
For Asian Americans, a changing landscape on college admissions - o0-0o
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race-tutoring-20150222-story.html#page=1
======
patio11
The language in this article is positively Orwellian.

 _Asian Americans are learning to deal with diversity in the changing
landscape of college admissions_

Where diversity means, explicitly, the bureaucracy which enforces academia's
racial discrimination.

 _Complaints about bias in college admissions have persisted since at least
the 1920s_ \-- this is a newpsaper formulation which they invariably use to
take no stance on opinionated controversies that are not conveniently
verifiable or falsifiable, like "Republicans feel that they're treated poorly
by the media."

But here's the followup to that: "... , when a Harvard University president
tried to cap the number of Jewish students."

Shouldn't this sentence read "American universities have engaged in formal
racial discrimination against disfavored minority groups since at least the
1920s, when a Harvard University president successfully implemented a formal
quota limiting the number of Jewish students." Because that is a historical
fact. It happened.

Another historical #()%')#(%ing fact is that Asian Americans have the weird
crazy notion that American universities discriminate against them because _the
universities have formal policies which spell this out_ and because when
challenged on it _they have written words defending those policies on amici
briefs to the Supreme Court_.

~~~
skwirl
"Orwellian" has become one of HN's least useful snarl words that now
communicates nothing aside from "I disagree with this point of view and
consequently the way it is framed."

If you were black, you might see it as "Orwellian" when someone claims an
admissions policy is non-discriminatory when it results in a class that is 6%
black and 29% Asian among U.S. students (this is CMU), while blacks make up
13% of the U.S. population and Asians make up 5.3%.

You are trying to cloak your subjective opinion in the veneer of science and
objectivity with nonsense about "verifiable and falsifiable," but it doesn't
work. In your example - "Republicans feel that they're treated poorly by the
media" \- what would be a falsifiable and verifiable statement? "Republicans
ARE treated poorly by the media?" How is that or any statement like it
falsifiable or verifiable?

Likewise, in what way are questions of racial fairness verifiable or
falsifiable? If one policy is "race blind" and results in some minorities
being seriously under-represented, is it fair because of its "race blindness"
or unfair because of its outcome? If another policy takes race into
consideration, is it unfair because it takes race into consideration in
admissions or fair because its outcome results in a proportional
representation?

It's a question of values, not a question of science. Depending on your point
of view you are going to see it very differently from someone else.

~~~
philwelch
"To discriminate" means to draw distinctions and act upon them. Establishing a
maximum quota of Jewish or Asian students at a university is, factually,
discrimination. It may be morally justifiable discrimination, but it is
discrimination.

If the freshman class at Harvard University ends up being 30% Asian and 10%
Jewish, maybe it's because people in East Asian and Jewish cultures value
education more than people in other cultures. In that case, why isn't it fair
for an educational institution to cater to individuals who have been raised to
value education?

If some minorities (and let's not dance around the issue; we mean black
people) are underrepresented at these institutions, that is a wake up call. It
means that the public school system in our country has, in aggregate, failed
black children and that decades of racial injustice have forced black people
into self-perpetuating cycles of generational poverty. It doesn't mean that
Harvard is being racially discriminatory.

~~~
leereeves
Isn't it in Harvard's self-interest, and the interest of its students, to have
a diverse (racially and in many other ways) student body that prepares
students for a diverse world?

~~~
krakensden
My understanding of Harvard's point of view is they want a particular mix of
strivers and old money. This is not the same thing as racial diversity.

~~~
leereeves
It need not be mutually exclusive with racial diversity.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The point is that they are investing in the growth of their endowment by
seeking to maximize future donations from successful alums. With that goal it
is straightforward to select exclusively from the two groups most likely to
meet it.

~~~
leereeves
I'm sure Harvard has more than one goal to balance in their admissions
process.

------
b6
I want a world where ethnicity, sex, and other body attributes do not matter
very much. In that future world, body attributes would matter much _less_ than
they do today. So I advocate paying as little attention to them as possible
today.

Other people seem to want the same thing, but they advocate a world view that
specifically considers ethnicity, and sex, and other body attributes. I feel
certain it's well-intentioned, but it's racism, sexism, etc.

