure since you wrote, "is it". If so, what if some do not share this goal?

> If there are minority students capable of finishing your degree program, giving it to them is going to have a far greater impact than giving it to a slightly more talented member of the majority.

How can you possibly know something like this with such certainty? It literally takes just one person to make this statement false.

That depends. Isn't it possible that you'd get more money by investing in attracting the highly talented students and reaping the later benefits, like large alumni donations?

If you want money and the numbers say that, than obviously you should do that. I don't think either of us know enough to say for sure, I was simply speculating.

Are you stating this as fact? I'm honestly not sure since you wrote, "is it". If so, what if some do not share this goal?

Than in my mind they are not a University whose mission is education. Anything else is a business University, whether their commodity is money or publications.

How can you possibly know something like this with such certainty? It literally takes just one person to make this statement false.

I'm claiming that for society (underprivileged * degree) + (privileged * talent difference) > (underprivileged) + (privileged * degree * talent difference). Less people collecting welfare, less crime, less single moms, etc. I'd like to look at data that contradicts this. I can't offer up data myself though at the moment, so I certainly don't expect it.

> I don't think either of us know enough to say for sure, I was simply speculating.

Agreed, but I'd think you'd have to be sure to say it was incorrect.

> I'm claiming that for society (underprivileged * degree) + (privileged * talent difference) > (underprivileged) + (privileged * degree * talent difference). Less people collecting welfare, less crime, less single moms, etc. I'd like to look at data that contradicts this. I can't offer up data myself though at the moment, so I certainly don't expect it.

There is no data that proves your statement. There are millions of unknowns hidden in your inequality, any one of which could reverse the sign completely.

> I can't offer up data myself though at the moment, so I certainly don't expect it.

Then stop passing it off as fact and saying that I am an "idiot" or wrong.

Underprivileged minorities don't need to go to the best school in order to lift themselves out of poverty. There are plenty of other schools capable of giving them the education they want without displacing smarter individuals.

> Far better to find less talented students that will attend and pay tuition.

And here you contradict yourself. By your own reasoning, minorities are statistically poorer, likely to require more financial aid, and less likely to end up less rich than their white counterparts. So in order to enroll less talented students that will attend in pay tuition, you are suggesting a white monoculture again.

> If there are minority students capable of finishing your degree program, giving it to them is going to have a far greater impact than giving it to a slightly more talented member of the majority.

Does this have an impact on the minorities? Yep. Does it necessarily have a greater impact than if it went to a white or asian? Doubtful.

Great teachers are usually paired with great students to great effect. A world-class professor teaching preschool in Harlem is not optimal.

And here you contradict yourself. By your own reasoning, minorities are statistically poorer, likely to require more financial aid, and less likely to end up as rich as their white counterparts. So in order to enroll less talented students that will attend in pay tuition, you are suggesting a white monoculture again.

You don't seem to be following the conversation correctly. johnnybgoode and I are talking about whether having a class aimed towards billionaires and Nobel winners is a valid goal or not.

You are building your argument on flawed assumptions such as "attracting highly talented students capable of such feats is expensive". There are no shortage of smart and intelligent candidates capable of paying being turned down at Harvard for a less capable minority on financial aid. And you are somehow arguing that Universities should be settling for dumber but richer minorities??

How is this not following the conversation correctly?

and I clearly acknowledge my change

You did not acknowledge your change until I mentioned it.

You did not acknowledge your change until I mentioned it.

Google cache proves I acknowledged it long before you mentioned it: http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycom...

It bothers me how you do not assume good faith on this site.

That does not prove anything. That was already your 3rd or so edit.

You must be a troll. Either that or your incapable of having a logical thought. The cache shows an acknowledgment of my removal of white male before you mentioned my edit. Your either too oblivious to have a conversation with or you are deliberately trying to provoke me. Either way I wont be responding to you anymore.

No, I mentioned it in my comment and removed it when you put it back in. Your original comment above mine was a snide 1 liner that said something like:

"That's dumb, you are suggesting college accepting only white males."

