
Do Elite Colleges Discriminate Against Asians? - guimarin
http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/48794283011/do-elite-colleges-discriminate-against-asians
======
martythemaniak
Well... They probably do, I'd be surprised if they didn't.

But let's not pretend that Ivy League school operate on anything resembling
merit. The reason you want to go to those schools is not their top-notch
academics, which you can get that in many other places, but as a shortcut to
the old-boys networks. Unfortunately those old-boys networks don't serve as
patrons out of the goodness of their hearts, so they require that many of
their otherwise unworthy offspring to get admitted.

It's a tough nut to crack. If Ivy Leagues started admitting based solely on
merit, they'd lose much of what makes them desirable, hence they need to add
vague criteria so admissions personnel can safely discard and let in the right
people.

Basically, Harvard is Harvard not because the exams are tough, but because the
scions of the rich and powerful go to Harvard. So how can you have both the
scions of the rich and powerful go there AND admit people based on merit?

~~~
niggler
"The reason you want to go to those schools is not their top-notch academics"

I assume you didn't go to an Ivy League school. Most of the people who are
there by academic merit genuinely are at the top of their academic year/class.
If you can handle it, you can take math classes with IMO medalists, chemistry
classes with IChO medalists, etc. And this holds true for most departments.

~~~
slg
The hardest part of getting an Ivy League education is getting into an Ivy
League school. The coursework at those schools isn't really much harder than
their less prestigious counterparts.

~~~
niggler
At the lower levels, sure. But once you start getting into more specialized
fields, there are generally more courses and more professors compared to less
prestigious counterparts.

It's not that there aren't sharp people at less prestigious schools, but that
there are generally more at more prestigious schools.

~~~
mjn
In CS, at least, I haven't seen that. The Yale CS department, for example, has
some very smart people, but is not that large, and the specialties concentrate
in certain areas. As far as I can tell, the undergraduate education there is
roughly on par with the quite small and non-Ivy school I attended
(<http://www.hmc.edu>). Possibly even somewhat lower standards due to
undergraduate education there being a lower-priority focus for their faculty
(their tenure cases are evaluated based primarily on graduate supervision and
research, not teaching), and more grade inflation meaning that it's virtually
impossible to fail.

edit: Though to be clear I'm not really claiming "Yale is worse than [X]",
just that past a certain level it depends more on what you care about. Do you
care about small class sizes? About the opportunity to engage in undergraduate
research? About big projects happening in your department? Do you care about
AI, compilers, graphics, or theory? About practice-oriented programming or
software engineering? Depending on your preferences there are more like 50
schools that will provide a top-notch education, not 8.

~~~
spamizbad
Harvey Mudd will give you a first-rate CS education, so I'm not surprised by
your experience. It shouldn't be surprising that its on par with Ivy schools.
I bet you'd get something similar from CMU or MIT too.

(Disclaimer: Not an alumni of any of these schools, but know and have worked
with many people who attended them)

------
kyro
A former admissions officer of a good medical school in California once told
me that the way it works is that they separate applicants based on ethnicity,
and they then look at the top 5% of each stack. His words were "so if you're
Asian with a 3.9gpa, good luck, you're a dime a dozen. But if you're an
African American with a 3.4gpa, you're getting in." On top of that, many who
share my ethnicity -- a minority in even our native country -- put down
African American or, what's now the trendy thing to do, Underrepresented
Minority, because they know it gives them a huge edge over the competition. I
don't fault them for it. The whole application process is one big game and
they're learning how to play it to their advantage.

~~~
smoyer
When my eldest daughter had her visit at Princeton, it was pretty obvious that
there was no cap at 5% Asian. On the other hand, why should they?

My youngest daughter was adopted from Korea, but our family heritage is almost
entirely Swiss-German ... She's been part of our family since she was 11
months old, and she loves the ethnic German foods we eat (mostly Pennsylvania-
Dutch type cooking), but is also fond of many Korean dishes (such as Bulgogi).
What should an admissions office consider her ethnicity? A twist on the
classic nature versus nurture conversation.

~~~
argonaut
kyro did not claim there was a 5% cap on the proportion of Asians at schools.
He claimed that the admissions pool was drawn out of the top 5% of each ethnic
bracket. Those are two different things.

~~~
smoyer
Thanks for pointing that out ... I missed it as I read the article. In that
case, I can tell you that the pool of WASP kids (like my daughter) at
Princeton consisted of those who had "almost perfect" SAT scores, documented
extra-curricular activities, proof of social awareness (best shown by
volunteer work with disadvantaged populations) and good interview skills. I'd
say it's pretty hard to get into that population as well.

~~~
beachstartup
> WASP kids (like my daughter)

white nope anglo saxon nope, and not even if she were your biological
daughter. protestant ... maybe. is she religious?

~~~
smoyer
I was referring to my biological daughter.

------
jellyksong
This issue is pretty close to my heart because I'm a high school senior this
year. I'm also Asian, play an instrument, have perfect SAT scores, and applied
for a STEM major (well, half STEM).

I was also rejected/waitlisted from every one of my top choices.

To be honest, I'm not really sure now to respond to this article. From the
point of view of a student applying to college, these "discriminations" exist
pretty universally, and not just to Asians. The notion that race, gender,
wealth, etc play a role in college decisions is very widespread among my
classmates and peers at other schools. I don't view it as particularly bad,
though, even if these colleges will never publicly admit such a thing.

College is not a completely merit based system. I think that we all like to
believe that it is, but colleges also have duties outside of admitting the
best students. They have to keep their alumni happy, somehow obtain outside
funding, keep its population diverse enough (this is ambiguous and
controversial, but I think it's a legitimate concern). Most importantly, a
college also has the duty to improve society, and that's where a system like
Affirmative Action comes into play. It's not perfect, but it does allow for a
great deal of social mobility where society would otherwise resemble something
like plutocracy. After all these considerations, there's only a fraction of
each year's class that they have for purely "merit" based acceptances. And at
the level that these elite colleges are at, it's almost impossible to
differentiate between candidates. So this small group of accepted students is
essentially random (or I like to tell myself).