Further, that worldview encourages codifying racism and sexism, and making
them part of our workplaces. It has become normal for universities to tweak
points on admissions applications, and for big companies to publish pie charts
about their progress toward diversity. But this is just more racism and
sexism. If you have to add an ethnicity column to your employee database and
periodically release ethnicity pie charts to show how unracist you are, I hope
it is obvious that something is very wrong.

We shouldn't try to use old bad ideas to increase justice. Justice will
increase naturally when we discard old bad ideas.

Every day, we're putting down bricks, building the world of the future. Let's
put down the kind of bricks that suit the world we actually want.

~~~
nl
_In that future world, body attributes would matter much less than they do
today. So I advocate paying as little attention to them as possible today._

You realize that your first sentence does not imply your second sentence is a
good policy automatically, right? It _might_ , but there is no automatic
relationship there.

If you are prepared to have an open mind on this, I'd strongly encourage you
to watch [https://www.gv.com/lib/unconscious-bias-at-
work](https://www.gv.com/lib/unconscious-bias-at-work).

I think that your goal of _a world where ethnicity, sex, and other body
attributes do not matter very much_ is admirable. However, in an imperfect
world - especially one in which some people explicitly disavow that goal - it
is worth considering what a policy like yours will actually achieve. What that
video linked above to find out.

------
thelogos
Some people may find this surprising, but you shouldn't. It's simply how the
world works. It's repugnant but life is not fair.

Racial discrimination is only the tip of the iceberg. There's also legacy
admission and athletes grade fixing. It's also not uncommon for rich parents
to hire a professional ghostwriter for the admission essay. College admission
as a whole is extremely subjective even if they try to pretend it isn't. After
that there's the rampant grade inflation. We can go on and on.

Make no mistakes though, these aren't just inefficiency that happens by
oversight. Someone __always__ benefit. They certainly don't feel sorry for
you. They may use fancy euphemism to justify their decisions, but we're all
adults here. Nobody really believes that bullshit.

College is a business and the only thing you can do is take your money
somewhere else. Until society is ruled by some AI, we'll always have these
kinds of problem.

Some things I would recommend if people really want to give away their money
and support these evil institutions, 1\. Change your name, first and last 2\.
Check a different box when they ask for your race (or any other bullshit like
religion, etc.)

Changing your name has _massive_ implications besides college applications.
Humans love to judge especially when they have nothing at stake. If you don't
believe me, just apply to a few jobs with different names.

------
Edmond
I think people who complain about discrimination against Asian students in
places such as Harvard should ask themselves, why do people want to go to
Harvard? It sure as hell isn't because that is the only place you can get an
excellent education.

While Harvard is obviously great as an academic institution, people want to go
to Harvard for the prestige. Do you think that prestige would be there if they
were to allow the place to essentially become an academic ghetto for any given
ethic group (Asian, Jewish or any future group)?

Every time a Harvard affiliated person wins the Nobel prize, Pulitzer,
Macarthur or becomes the first black president the prestige equity of every
Harvard graduate goes up. You don't get that by robotically picking students
based on only test scores.

Complaining about not being accepted to a place like Harvard even though you
scored a perfect SAT or some other test taking metric shows a misunderstanding
of what these highly prestigious institutions are about.

~~~
jessriedel
We know what top universities would look like if they selected purely for
academics. They would look like CalTech.

> Every time a Harvard affiliated person wins the Nobel prize, Pulitzer,
> Macarthur .... You don't get that by robotically picking students based on
> only test scores.

CalTech has _more_ nobel prizes per capita than any of the Ivies. Dunno if
CalTech loses out on Macarthur (maybe) or Pulizer (probably), but if so it's
because CalTech is a _technical_ university. There's no reason you couldn't
have an all-academically selected university focusing on the humanities.

> or becomes the first black president the prestige equity of every Harvard
> graduate goes up.

This is obviously not the reason that Harvard has racial preferences.

Yes, we can agree that it is reasonable for Harvard and other high-prestige
universities to select for things besides academics (ambition, social savvy,
sports, extracurriculars). But the complaint being leveled is that they
shouldn't pick explicitly on race.

~~~
Edmond
I think you're making my point, only people hanging out on HN and other
similar circles know what CalTech is...Go out there and ask random people
about CalTech... :) CalTech is a first-rate academic institution but it's
prestige is limited to those who actually know what it is about.

My reference to the "first black president" has less to do with race or racial
preference but rather for the sort of social change it represents. When you
take the entire social history of the United States, a first black president
is a monumental change and the institutions (academic or otherwise) that can
claim any part of the credit for that, are falling over themselves to do so.

Again, my point is that the preoccupation people have with Schools like
Harvard isn't about academics but prestige.