Which you then deleted after people started downvoting you, so you replaced it with that longer 4 line comment that had no trace of the original line.

I think its you who is being needless inflammatory by calling me an "idiot" and down voting every comment here that even remotely opposed your views.

There's more to life than dollars and prizes. I went to one of these schools and as a freshman would've probably had the same reaction -- who needs forced diversity? Why admit people on factors besides the quantitative? If the rich kids score better, they deserve it more.

I'm proud to have graduated with a different outlook. The diversity of background, opportunity, and thought created by these policies is worth it. Sure, they're not perfect. Asians should not be penalized and, for that matter, we should probably just look at income rather than skin color. Nonetheless, the answer is not to eliminate "soft factors" from the process. I cherish time spent with my housemates and girlfriends who did not have the same opportunities I did in high school. They're off doing wonderful things now and will succeed by the traditional metrics.

I think they would get a much better class by admitting people based on their merits rather than what a bunch of academics feel is the correct racial cocktail. It's as if it's not racism if the culture you're pulling down is successful.

"Anti-Asian quotas aren't anti-Asian."

They are going to be in a lot of trouble if they are using upper-limit quotas outright. Quotas, then intangibles and geographic diversity were once used to limit the number of Jews at top universities (Jews being largely in urban areas in the Northeast and the West Coast). There'd be a huge uproar if it could be shown that similar policies were being used to limit the number of Jews at top universities today.

Some kind of sense of fairness in the admissions process, even accounting for considerations of diversity is still something that colleges strive for, and if they discriminate, in some forms it is illegal and even when it's not, there's so much public money involved that they would still have to consider public opinion.

There's also a straw man in your Latino example. Set aside groups that are treated favorably for reasons of diversity. Probably the two largest groups we're left with are whites and Asians. Whites aren't underrepresented, but this study is implying that it probably is significantly easier for someone white to get into a top school than it is for someone Asian. How do you choose between the two based on diversity when neither is underrepresented?

This is all true in my experience, as if I'd written it myself.

The kid who filed the complaint wasn't discriminated against because he was asian. He was probably discriminated against because he was BORING.

I worked at PU during the time this lawsuit was kicking around. Never looked at the kid's credentials or anything, but what I read about him in the press made him sound like every other asian kid who applied to the Ivies, with the added wrinkle of being a sore loser.

Poor Latino students with great academic credentials are rare in America. They get snapped up and fought over by admissions committees.

Poor/middle class Asian students with great academic credentials are dime a dozen in America. The very best of them get snapped up and fought over, the rest face a roll of the dice like a lot of other applicants.

If you're an elite college, you want to fill your class with outliers. You're looking for purple cows. Unfortunately for Asians who play the violin, get perfect test scores, and hold student council positions, that's a really common profile.

When I was working at admissions at Princeton Asian students would ask me how they could stand out in the applicant pool. I would tell them to stop the piano and violin lessons and go to clown school.

Or for those in the scienCe/engineering track, I'd tell them to actually make something interesting that they were passionate about because few of them had actually accomplished anything tangible outside of school activities. If you want to be admitted based on how smart you are, you can't just show potential. You've got to show us proof that you're doing stuff with that brain.

As common as that profile was, the best application I ever read was from a middle class Asian-American woman who was class president and played the violin....

...and who didn't just compete in the Intel science fair, she WON it...

...and wrote a hilarious essay about counting in finger binary (128!)...

...and who filed her first of 4 patents at 13 years old...

...and who had a rave letter of recommendation from the woman who ran the local senior center...

When you spot a true outlier, you snap them up every time.

I actually have some experience in university admissions procedures at the University of Wisconsin. It is interesting that Princeton is being sued because it was one of the schools following a program that many had considered to hold some promise. It is based on socio-economic standing. So Mr. Li is saying Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites were admitted to Princeton, even though they were less qualified. Now I don't work at Princeton, but I am familiar with the admissions there. I am almost positive that lower and middle class students were admitted to the University in lieu of better qualified students from the elite classes. Probably causing Mr. Li to be rejected. The article alludes to this fact when it talks about poor whites being given admission over better qualified wealthy whites. I am also all but certain that poor asians were given admission over better qualified wealthy asians at Princeton that same year. Though I don't have the data to back up these assertions, it seems that the gentleman in the article does.