There was a quote by a Yale admissions officer who lamented that he could've
filled 3 identical classes with students on the waitlist.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I think that one of the benefits of our society,
especially in the entrepreneurial community, is that success is ultimately the
result of hard work and talent. College is not the end-all and certainly not
the determinant of your future.

~~~
chubot
Man you sound like me 15 years ago :) I am Chinese American, got almost
perfect SAT scores, top of my class, etc. I got rejected from all the schools
Asian parents like (Harvard, MIT, I think Yale, etc.)

I ended up going to Cornell (I think my other choices were UPenn and CMU).
Anyway, it ended up great. There were tons of things that interested me in
school; I got very high grades but didn't concentrate on them. I played in
bands and partied. I developed a reputation for being the guy who stayed out
all night and still got 100 on all the tests people were cramming for. There
is freedom in not trying to compete with others.

Like everyone, I had some rough years after college, but with a decade of
hindsight it all turned out great. I also did better on the Asian parent
metric of making more money than peers who went to Harvard, etc. I think it
was mainly by valuing honest work (i.e. problems people actually have) rather
than working on things that are supposed to be hard or prestigious. If you
follow the advice of a lot of Asian parents, you'll end up working hard and
not smart.

It sounds like you have a great head on your shoulders, and a great outlook on
the situation, so good luck to you!

~~~
pwang
Cornell is a great school. There are certainly easy majors and easy courses
available, but I was able to find courses that would kick my ass, and made
lifelong friends with people who were hard working and incredibly bright.

Getting into college is only the starting point; the key is to find a place
where you have room to grow and that will challenge you, and where there is an
overall good work ethic. Those are the things that will really determine your
trajectory later in life.

~~~
chubot
Yeah, I also meant to say that one of the things I appreciated most about
Cornell is that, unlike almost all prestigious schools, it is outside the
normal "east coast metro area" mentality (i.e. Boston - NY - DC).

Alan Kay (who I previously bashed here) has said "perspective is worth 80 IQ
points" and that definitely applies to your education.

------
danielna
While it is a very easy "excuse" to hide behind, I believe in holistic
admissions qualifications. I think charts of SAT score x race x admissions are
as good of a metric of assessing a potential student as college GPA are of
assessing a potential employee. To some degree there's a baseline expectation
for the practical purposes of filtering (with lots of outliers for various
reasons), but at the end of the day it doesn't say much about how intelligent
or capable someone really is. Intelligence and capability can't be reduced to
a test-taking skill.

I am Asian-American and I went to an ivy league university. I think (hope)
that essays hold particular importance for admission to the most competitive
schools because academically there's very little variability between most
serious applicants. Everyone was the valedictorian, everyone had a 4.0+,
everyone had 1500+ on the SAT (out of 1600). Everyone played an instrument,
everyone was in every honor society, everyone performed hours of community
service. When you get that far as an applicant you know how to play the
academics "game." So in the midst of a lot of redundancy -- "“Another piano
playing, hard working kid, with perfect SAT scores" -- you have to stand out
for other reasons. Like the passions that will ultimately lead to a student
body that enriches itself rather than one where everyone is constantly holed
up in their room studying non-stop for the next exam.

~~~
tobylane
Asian-born student life sounds like it involves a lot of after school classes,
and group cramming sessions. Maybe this leaves less time for community service
and class representative. If Asians do less of this they'd not be chosen
compared to all the other 'equally' 'perfect' applicants.

~~~
jlgreco
The question I think is how we are weighting extra-curriculars. How does piano
compare to... say.. windsurfing? I'd put both about on the same level as far
as merit goes (one taxes the mind and dexterity, the other taxes the body and
dexterity, both are fairly out of reach for the underprivileged).

If the "holistic admission" thing is being used to disqualify Asian candidates
I would expect that two students with equal grades would be disadvantaged if
they played piano rather than windsurfed.

From my anecdotal experience, I find this very plausible. (I'm a white guy who
had _extraordinarily_ poor grades in highschool yet was accepted to the school
of my choice. My Asian peers almost universally far outclassed me in academic
skill _(proper student discipline in general)_ ; if you told me that I was
accepted because I was on the swim team instead of another student with better
grades who played the piano (both forms of self-improvement, not community
service), I would not be surprised. Very disappointed, but not surprised.)

~~~
Torgo
What about diversity of extra-curriculars? I don't know how it breaks down,
but maybe they felt they had enough Asians (or anybody) who play the piano.
Maybe you got in because they didn't have that many people who swam as an
extra-curricular.

~~~
jlgreco
As far as I am concerned, a sport is a sport. I primarily swam, but I did some
track as well, and did and continue to do casual weightlifting. They work
different muscle groups but they are all fundamentally the same (all have very
low leadership/teamwork opportunities, all require a decent amount of drive
and dedication, etc. These are all fundamentally "selfish" sports; most
participants will spend most of their time competing against themselves). The
other class of sports, the "team sports", are fundamentally different of
course but also essentially all the same.

So do universities _honestly_ think they have too many classical musicians,
but not enough casual athletes? I don't think so. That seems incredibly
implausible. I don't think they are thinking anything at all along the lines
of _"we better introduce some athletic viewpoints into our student body, lest
all the musicians dominate discussion."_

I think they are arbitrarily classifying hobbies as "well rounded" or "square"
to allow themselves to shape their student body demographics to their liking.

------
tokenadult
Some basic facts about college admission in the United States:

1) Most colleges admit large numbers of students who are officially reported
as "race/ethnicity unknown." (The graphic in the submitted article, showing
race/ethnicity questions from a college application, is dishonest by omitting
the part on the application that says that whole section is optional, as it
must be by federal regulation.)

2) The definition of "race" categories in current United States regulations is
arbitrary, acknowledged by the Census Bureau to be unscientific, does not
match categories used in any other country, and has changed several times in
my lifetime.

3) "Jewish" has never been an officially regarded category in the United
States for tracking data on the issue of college admission, but Jews once
faced considerable barriers getting into many colleges.

4) The subset of United States high school students who are college-ready by
what courses they have completed during high school has a much different
"race" composition from the general United States population.

Several of the replies in this interesting thread speculate about details of
the practice of colleges in the United States, so I will refer here to the
definitive FAQ about "race" in United States college admission,

[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/admissions-hindsight-
les...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/admissions-hindsight-lessons-
learned/1366406-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-10-a.html)

so that those of you who like to look up reliable sources and check facts are
able to do that about this contentious issue. The FAQ will have to be revised,
of course, after the Supreme Court issues its opinion in a pending case (cited
in the FAQ). Full references to the facts listed above can be found in the
FAQ.

------
stared
A nice, if lengthy, article on that topic:
[http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-
of-...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-
meritocracy/)

TL;DR Asians are "the new Jews" and are discriminated (often implicitly) - for
example they ace at high-school STEM competitions, yet they don't make that
many undergrads as they should (with a notable exception of Caltech).