~~~
jessriedel
> CalTech is a first-rate academic institution but it's prestige is limited to
> those who actually know what it is about...

> Again, my point is that the preoccupation people have with Schools like
> Harvard isn't about academics but prestige.

I understand that, which is why I didn't claim that CalTech had the same
prestige as Harvard. I was rebutting your claim that Harvard had racial
policies in order to get academic awards in order to get prestige.

> My reference to the "first black president" has less to do with race or
> racial preference but rather for the sort of social change it represents.
> When you take the entire social history of the United States, a first black
> president is a monumental change and the institutions (academic or
> otherwise) that can claim any part of the credit for that, are falling over
> themselves to do so.

Again, this is clearly not why Harvard has these policies, so bringing it up
is a distraction. I agree that racial policies affect Harvard's prestige, and
I agree that Harvard is driven largely by the pursuit of prestige, but I
disagree that prominent racial alumni is a causal link, as you suggested.

------
thinkofnothing
I'm one of those Asian-Americans that applied to only "elite" schools due to
constant parental pressure and did "enough" to get accepted to most. Although
all this happened a decade ago, the challenges these days seem mostly the
same, if not trite, in the sense that Asians seem to typically over-value
institutionalized education and focus on a narrow set of activities for
whatever cultural reason ... leading to racial bias from colleges and
conventional life choices from Asians.

For me though, I just enjoyed trying a bunch of different stuff out and was
fortunate enough to excel at a variety of things that I guess these colleges
weren't expecting from an Asian. These interests include(d) linguistics,
journalism, public speaking, student government, graphics + layouts + grids,
game design, acrobatics, and somehow even ended up as an Eagle Scout (shrug)
... on top of hyper-accelerated math, science and tech stuff expected I guess
of Asian students. Didn't sleep much though.

Also, after attending one day of Harvard's Campus Preview Weekend, my gut said
"uh ... no," and went to MIT instead. Very happy about that choice in
hindsight, purely based on the people I met and the meritocracy instilled in
the students; I doubt I use even 25% of course material in the stuff I work on
these days. The most important lesson that I did learn at the end of the day
is that general society is led to believe that people should/can master only
one or two tasks, a possible relic from industrialism. Instead, people should
aim to become polymathic, which becomes exponentially easier by learning
across diverse interests and realizing that there are many common threads
across seemingly different fields -- a personal and particular implementation
of "learning how to learn."

* As a side note, San Gabriel Valley? Never been so can't really guess, but I would bet that Cupertino schools were much tougher. Thankfully, we had a certain neighborhood fruit company that inspired some of us to become pirates instead of joining the navy, and to experiment with Learning Some Divinity (eventually).

------
gambiting
I find penalizing scores of Asian Americans to be exactly as racist as
improving scores of African Americans and other ethnicities. If we, as a
society, believe that all people from all ethnicities are equal, why do we do
this? I could understand if we boosted scores of people coming from poor
families, but changing scores based only on ethnicity? How is that not racist?

~~~
intopieces
>all people from all ethnicities are equal

All people from all ethnicities are equal in the sense that they deserve an
equal oppertunity to succeed. However, that has not happened. Certain ethnic
groups (black people) have been systematically disadvantaged. They continue to
be under-represented in higher education and over-represented in the prison
system. Affirmative action does a good job at getting black people into
college, which generally helps a person later in life when they want to get a
good job.

~~~
gambiting
It's not black people who are disadvantaged - but people coming from poor,
ghetto communities who are. The fact that they are black is secondary. Like
I've said, I would be completely ok with them being given extra points due to
coming from a very poor/criminal families. No problem here. But a simple
system "black? extra points. Asian? negative points" is nothing but racist. Is
a black person from a rich family getting extra points? If yes, why? Is an
Asian person from a poor family still getting negative points? If yes, again -
why? It literally doesn't make any sense.

~~~
intopieces
You're now shifting the conversation from the broad admissions policy to
specific admission merits of individuals. The policy of promoting the
admission of black students as a whole has been successful. It's not racism
when a minority/disadvantaged group is given a leg up on a group that already
has an advantage. The effect is so minimal that it really isn't worth
discussing.