It is pretty safe to say that the nation's universities will be watching this law suit with great interest. It will determine whether this socio-economics based admissions practice is wrong or if it is acceptable. More importantly, if it is acceptable, under what circumstances is it acceptable?

This one will be VERY interesting. Not just an ordinary affirmative action suit. This one is quite out of the everyday.

It is interesting that Princeton is being sued

Strictly speaking, Princeton is not being sued by anyone. There is no lawsuit here. There was a complaint by a rejected applicant to the federal Department of Education Office of Civil Rights

http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintprocess.ht...

and while the complainant first matriculated at Yale and then transferred to Harvard the inquiry was expanded.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/09/08/21307/

There still has not been any announcement of findings from the inquiry.

The controlling law is a federal statute prohibiting discrimination by race in any higher education institution receiving federal funds.

http://www.ed.gov/policy/rights/guid/ocr/raceoverview.html

(All elite institutions of higher education receive federal funds.)

Amazingly, this law has been on the books since the 1960s, but apparently most students have not been aware of their opportunity to make complaints to the federal Department of Education Office of Civil Rights in regard to the practices of privately operated colleges and universities. Previous Supreme Court cases on affirmative action have been based on a different body of law, the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution as applied to state universities.

So are they going to opine on whether there was discrimination by race, or perhaps not opine at all? Or is there any chance that they would look at data, like that of Thomas Espenshade, that points to widespread socio-economic discrimination? Perhaps give some guidance as to whether that is acceptable or not?

The Department of Education may not issue an informative finding at all.

I don't really want to fight the last war. The real evil to be fought here is credentialism. Apparently even PG might agree: http://www.paulgraham.com/credentials.html

If you take care of that, both from a social angle and for employment, it won't feel like your life has taken a hit if you don't get into one of these schools. In fact you might not even want to go anymore.

The real evil to be fought here is credentialism.

That's a very good point, and thanks for the link to pg's essay on that issue.

As a white, it makes me somewhat sick to my stomach to think that I might have benefited from affirmative action. If Asians are better than me, score better than me, I shouldn't displace any of them in the university.

I almost always assume that blacks who are in any kind of engineering, math, physics, or hard science schools are placed there because of their race. I don't want to be thought of in that manner.

Now, was it wrong that the first thing I thought of when I saw a black in the engineering department was affirmative action? Maybe so, but what is one to think when affirmative action programs are in place?

what is one to think when affirmative action programs are in place?

I wish I could be 100 percent sure that today's affirmative action programs operate like the first one I heard of (in 1968), when the idea of the program is that it connected students who didn't have college-educated parents to colleges that easily gained applications from children of alumni, but didn't get many applications from first-generation college students. Then what I would think of anyone admitted under an affirmative action program is, "It's only fair that he is here too, even though he didn't have the advantage I had of being a third-generation college student." But it's not clear now, college-by-college, just what happens in detail when the admission committee meets to decide whom to admit.

The great majority of United States colleges admit nearly all of their applicants. Hundreds of colleges have explicit open-enrollment policies. So this whole issue only pertains to a small subset of the most desired colleges, colleges that reject the majority of their applicants.

FYI, the whole idea of affirmative action used to bother me enormously.

But not so much now that I realize that working for others is not a desirable goal.

I think this issue of fairness is a distraction. Focus on changing the world instead.

Affirmative action doesn't bother me. So what if the SAT-tutored and AP/IB class-taking kids from suburbia couldn't get into Harvard, Princeton or Yale? Boohoo! It's the end of the world when they go to the Duke, CMU, or Cornell where upon graduation, you have finally (phew!) saved the family face after all by going to medical school, law school or becoming that engineer - so that your Asian or Jewish mother has something to good to say about her son at her friends' dinner party.