~~~
mikebike
For a critique of Unz's data analysis, see Andrew Gelman's blog post here:
[http://andrewgelman.com/2013/02/12/that-claim-that-
harvard-a...](http://andrewgelman.com/2013/02/12/that-claim-that-harvard-
admissions-discriminate-in-favor-of-jews-after-checking-the-statistics-maybe-
not/)

~~~
argonaut
Did you read the analysis? I mean, the length of his critique should already
tip you off, since Unz's article takes at least 2-3 hours to read. Gelman only
criticizes Unz's assertion that Jews are overrepresented.

 _Gelman says in that critique that he agrees there is an underrepresentation
of Asians._

------
david_shaw
I can't speak to whether admissions officers are, consciously or not,
discriminating against Asians.

What I can contribute, however, are my (admittedly anecdotal) experiences with
Asian households, and my own personal experience with the college application
process. I am not Asian.

Probably because of my own interest in sciences and mathematics, many of my
friends in high school were Asian. They tended to excel in schoolwork, in no
small part because they were under _huge_ amounts of pressure from their
parents. I'm not saying that all Asian families "force" their children to
study ad-nauseum, but the "high expectations Asian father" Internet meme is at
least _somewhat_ based in truth, stereotyped or not.

Because of this pressure (and supportive culture of success), Asians tend do
incredibly well in school, as well as on standardized tests... but the more
they study, the proportionally less time they have to do _other_ activities
that make students "well-rounded," which is one of the qualities that top-tier
universities value.

My _personal_ college application process involved SAT scores that were very
good, and a GPA that was solid but somewhat average. However, I had done
several sports in high school, done a considerable amount of community
service, had _three_ technical jobs (two as a developer, one as a security
analyst), and released open source software--all while passing my classes. I
was passionate about computer science, and I believe that that helped me gain
admission to very good universities.

I'm not trying to "blame the victim" with this comment--it may very well be
that admissions officers harbor prejudices against Asians--but I also think
it's worth noting that when you're talking about the top-tier of our education
system--the Stanfords, Harvards and MITs of the world--great grades _aren't
enough_ to gain admission.

~~~
rayiner
"but the more they study, the proportionally less time they have to do other
activities that make students 'well-rounded,' which is one of the qualities
that top-tier universities value."

"Well rounded" is code for "like the WASPs we used to admit in years past."
Look at the kinds of things colleges value: community service, sports, etc.
These are the things that used to in years past set people of good breeding
apart from the regular people who were too busy keeping a roof over their
head.

~~~
Vlaix
Trying to experience a bit of everything isn't a WASP thing, it's bona fide
Humanism. As Montaigne put it : « I like better a well rounded head than a
well filled one ». Western Universities are (or should be) the heirs of this
tradition.

~~~
rayiner
Montaigne is a WASP thing.

------
wfunction
I don't get is, how is this surprising?

When affirmative action is letting more people from some group in than they
normally would, then isn't it kind of obvious that other groups will take the
hit?

It's not some magical force... when A + B is to be constant (total capacity),
then increasing B decreases A.

~~~
litewulf
If that is the case, then why do Asians underperformed compared to Whites? If
affirmative action is meant to help underrepresented groups, shouldn't the
overrepresented group be the one "taking the hit"?

~~~
streptomycin
Asians are the overrepresented group.

~~~
wfunction
Overrepresented? Is the Asian to non-Asian ratio is higher fir college
students than for qualified applicants to those colleges?

~~~
streptomycin
You'd have to define "qualified" first to answer that question... but anyway,
that's not what overrepresented means.

~~~
wfunction
What does it mean then?

~~~
streptomycin
There is a higher proportion of X in Y than there is of X in the total
population.

~~~
wfunction
That's like saying children of age 6 are overrepresented in kindergarten,
because there is a higher proportion of kids of age 6 in kindergarten than in
the total population!

The "natural" (equally-represented) proportion isn't that in the total
population, it's the proportion in the population of interest, which in this
case is the set of qualified applicants.

~~~
streptomycin
The meaning of words does depend on context of course. Regardless, rest
assured that when you hear someone say "overrepresented" and they are talking
about higher education, they are using the definition I gave you above.

~~~
wfunction
Well then the word is quite uninteresting and meaningless.

------
yosho
Being an Asian American that fits the model minority stereotype, I already
expressed my thoughts on Quora, specifically on affirmative action and racism
which you can read here: <http://qr.ae/TEVfO>

It's fairly obvious to me that colleges do discriminate against Asians, and
that this reverse racism does need to stop whether it's intentional or not.

Everyone here talks about how Asians are like this or like that... the reality
is that Asians are a pretty diverse group of people, and while you do have
your nerdy, book worm types, you also have Asians who were captains of their
basketball team or who played football or another major sport. Most people who
are at the top of their class are extremely gifted in more ways than one and
good parenting isn't the only factor that gets them there. I have cousins who
have 'tiger-mom' parents but their grades are still suffering. We need to stop
generalizing everyone into the same buckets, that's part of the problem.

I'm all for diversity, I would love to see colleges adopt a race blind
admission process and focus on all the criteria that they value and see what
happens. I almost guarantee that we will see the Asian acceptance rates rise
even with the focus on "diversity". Right now, it seems like it's straight
forward discrimination at play that is guised as diversity seeking... since by
diversity, what they're really saying is that we want less Asians in our top
schools.

~~~
hashmymustache
I don't disagree with you, but I'm curious how you explain the test
performance disparity across races. If you look at the top public high school,
TJ, blacks/hispanics compose 4% of the class at 25% of the population while
asians make up 60% of the class at 5% of the population. Is it because asians
are that much more naturally gifted?

I realize with regard to affirmative action that race is a poor proxy for
socioeconomic status, but it is statistically practical with regard to
cultural values. You mentioned "I went to an Ivy League school, I fit the
Asian model minority stereotype pretty well." How much did your parents
influence your priorities in weighing education?

One of the issues seems to be that colleges are attempting to address
institutionalized racism too late in students' lives.

~~~
newnewnew
If a child grows us with a crummy culture with regards to education, has he
experienced "institutionalized racism"?

I feel like the english language is being rapidly perverted.

~~~
hashmymustache
Well black kids were first let into white schools in 1960. That's 50 years
ago. You don't think that exclusion shaped cultural views toward education?

------
kenster07
So much tiptoeing. The answer is 'yes.' They do.

I had a tougher high school course load, a better GPA, significantly higher
SAT I and SAT II scores, and comparable extracirriculars to everyone in my
class who got accepted to elite university X.

Thing is, I'm Asian, and they were all more coveted minorities.

The good news is, your university does not determine your future. You do. Once
class is out and you're in the real world, the only thing that matters at the
end of the day is PRODUCING VALUE.

------
candybar
What's interesting to me is that elite colleges are doing this under the
pretense that qualifications other than SAT and grades, like life experiences,
character, community involvement, etc, matter greatly, but statistics suggest
that Asians without the scores and the grades are even more out of luck when
it comes to the top schools.