~~~
gambiting
How has it been successful? Some people got admitted to university on the
basis of their skin color, while some other people got rejected based on their
skin color. How is this a success?

~~~
intopieces
Skin color is not the only factor of admissions, so your reduction of the
situation to being one is not appropriate. It is a success in that people who
might have previously been unable to attend college are admitted to college,
and given scholarships for needy/minority students. We need not worry about
the fate of middle class white people like me.

------
noobermin
Here's an out of the box idea that doesn't address racism but addresses
another aspect of this: may be we should focus effort (research grants and
moneys) on non-elite schools and bring the general average university up to a
better level, then people, asian or otherwise, wouldn't feel that much less
accomplished if they got into a some large public uni that happens not to be
an ivy-league school.

It boggles my mind how we have the best schools in the world while at the same
time have an average college educated adult who has skills below the average
[0]. That could be part of the reason why so many people are shoving against
each other on the way to Stanford, because if they get into some random state
uni, they know they won't have a quality education. May be if we fixed that,
we'd increase N, the number of spots available for everyone, and we wouldn't
reach the pigeon-hole limit so quickly that colleges wouldn't have to start
discriminating against anyone.

[0] [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/08/us-adults-
ran...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/08/us-adults-rank-below-
average-global-survey-basic-education-skills)

------
Bahamut
This is not surprising, most asians already know this - I encountered this
during admissions when I applied to undergrad for the class of 2006. I was one
of the most stellar candidates from the NY tristate area (NYC area) with some
of the best test scores & a diverse set of extracurriculars, and a history of
excellence in regional/national math competitions & advanced coursework
(Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra in 10th grade), but my being Korean
definitely hurt (combined with my having wrote a bad essay, which helped give
a reason to say no/waitlisted in a year where many colleges lost millions of
dollars from the Enron scandal).

In the end, it didn't matter as much since I always had strong confidence in
my ability to adapt and to look ahead, and my path turned out to be beneficial
in many different ways. Obstacles such as this are difficult to overcome
though, and it helped home in that I need to be that much sharper in order to
succeed.

------
ausjke
Don't know what to say other than feeling upset. The losers are more on the
middle-class of poor Asians and the Whites obviously. Due to the increasingly
large number of the black and the Hispanic voters, these situation will not
change, if not getting worse.

Then I read somewhere that for diversity reasons after those students(the
black and the Hispanic) are admitted to the top universities, they actually
don't have a nice experience at all, most of them simply can't catch up and
some of them drop out.

I'm fine with helping the economically disadvantaged students, but
manipulating the admission by skin color or race?

Top universities just like NBA, only the best players shall attend, skin color
shall not be the reason you can stay there. Not to mention there are so many
other public/private universities to choose for everyone.

~~~
Larrikin
From what I've read most of the black and Hispanic students are not dropping
out due to course work, but an inability to pay for it. Furthermore, taking
out more loans is often not the best idea since many of the students do not
make the connections in those schools to get the best paying jobs and usually
end up with similar jobs as their peers that went to less prestigious and
cheaper schools.

------
rjdagost
Racial discrimination, neatly quantified: "Lee's next slide shows three
columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how
race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It
uses the term “bonus” to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant's
race is worth. She points to the first column. African Americans received a
“bonus” of 230 points, Lee says. She points to the second column. “Hispanics
received a bonus of 185 points.” The last column draws gasps. Asian Americans,
Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that
much better to win admission."

~~~
skywhopper
Note that no school actually penalizes Asian Americans by 50 points or gives
230 points to black applications. This study appears to assume that one's SAT
score is the only factor that should be used in college admission and that
race is the only explanatory factor for the disparity between admission and
scores.

But admissions policies that granted extra "points" based on growing up in a
poorly performing school district or the economic status of the parents would
also likely generate this sort of distribution.

------
GrandTheftR
MLK said this in his famouse speech "I have a dream that my four little
children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin, but by the content of their character." [0]

This is so sad with what many colleges/states are pushing for now. I am all
for college admission policy to help out low incoming group, based on his/her
economy status, which the children were born into, but not discrimination
based on skin color, which the children were born with.

[0]
[http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/martinluth115056....](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/martinluth115056.html#meSsLUb8M6r42ETO.99")

~~~
Anechoic
_MLK said this in his famouse speech_

MLK also said: "Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is
raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted
equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this
appears reasonable, but it is not realistic."