Without the elite ivy league schools offering 100% financial aid (vs. middle-tier state schools that try to amp up their U.S News & Report Ranking by offering full-rides to high SAT scorers from the 'burbs, and hence could not accommodate 100% to need-based financial aid), a lot of urban kids wouldn't be able to afford college at all, not even state school. Also, schools that could afford to let down their average SAT scores often pick students based on their "narrative". A technical forum may sneer at the qualitative over quantitative, but it means that schools consider their applicants' background, what odds they had to overcome in their environment vs. say, how much money someone's parents spent for their child's Princeton Review classes.

However, I agree with you in that affirmative action have a lot of inefficiencies. For instance, a lot of under-represented minorities from the 'burbs and prep school game the system by offering a offer that colleges can't refuse: high SAT score and diversity, but haven't overcome any serious odds as an urban student would. A lot of colleges game the system by claiming diversity on their admissions broshure, when recruiting a lot of black/hispanic students to their freshman pool - but do not do a proper job of trying to graduate their minority students at all.

"As a white, it makes me somewhat sick to my stomach to think that I might have benefited from affirmative action. If Asians are better than me, score better than me, I shouldn't displace any of them in the university."

I didn't know this when I first heard of affirmative actions (moved to the US in junior year) but predominantly Black Colleges have to adhere to quotas too but have a hard time doing so. Many of those colleges simply do not get enough white or other ethnicity applicants. In fact, some give full scholarships to white students to try to attract them.

So a measure that is supposed to help bring more minorities to college actually causes them to loose places they previously had.

Frankly, having grown up in Canada, I had never really thought of the question until I moved to the US. I guess we sorta have a blind eye to those issues up here. Dunno if that's good or bad.

predominantly Black Colleges have to adhere to quotas too

Actually, quotas are strictly against the law under the Bakke decision

http://www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1977/1977_76_811/

for all state universities, and I have every reason to expect that an explicit quota would be found illegal for a private university under the general federal civil rights statute enforced by the Department of Education. But colleges appear to have suspiciously consistent numbers from year to year without admitting to having quotas.

See

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063172559-post8.html

for examples of colleges with large numbers of students officially reported to the federal government as "race unknown."

Hey, I got into Princeton because they hadn't admitted anyone, much less a white middle class male, from Western Michigan in a few years.

Everyone catches a break. No use crying over it. Exploit it.

At least part of the problem is that it isn't well defined what colleges look for in applicants. For applying to something like YC, the goal is pretty clear. Applications are selected based on their likelihood of making lots of money in the future.

Colleges select (I think) looking for people who will be "successful". Being "successful" in life is fortunately very hard to define.

I remember reading an article about this a while back. A college admissions officer was interviewed, and she admitted to thinking something like, "Oh great, another one of these kids" whenever she saw another Asian applicant who plays a musical instrument, (insert other stereotypical activities), etc.

Your first reaction might be to accuse her of racism, but you can see why she would have the reaction she does. In certain areas, especially with large, high-achieving Asian communities, a lot of Asian children are encouraged by their parents to do essentially the same things to increase their chances of being admitted to the "top" schools. Is it any surprise that college admissions officers are getting bored of seeing very similar applications?

Not that this necessarily justifies the decisions, or that this is the only reason for this phenomenon; obviously, it is not.

The study could show that Asian applicants are less likely to apply to lower ranking private colleges. Or, the "soft factors" they talk about could be something obvious, like admitting student athletes with lower SAT scores. Asian students might be less likely to focus on sports in high school.

A different study reported in various news sources this year

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/20/mismatch

suggests other possibilities.

College admissions ain't YC. If schools actually admitted students based on merit, I'd be against this. But since they admit mostly based on grades and SAT scores, I find it difficult to complain.

(And while they do theoretically factor in other stuff, for the most part that just means that in the event of a tie they choose the person who made a documented appearance at more after school 'clubs'.)

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