Admissions officers are not some kind of mind reading wizards who are able to
churn through thousands of applications and figure out who are amazing people
despite bad test scores and grades and who are frauds despite high test scores
and grades, merely based on short descriptions of what they did outside of
classes. They are underpaid paper pushers forced to judge people who are
likely smarter than they are, with very little information. There are two main
reasons for the holistic evaluation. One, to give themselves plausible
deniability when they need to tweak the student body to fit institutional
purposes. Two, to introduce sufficient randomness into the process to reduce
the incentive to game the process.

The truth is that top private schools are in the business of soliciting
donations from wealthy donors and selling an image of prestig while avoiding
major controversies. Having a heavily Asian-dominated student body doesn't
serve any of those goals. They are politically weak, not a threat to organize
and are seen as foreign by a large portion of the population.

------
wfunction
> “Harvard College welcomes talented students from all backgrounds, including
> Asian-Americans… The admissions committee does not use quotas of any kind.”

Yes, because using quotas would be illegal.

But I don't understand how "does not use quotas" translates into equal
treatment.

Wasn't the whole point of the UC v. Bakke case to say that quotas are illegal,
but race is still a legitimate factor to consider in admission? This sentence
means nothing.

~~~
twoodfin
Would quotas be illegal for a private university?

~~~
OGinparadise
They accept government funds and grants so I _think_ that the government can
force them to do almost anything.

~~~
twoodfin
That's not true. They couldn't, for example, demand editorial constraints on
the Harvard _Crimson_. Private organizations don't give up their rights,
including their right to free association, just by accepting government
dollars.

~~~
wfunction
You misunderstood what the parent was saying.

By "force them to do X" he meant the government can refuse to fund them if
they didn't do X (which forces them to abide by the government's rules if they
are accepting its funds), _not_ that the government can legally mandate them
to do X unconditionally.

~~~
twoodfin
Conditions placed on the recipients of government expenditures are not
unrestrained by Constitutional limitations. Witness the Supreme Court throwing
out some of the strings attached to ACA's Medicaid expansion.

~~~
OGinparadise
You are going on tangent after tangent as if to prove something. No one said
that "unrestrained by Constitutional limitations" are ok.

Suppose you have the right to exclude Blacks or Asians from your college
(freedom of speech, associations or whatever)

Once you take even a penny of federal dollars, directly or indirectly, you may
have to agree not to discriminate. So YOU give up that right voluntarily. No
one forces you to take the government's money.

------
mindcrime
Maybe they do, but this whole discussion is missing the point that going to an
"elite" university is not an essential step in having a successful life and
career. I quoted a bunch of this data in a previous thread that I'm too lazy
to search for right now, but the gist is, you have approximately as good a
chance of becoming CEO of an S&P 500 company if you go to the University of
Wisconsin as if you go to Harvard. So even if your goals are at the _extreme_
upper end of the spectrum, you aren't necessarily hurt by not going to an Ivy
League school. A well known, well regarded State university puts you on pretty
good footing as well.

None of this, of course, is meant to say that discrimination is good, or that
I encourage it or anything like that. Personally, I think admissions should be
completely race-blind. I'm just saying there's a bigger picture that we should
look at as well. If you don't get into Stanford, Brown, Columbia, Princeton,
Yale, Harvard or wherever, fine... go to Georgia Tech, University of Virginia,
University of Wisconsin, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, Clemson,
University of California at Irvine, University of California at Santa Barbara,
University of Texas, Pitt, Penn State, Miami, etc., etc., etc. You'll most
likely do just fine.

Heck, as far as that goes, there are some public, State universities that are
probably as well regarded as some Ivy's, at least in some people's eyes. Look
at UCal-Berkely. They are one of the most famous, well known, and well
regarded schools in the frickin' world. Or how about UIUC? Not exactly a
shabby reputation there. Or UM-College Park? You could do worse...

~~~
rdl
I think you confuse the odds of a given exec being from Harvard vs. OSU with
the odds that a Harvard student becomes an exec vs. that an OSU grad becomes
an exec.

All things equal, if you want to be a leader (especially in finance), going to
Harvard is a better choice than Ohio State.

~~~
mindcrime
In retrospect, you may be right, when factoring in the different size of the
student populations. But nonetheless, I stand by the point that going to a
good State school is a perfectly sufficient step to have a good - even amazing
- career. Keep in mind that there are only, well, 500, S&P 500 CEOs. But a
pretty damn successful and amazing career might be being the CEO of a multi-
million dollar textile manufacturer in South Carolina, that nobody on HN has
ever heard of.

Of course I'm not arguing against aspiring to go to an Ivy if you have that
chance. But one should absolutely not define their life by whether they get
into an Ivy (or other "elite" ) school or not. Your ultimate success is going
to, IMO, have more to do with how hard you work, and other characteristics,
than the name on your degree.

~~~
rdl
This is independent of school -- if someone like Steve Jobs didn't go to
college for very long, he'd be fine (oh wait, he was).

I'm involved with Thiel Foundation/20 Under 20; I think in a few years, it's
possible that at the top end, it's not going to be as key to go to college.
However, as that happens, the value of going to Stanford, Harvard, Princeton,
Yale, MIT, CMU, Caltech seems to be going up, relatively. It actually seems to
be that the value of going to the next batch (other Ivies, Berkeley, UW^2,
Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, etc.) is going down, and the ones blow that is
falling through the floor. Sort of the same thing that's happening to the
economy as a whole -- the top 1% is doing exceptionally well, the next 4-9% is
doing better, and the rest is falling apart.

~~~
rdouble
There's that payscale list of best ROI per college which mostly confirms this,
but there are some colleges in the top 20 I wouldn't have thought of (Duke,
Babson, Harvey Mudd).

<http://www.payscale.com/college-education-value>

~~~
rdl
Means or even medians are probably not terribly useful (Stanford and Harvard
should be crushing the stats just based on Google/Facebook/etc.). A school
which has a lot of people who go into public service or other low compensation
positions would also be unfairly penalized.

"Percentage of graduates who live the life they want after graduation" is
probably the ideal metric, along with "net benefit to society".

On a pure ROI basis, it's obviously going to go to the service academies and
maybe Olin/Cooper Union, too. Good incomes on zero cost.

But all of this also discounts the inputs; I'd consider a school which turns a
bunch of otherwise-losers into median success citizens to be a success, while
someplace which takes the children of Googlers and achieves the same result
would be a horrible failure.

It's complex.