 _I am all for college admission policy to help out low incoming group, based
on his /her economy status, [..] but not discrimination based on skin color_

The problem is that research has shown that institutional discrimination is
not just based on economics, but also on race (for example, Prager's research
showing that a white job applicant _with_ a criminal record is more likely to
get a job callback than a black applicant _without_ a criminal record).
Ignoring race isn't the answer. As for what is the answer, that's a much
harder problem which is why we're still wrestling with it.

------
throwaway-ofc
Is it true that non-jewish whites are more underrepresented than even
hispanics or african americans, while at the same time needing higher scores
to be accepted?

~~~
Alex3917
I think that's plausibly true at Harvard, but it's mathematically impossible
for that to be true overall.

------
jrochkind1
> Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points

Compared to what? White applicants, statistically? Why are white people the
"default" which everyone else is measured against, do white people not have a
race/ethnicity?

There is no 'objective' measure of what SAT score "should" get you into a
university. Most universities use things other than SAT scores to decide
admissions (things in addition to affirmative action/diversity, I mean, too).
Some universities may rely/weight SAT scores more than others. There is no SAT
score that is "supposed to" guarantee you admission, "before accounting for
race". It doesn't work that way. If you think it would be more "fair" to rely
exclusively on SAT scores, you can make an argument for that, but a test is
not in fact some objective measure of 'reality', it's just one test.

The idea that it's just a fact that "Asian Americans are penalized by 50
points"\-- it's an under-specified statement, and it doesn't actually mean
much.

I think this is an example of the assumptions/biases in the language of this
article and those quoted in it, in general.

------
bane
I'm married into a first generation Asian family and this is a constant topic
of conversation on that side, especially now that their kids are getting ready
for college.

The problem ultimately stems from a huge wave of mostly Korean and Chinese
immigrants (but by extension other East Asian and Pacific Island nations get
penalized as well), who grew up in poor countries (or when their countries
were poor), suddenly finding themselves with enough money to immigrate to the
U.S. and "escape". They put down roots, work their tails off and start having
families.

They don't want their kids to have to struggle like they did (and they want to
ensure they set themselves up well in retirement), but they have incredibly
unsophisticated views of what 'success' means in America (often as a result of
working so much they never really had a chance to integrate well into their
adopted country).

However, they understand passing tests, having deep cultural histories around
test taking to get ahead in life. So they look for the most prestigious work
you can test into.

And bam, at the intersection of hard work, prestige signaling and test taking
you get a fairly limited set of occupations, which these parents instinctively
laser beam their kids at.

Good schools want extracurriculars? No problem! Let's use the prestige button
on that, prestigious schools must want the _most_ prestigious
extracurriculars, and those are obviously piano and violin (and sometimes
opera). Let's toss in some prestige sports as well, and now these kids and
splitting time studying endlessly for tests to become a doctor or lawyer,
practicing piano/violin and playing tennis/golf/figure skating.

Repeat until the parents think they're maximizing the fitting function for
university acceptance and you end up with entire social networks and minor
industries around SAT test taking, piano and violin teachers and
tennis/golf/figure skating coaches.

And you know what? For a very long time this worked. Asian Americans have been
extraordinarily and consistently "successful", far over-represented in
university admissions and in select professions.

But there was no secret, it was literally hard screaming, crying, kicking
work. There's no cheating. While their other raced peers studied for an hour
every night before turning on the XBox. They studied till midnight, every
night, and then spent all day Saturday at private school, then studied till
midnight again, then spent most of the day on Sundays doing prestige
extracurriculars. Their parents were often poor, working crap triple-D jobs,
or triple shifts at convenience stores. They lived frugally and invested every
single drop of blood in their kids. Even if they were often wrong headed about
how they did it, it worked and anybody can do it.

But on the university side, as parents start to find the optimal mix to
acceptance, application packets start to look not just virtually identical,
but absolutely identical.

Imagine you're tasked with figuring out which 10 of 1000 applications all with
the last names Kim, Chin, Hu, Lee, Park, Wang or Choi should be accepted:

\- All have 4.0 GPAs

\- All have AP degrees from High School

\- All have extracurriculars that are selected from the set of {violin, piano,
opera, tennis, golf}

\- All went to the best High Schools in their respective areas

\- All submit essays with some story about their parent's difficult
immigration, usually involving stories of poverty and unbelievable work hours
in menial jobs. Maybe with some kind of "escape from the communists" or
"swimming to safety across Hong Kong Harbor" or something. I know 3 Chinese
Americans who's parents have almost identical "swimming escape from China and
lived in Kowloon Walled City for 3 years before making it to America" stories.

\- All have perfect or near perfect SAT scores

What the universities are of course realizing is that it becomes a random
sample at this point. There's no criteria they can use to discern one 'Kim'
from another 'Lee'...every applicant literally looks exactly the same. There's
no "fair" way to select from this applicant pool, and this pool has quite
literally self-grouped.

So, clumsily, the universities are trying to throw big rocks in the pool.
These are starting to no longer accept the products of this application
optimum, _especially_ if they have Asian-American last names.

It's getting heard, and in the parts of the Asian American community I'm privy
to, mothers are stressed out that all those years of forcing their kids to
master Bach aren't going to count for much. They're in a mad scramble to
figure out the next optimized path, but the universities are smart to it now.

They also don't come from cultures where the notion of cultivating meaningful
hobbies is well understood. My niece loves waterpainting and flower arranging.
Gifts of art supplies and arrangement books are met with skepticism and
sometimes scorn. She won't have time to be forced to practice piano if she's
dilly-dallying around with another painting! Yet, a portfolio of prints and
some awards from local flower shows would be _exactly_ what the universities
are now looking for. The idea that maybe she should be encouraged to develop
her own innate interests is lost while he parents look for the next magical
prestige signalling instrument for her to be forced to study. My other family
back in the home country are trying to understand it better, but they still
haven't gotten over the idea that being "a hobby photographer" doesn't have to
mean spending $25,000 on pro-level camera equipment.

Coincidentally, the second generation of Asian Americans are having kids and
_those_ kids are often growing up without all this mess, but still affected by
the continued wave of new first generations. Now Rebecca Choi, who's parents
didn't push her through the Harvard funnel is getting impacted by Hee Soo who
did. But Rebecca is interested in becoming a writer, has a 3.2 GPA, stinks at
math, dyes her hair pink, listens to rock music, is trying to learn to play
guitar, volunteers as a drill coach for her local girl's basketball league.
Had a pregnancy scare her junior year. Has experimented with drugs a little.
Her SATs were above average, but not spectacular.

If she was _another_ minority she might make it into a tier-1 school. If she
was white she probably wouldn't. But now because Hee Soo's parents tiger mom'd
her through the perceived application optimum, Rebecca, for no other reason
than being a Choi, gets a 50 point application deduction. Does this mean the
system worked? Rebecca would just be an average white kid if she was Rebecca
Smith.