~~~
dfc
Its funny you mention Cooper Union, the grey lady had an article today about a
change in tuition policy. The change being they will now charge:

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/nyregion/cooper-
union-t...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/nyregion/cooper-union-to-
charge-undergraduates-tuition.xml)

~~~
rdl
Yeah, I saw that :( And I think Olin may have changed their policy a few years
ago (I'm not sure); seems to have tuition now, and a half scholarship for
everyone.

I think the proper tuition is something where a student can work during the
year and summers to pay for it and emerge with little or no debt, or choose to
do non-work activities and have debt which could be repaid with 10-20% of
reasonable income in 10 years. I'm not sure if half of inflated tuition covers
that.

------
CapitalistCartr
I get so tired of seeing this sloppy thinking. Discrimination isn't bad. Its
an essential part of clear judgement. Prejudicial discrimination is bad
because its piss-poor discrimination. Of course universities are
discriminating against a wide variety of people; they can't accept everyone.
The question is whether its prejudicial, as in they've pre-judged these people
because of a group they belong to before they've looked at them as an
individual.

~~~
jsnk
Do you think discrimination by public institutions is not bad?

~~~
CapitalistCartr
I think you misunderstood my post. Your question is exactly the problem I
addressed. Universities HAVE to discriminate; they cannot accept every
applicant. The question is how are they doing it, is it a good way, and is
there a better way.

You discriminate every time you purchase one product over another, take one
job over another, live in one area over another, befriend one person over
another, etc. We all do. The key to doing it well is clear, analytical
judgement about such decisions. Personally, I haven't seen much of that in
University admissions at any school.

~~~
jsnk
I am ok with private businesses or individuals going about their own business
with whatever racist, homophobic, sexist policies. I don't care. I simply
won't visit them or pay for their service. I read my fair share of Rothbard,
Friedman and Block. Discrimination in the sense of making choice so long as
the choice doesn't violate the rights of other is ok, even if it is morally
despicable.

This issue of universities is completely different. Even private universities
get public funding. Universities are inexplicably tied to tax payers including
Asians. This is where I see the problem. Either remove public funding from
universities operating admission based on racism or stop having a racist
admission standard.

------
jcampbell1
Yes.

We should just take race off the applications, like we did on loan
applications decades ago. If you want an affirmative action proxy, we can just
use high school data, and zip code information, and questions like "did your
parents attend college?"

~~~
fyi80
This is of course much better, to avoid AA going to rich black kids over poor
white kids.

------
ekm2
It is interesting how SAT scores are unconsciously used as an indicator of low
iQ in the black population while simultaneously being used to show that high
asian scores in the test is an indicator of hardwork,not brilliance.

------
cdoxsey
Thomas Sowell recently released a new book on this subject:

[http://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-and-Race-
ebook/dp/B00BAH...](http://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-and-Race-
ebook/dp/B00BAH8D6K/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1366837955&sr=8-1)

Clearly discrimination against Asians was one of the unforeseen consequences
of affirmative action. What's particularly sad is it doesn't even help the
people it was supposed to. For example:

"Despite dire predictions that there would be a drastic reduction in the
number of minority students in the University of California system after
racial preferences in admission were banned, an empirical study showed that
there were 'modest declines in black and Hispanic enrollment but an increase
in black and Hispanic degrees.'"

------
nchuhoai
Asians are fairly poorly represented compared to their raw "paper
intellegence" in the business, cultural and politics of the United States. The
following statements will include many generalizations, but I don't think it's
a stretch to say that most Asians are studious, but rather shy, passive.
Asians tend to generally not be viewed as "strong" personalities or leaders,
but "born followers" that know how to get the job down quickly. It doesn't
help that China always copies everything.

As much as stereotypes are deceiving and ill for our society, I tend to think
they hold a small, but ruthless grain of truth in them. and i am Asian.

------
learc83
They're not directly using quotas, but they get the same result by putting
less emphasis on test scores and grades.

There is a real argument that test scores are easily gamed, and that studying
for the SAT for 2 hours a day because your parents made you, doesn't
necessarily translate to success in college/life/business.

------
Xcelerate
Alright, what's up with this weird article shuffling on HN lately? This was in
the top position on the home page. I refresh the page, can't find it anymore,
spend a few minutes checking my browser history, and suddenly it's at the
bottom of the home page. This happens a lot lately, and it's confusing me.
Could we at least get a moderator note when the article is moved or a
different color to let users know it has been moved?

EDIT: Holy cow, now it's on the 2nd page. What the heck? (And I bet I'm never
going to get an explanation either.)

~~~
pg
False positive by the flamewar detector.

------
rdl
I've always wondered what happened if you lied, particularly if you had an
ambiguous or misleading name.

(If you really wanted to manipulate the system, join/start the Kenya club at
your high school or something, and claim to be deeply interested in exploring
your African roots. Don't mention that they're from 150000 years ago and not
300 years ago. You could potentially even leave the race question blank, or
write in that you find race a European-centric concept which doesn't reflect
your humanity...)

~~~
roguecoder
I was made uncomfortable enough honestly reporting my racial background I
can't imagine kids actually doing that. I am of mixed race, had a culturally
non-White upbringing, but look as White as Wonderbread. College was a very
weird experience, because I felt like I was either unfairly infringing on the
challenges of the students who were obviously minorities at my school, or I
had to ditch most of my upbringing and pretend to be as White as I look.

~~~
SPSteinbeck
Just like a young Barack Obama. You could be president one day :)

------
lifeformed
When I was an Asian student (I'm still Asian), my strategy was to apply to
good-but-not-elite schools, and spent my time trying to load up diversity
scholarships and merit-based scholarships.

I got a full-ride to a great non-elite school; there are plenty of schools
like the one I went to that would love to have more non-white students, and
are even giving away money for it. I'd much rather go to a good school for
free than to go to an elite one and be in debt.

------
eliben
Why does ethnicity play a role in the USA in 2013? Is someone born here to
parents who came from Asia considered "Asian"? Because he/she looks Asian? And
what if he/she is 4th generation in the USA and looks Asian, is that
considered Asian?

This is baffling.

------
cimorene12
This is not a question. It's a statement. I knew about reverse racism in
college admissions when I was 10 and starting to go to a college admissions
counselor.

I would also like to add this to the conversation:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/education/a-grueling-
admis...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/education/a-grueling-admissions-
test-highlights-a-racial-divide.html?pagewanted=all). When the criteria to get
into elite schools is completely objective, Asians get in disproportionately
(what is called overrepresentation) because their families put a higher
emphasis on education and doing well on tests. Not every Asian family has a
Tiger Mother, but a significant portion of the Asian family places a lot of
emphasis on academic achievement. I found the discussion about Jews to be
interesting, because Jews in some ways are close to Asians. Jewish culture
also places emphasis on scholarly achievement, but to a lesser extent than,
for example, Amy Chua. That's why her mother-in-law and husband, who are
Jewish, objected sometimes to Chua's overly rigorous methods.

------
gtr32x
The current educational system utilizes SAT scores with a variety of other
sources for determining acceptance. While there are other factors such as
athleticism, social endeavors etc. SAT score is still often viewed as one of
the key determining factors. It is of no doubt that Asians that apply to these
top universities as a whole have higher SAT scores. However it does not say of
their other qualities, those were perhaps the reasons why there was a lower
acceptance rate for them.

In our current educational system, the only transparently comparable bar is
the SAT score, while every other factor is more or less arbitrarily
judgmental, e.g. can be manipulated. Asians learn that in order to become
better, they'll at least put down efforts to increase the clearly visible bar
to increase their chance. It is not to say that they will overlook the other
factors, just since they aren't as apparent and obvious, they will make sure
their SAT score does fare better.

One argument can be that because Asians put down more effort and time in their
SAT (bookworms), then they will not be able to fare better in other metrics. I
won't say that this doesn't make sense, it does, but it calls for
generalization bias. Especially when a data set has been collected that speaks
for a year's worth of group, I do not believe the general idea that Asian are
less adept in other metrics is true.

Under this assumption, when we see data that SAT score (the only visible
metric) is actually leveraged against a person's race, that is plain racism.
Not saying racism is a bad thing, if schools determine that collectively as a
whole they need diversity to strength the core values, racism is just one
factor to play with to achieve their goals. The only problem that I do have
with though is, with all the metrics you throw out there, the group of people
that just naturally put down more effort to increase their chance gets
punished, because of racism/diversity reasons.

~~~
jsnk
You did mention it in the last paragraph, but let's reiterate that. In the
end, it is plain racism against Asians, solely for being Asian. People can
continue to shroud this fact with more comforting language such as "diversity"
that's politically salient, but end result for Asians is all the same, plain
old racism.

No one is saying that SAT is the sole standard of admission. But does anyone
really believe that Asians as a group collectively are so horrible in
admission standard (with exception of SAT score) that huge disparity in number
of Asian applicants and Asian admissions are justified?

~~~
roguecoder
Asians are not underrepresented relative to population-wide demographics, so
it is only "obviously" discrimination if you assume that more Asians are
qualified than students of other races. Otherwise, it is possible that these
studies are failing to take into account some dynamic.

To play devil's advocate, for example: Asians may be more likely than other
groups to apply to these schools. It may be that Asians with high SAT scores
but weaker applications in other areas are more likely to apply to highly
selective schools than comparable students of other races, which would lead to
lower admission rates.

The numbers here wink suggestively, but they present a far from airtight case.

~~~
jsnk
<<Asians are not underrepresented relative to population-wide demographics, so
it is only "obviously" discrimination if you assume that more Asians are
qualified than students of other races.>>

I am not assuming that Asians are more qualified than students of other races.
Purely from the statistics provided by the blog, I find it hard to believe
that Asians are doing so poorly in other admission standards that having
several hundred extra SAT score doesn't put them in equal footing.

Aren't you the one who is assuming that Asians are obviously failing in
admission standards other than SAT compared to other races?

------
eagsalazar2
I had a prof I was friends with after graduating tell me they 100% did judge
test scores and gpa of asian applicants differently than other races.

His stance was that they wanted to select the very "best" applicants. Where
best in his mind meant most likely to do great research and otherwise be
brilliant. gpa and test scores are just one way to assess that.

His experience was that with asians, gpa and test scores were a particularly
bad metric for determining brilliance because the culture demanded 4.0 and
perfect test scores more than in other cultures.

Discrimination? Racism? I don't think so. Dangerously subjective? Definitely.
But I'm not sure he was doing the wrong thing given the observable fact that
there was low correlation between gpa/scores and performance. Not sure what is
right either.

------
niggler
I'd like to propose an alternate interpretation:

There is some desired heterogeneity of intellect. Elite Colleges aren't just
looking for sharp mathematicians. They want to attract sharp physicists, sharp
philosophers, sharp linguists, sharp artists, sharp musicians, sharp poets
etc.

Now, in my experience there is a set of areas in which asians excel, but that
doesn't comprise 100% of all areas. There are many areas where predominantly
white people dominate.

If you weight the distribution of ethnic origin along those lines, I suspect
asians will be underrepresented relative to the distribution measured by SAT
scores.

------
natrius
The comparison between Caltech and the Ivies is a bit unfair. Caltech is in
California, which has more Asians, and people tend to attend schools near
home. Adding in Stanford would be illustrative.

~~~
cube13
Yup, I'd like to see Stanford as well. I'd also like to see what the breakdown
for asians that are US citizens versus foreign nationals or immigrants.

The other problem is that this article automatically assumes that private
schools are "elite", and public schools aren't.

That's true for certain fields-law and finance, for example, are dominated by
the ivy league schools. STEM, on the other hand, is a much more even
distribution. Many of the engineering programs at most of the Big 10 state
schools are considered to be some of the best educations you can get, and the
UC system is full of very good programs. UIUC's CS program is considered one
of the best in the nation, as are Purdue's ME and aeronautical engineering
programs.

~~~
natrius
As far as public schools go, the article only excludes the UCs because they
can't consider race. In fact, it uses Berkeley as a peer for the elite private
schools. There's no other public school that has a reputation _across all
disciplines_ similar to the elite private schools, so I don't think the
article made any real oversight. There are many programs within public schools
that are considered peers, though.

~~~
wildgift
I thought UMich was considered very good too.

------
jug6ernaut
The sad part is there will always be discrimination, all attempts to counter
discrimination are in themselves discrimination.

Until students/people are judged purely off their merits there will ALWAYS be
discrimination.

The truly sad part is it is openly acceptable to discriminate against whole
groups of people purely based on statistics of whole groups. If this isn't the
definition of stereotyping i don't know what is. Just because one's
motivations are sound doesn't mean we should unanimously assume so are there
actions.

Judge people for who they are, not where they are from.

~~~
fyi80
Define "merits". That is a huge problem in itself, as traditional measures of
merit encode cultural discrimination.

~~~
jug6ernaut
I suppose that depends on what the goal of a school is. If the goal is to
teach(which i think everyone can agree is there purpose?), then cultural
discrimination, or any discrimination has no place in it education process. In
school students are judged by their grades, so should they be in the selection
process. Any deviation from this IS discrimination, again assuming the goal is
to teach.

------
lsc
This brings up another question. Just how far are these things verified? What
would happen if I checked the box marked "African American" - would they ask
for documentation? If, somehow, someone decided to look into my ancestry, and
they didn't find any other people identifying as the race I checked on my
admissions form, what would be the consequence? Would I get in trouble or
something?

There's gotta be case law on this...

------
conjecTech
Honest question: How well do good academic scores in high school correlate
with success in non-scientific majors? I go to a top-tier engineering
university, and I know of multiple individuals who had perfect SAT scores and
GPAs in high school that have been utter disappointments, and I've known
people who by no reasonable metric should have gotten in that break curves in
nearly every class. Hell, I was the first of 3 boys to get accepted here
through normal means, but both of my older brothers ended up transferring in
and subsequently graduated with GPAs of 3.96 and 4.0, with one now working on
a PhD in physics under a Nobel Laureate and the other working in investment
banking. I've honestly started to question how much predictive power these
tradition metrics actually have among the subsets of students who think they
have a good enough chance of getting in to a school to apply in the first
place. If anyone knows of any good studies on the subject or perhaps has a
data set that could be used for such analysis, please let me know.

------
Lukeas14
For anybody interested in running their own numbers, there is a wealth of
demographic data on college admissions available called IPEDS from the
National Center for Education Statistics.

<http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/DataFiles.aspx>

------
realitygrill
Allow me to posit that a primarily intrinsically-motivated Asian student
dealing with high-pressure immigrant culture is in a particularly shitty
situation:

1\. Feels forced to spend the extra time - at diminishing returns - to do well
at everything with a grade attached. This comes at the expense of passion-
based activities, regarded as 'useless' or invalid as a 'line item for the
resume'. (There is wide understanding that you need extracurriculars to look
good. As pg says, these are mostly bogus.)

2\. The pressure itself is killing your intrinsic motivation, which means the
surviving applicants are primarily conformist types.

3\. Even if you somehow make it through intact, colleges will assume the
stereotype and view your application through those lenses.

------
fixxer
Can't speak for Harvard, but I'm at a pretty good public engineering school
and I'm quite confident that we aren't discriminating against Asian students.
If anything, they are sought after to help keep the lights on (they are the
only ones paying full tuition).

~~~
fyi80
Are you referring to Asian-Americans, or Asian international students?

Public schools love the international student tuition money these days, it's
such a farce, turning "public" education on its head.

~~~
fixxer
Asian internationals. I hear rumblings that U.S. schools are falling out of
favor with Chinese, but I haven't seen evidence and my colleagues have more
applicants than ever.

------
seanmcdirmid
Even state schools have some sort of quota based on region. For example, its
much easier to get into UW if you are from Eastern Washington than if you are
from Western Washington (otherwise, UW would be dominated by kids from the
Seattle area).

------
dingjian98
In my view, the top universities' admission process is just like how the VC
select start-ups. The school's goal is to seek the maximum return just like
any other investors. What will this student bring to the university as the
return of the investment, it could be more chance to get donation from a
potential entrepreneur, academic fame from a genius, or a beautiful story of a
student coming from some difficult background. And also, this seems aligned
with the long term success defined by the main stream. No sure for the public
school, though no problem with the private school.

------
lukejduncan
I don't remember if my college applications (not an ivy league school) asked
my ethnicity, but on principle I always answer "prefer not to say" anytime I'm
asked in a form. It's just a dumb criteria for anything.

------
sodomizer
What bothers me most about elite colleges is that they're based on sheer
amount of work, not actual ability.

Thus you get a lot of droids who are good memorizer/regurgitators but not
necessarily all that wise, perceptive, creative, etc.

In my experience, schools discriminate against groups which they see as
proxies for this group, such as doctor's kids, nerds, Asians, because having
too many of them will mean a miserable "is this on the final?" campus with no
commitment to learning.

------
stevenameyer
I would be interested to see how prevalent this is at top institutions around
the world. I can be fairly confident that my program does not do this as my
class is very far from diverse. (the large majority of students being asian
males)

I have heard of a little bit of black magic that is involved in the acceptance
process but in order to accept people who are more likely to succeed in the
program. But race definitely does not come into play.

------
fatjokes
Yes. Now what is anybody going to do about it?

Asian-Americans lack the numbers and the political clout as African- and
Hispanic-Americans. Asians do not have a Sharpton. It's also tough to
sympathize with a bunch of kids protesting how they weren't let into Harvard /
Princeton / etc. It's unfair, and it sucks for them. Jews got around it after
Asians came around and took their place. Who can Asians wait for?

~~~
gyardley
Jews 'got around it' due to sustained media and political pressure in the
1950s - we didn't wait for anybody. Nor did Asians take our place - quotas
against Jews in elite universities were largely lifted before the widespread
adoption of affirmative action, which is when Asians' problems began.

If you want to do something about it, don't wait for some other minority group
to come along and be the goat, organize. There's a lot more Asians than Jews
in this country - you should be able to build an organization at least as
effective as the Anti-Defamation League. And for god's sake, at least stop
voting for politicians who support affirmative action. If you vote for
politicians who discriminate against you, those politicians are going to quite
reasonably conclude that you don't really care about being discriminated
against.

~~~
Crake
I think it will first take realizing that they don't deserve to be
discriminated against. A lot of my asian friends are just like, oh well,
nothing to be done about it. It's an attitude I find quite perplexing. Even
the ones that do care about it do so only mildly--nowhere near the level of
outrage that is mustered by a hispanic or black person when they (increasingly
more rarely, today) encounter a similar problem.

~~~
chii
Theres a bit of culture of submitting to authority in the asian zeitgeist.
This is probably because of that.

------
bane
Maybe another way to think of it is, "Do Elite Colleges Discriminate Against
The Kinds of Things Asian Tiger Moms Think Will Get Their Kids Into Their
School?"

At risk of sounds discriminator and stereotyping, the number of Chinese and
Korean kids applying for college with 4.0 GPAs, perfect SATs with awards for
Math and who play either expert level piano or violin is just simply not
interesting anymore.

------
nacho2sweet
I worked on the web side of a non elite but good universities student
recruitment department. I would hear stories all the time of Asian parents
coming in and handling their whole child's enrollment process. Many of the
administrators found it kind of funny/horrifying/sad all at the same time.

------
digitalzombie
Ha! Jokes on ivy league! I only applied to UCs! But yeah I often hear lots of
my Asian friends talked about changing their race. Like if they're half white
they would rather put white down. I joked about being blackanese.

Wow, good for Cal tech though, non race specific admission likewise for the
UCs.

------
jrokisky
Judging talent is extremely difficult, especially when the pool of candidates
is at arguably the most volatile point in their lives.

I think setting some standard benchmark is necessary, but diversity needs to
be guaranteed. (Even if it is as heavy-handed as basing it on race)

------
mustafakidd
Isn't it strange that middle easterners have to go through life being treated
as non white and dealing with all sorts of social issues around that -
especially in the past decade - and yet get no "benefit" when it comes time
for admissions?

~~~
Crake
Race based discrimination that favors any given minority will only come after
the political/social upheaval that disadvantaged them has ceased to exist,
more or less. At least, you have to reached the peak of your civil rights
movement for that particular group, so that it's "obvious" that it's not just
a "political opinion" to discriminate against them. This is why you presently
see homeless GLBT kids who don't qualify for federal financial aid, while
wealthy hispanic/black kids at private high schools get easy admits and full
rides to wherever they apply.

It'll happen for middle easterners only once people no longer mind them--of
course, then people will think it unfair that they are so oppressed, and
whatever the current group-to-be-hated of that decade is will be further
discriminated against in favor of correcting for a social pressure that has
long since disappeared.

------
coherentpony
Not at Cambridge or Oxford. Recruiting international students is what they do
especially for science or mathematics, where education in these areas is a lot
better in some Asian countries than the UK.

------
AlexeiSadeski
This is the opposite of news. The fact that whites actually benefit from
affirmative action, to the detriment of Asians and Asian Indians, has been
well known and obvious for a long time now.

~~~
james1071
[http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-
of-...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-
meritocracy/)

------
andrewchoi
Asian American student at an Ivy League school currently here, if you'd like
anecdotal evidence.

Ask away!

------
lucidrains
this is true for medical schools too

~~~
lucidrains
this is all really just a debate of how to strike a balance between diversity
and fair admissions. all a moot subject anyhow as we move towards open
collaborative learning online.

------
spitx
There are several problems with corralling peoples of varying regional
backgrounds into a neat label or two.

This poses a problem for the sake of consideration of applicants for admission
into institutions of higher learning not unlike it does for consideration of
peoples for any other purpose.

The immediate problem is of the question of homogeneity.

Although both Asian, are people of Filipino extraction similarly prone to
academic excellence as their Chinese counterparts?

Although both Black and hailing from much the same coordinates, do Haitians
benefit from a culture that values the merits of higher education as do their
Jamaican and other Carib brethren?

Although all White, are the rates of adoption of fields of study uniform among
Polish-Americans, Irish-Americans and all other non-Hispanic white Americans?

( The former president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers has famously
commented on how few numbers of Irish-Americans, as opposed to other whites,
are to be found in high-finance. He has made more controversial statements
about women in science and mathematics which are less relevant here. )

The more sensitive problem - and one that the universities seek to handle
delicately - is the problem of producing a class of pupils that is deft at
handling problems of the larger world that are not entirely limited to the
narrow confines of their chosen area of study.

Over the course of hundreds of years, universities have come to learn that a
purely academically flourishing candidate, otherwise deficient in certain key
qualities that make for a ringleader, is less than ideal for those larger
missions.

This has led to the emergence of the much vaunted, deservedly so, "well-
rounded candidate".

The candidate who sets himself or herself apart in matters of moral
earnestness, social conscience and a world view. He who is not just driven by
an achievement trophy-besotted vigor that sees education as a means to a
higher rung.

I'll leave it to the discursive minds here to explicate on the matter of how
various groups including “piano playing, hard working" Asians fare in this
regard and if that positively accounts for the disparity in acceptance rates
for those groups.

~~~
cpr
As much as I loathe Larry Summers' economics (he's a Goldman grad, after all),
I have to defend him against the casual slur implied above.

He didn't "make controversial statements about women," he simply asked a
question about a fact, which is why men are far and away the (high end)
outliers in math and science, and whether there might be something based on
nature (vs nurture). For asking this un-PC question, he was basically driven
out of the presidency at Harvard.

When you can't even ask questions about reality without getting pilloried, you
know things are rotten in academia.

(Summers was a year ahead of me at school, though I didn't know him then.)

~~~
spitx
I didn't mean to draw attention to the uproar over Summers' comments.

If I hadn't been upfront about that portion, I was certain that people would
try to scuttle the validity of the comments on Irish-Americans in light of
what he said about women.

People love to flog dead horses.

------
radiusq
While I disagree that people should be discriminated based on ethnicity, I do
think that a lot of asians who fit the bill as high GPA and high SAT are not
doing themselves any favors by just sitting on those qualifications. In my
professional experience working with a lot of early high-achievers (asian or
not) they tend not to do that great in the professional world: lack of
innovation, lack of creativity, willingness to only follow- not lead. Many
also seem to get burned out by the time they start their career and start to
show lack of discipline.

I think theres a lot of value in looking beyond that GPA/SAT. We don't want a
lot of identical personalities on a campus nor in the workplace. High GPA/SAT
does not necessarily breed the innovation and creativity that makes this
country strong (how's China doing on that front?).

Lets make the conversation about that. Thats really what this should be about.

------
OGinparadise
_“Harvard College welcomes talented students from all backgrounds, including
Asian-Americans… The admissions committee does not use quotas of any kind.”_

....but we do value diversity :)

and that's the same thing. It's unfair to Asians but then no one is entitled
to being accepted at school A or B, and more than SAT scores and GPA should be
at play.

~~~
tsotha
>It's unfair to Asians but then no one is entitled to being accepted at school
A or B...

Uh huh. Substitute "Blacks" for "Asians" and somehow suddenly it's no longer
okay.

~~~
hackinthebochs
This makes no sense. This kind of sloppy thinking on a topic like this does
nothing to further the discussion.

~~~
Crake
It makes perfect sense. We've traded one group that it is socially and
politically ok to hate based on their skin color in for another.

I guess the idea that we should stop with race based discrimination altogether
is too novel yet. So long as this is the case, the cycle will continue to
repeat.

~~~
hackinthebochs
The topic of Affirmative Action, or race- conscious admissions in general has
_nothing_ to do with entitlement. Conflating the two is the sloppy thinking
I'm referring to.

>It makes perfect sense. We've traded one group that it is socially and
politically ok to hate based on their skin color in for another.

Let's not conflate the hatred leveled on Blacks which kept them out of higher
education to not wanting your school full of bookworms (generalization, but
I'm just making a point). This is just more sloppy thinking from you folks.

~~~
tsotha
>Let's not conflate the hatred leveled on Blacks which kept them out of higher
education to not wanting your school full of bookworms...

That's just a rationalization.

------
pionar
And once again, if the headline is in the form of a question, the answer is
no.