~~~
walshemj
Interesting I know that one of the reason well off mainland Chinese parents
are opting to send their kids to Public Schools in the UK to get out of the
death march style of cramming facts education.

~~~
bane
That's interesting, I wonder how the emergent Chinese middle class is
informing this.

It's really such a difficult and complicated topic. But I think the
action/reaction dynamic is largely explainable and understandable.

The people who I really don't get are the ones that know better, the Amy
Chua's of the world. Who have the education, the sophistication and the
cultural integration to escape it, yet simply repeat the cycle of abuse,
mindlessly.

While the "death march" approach has largely worked to get immediately (within
a generation) into "prestige" and well paying occupations. There's also a huge
number of burned out kids with absolutely shattered parental relationships.

There's several reddits dedicated to basically being support groups for deeply
depressed, deeply damaged kids who grew up in this kind of grind.

------
nether
CalTech doesn't discriminate by race at all:
[http://www.mindingthecampus.com/2010/12/why_caltech_is_in_a_...](http://www.mindingthecampus.com/2010/12/why_caltech_is_in_a_class_by_i/)

~~~
Anechoic
This is not true according to CalTech's Common Data Set filings [0] (see
section C7)

[0]
[http://finance.caltech.edu/Resources/cds](http://finance.caltech.edu/Resources/cds)

~~~
thaumasiotes
This is an issue of some interest. For example, the UC system in California is
currently prohibited by law from discriminating by race in admissions. But we
know they're doing it anyway by looking at the statistics of the students they
keep admitting. When we look at the CalTech statistics, racial biases are not
apparent (admittedly, we have to do this in a very rough way because
universities will generally fight tooth and nail to prevent researchers from
looking into the effect of race on admissions). And the source you cite
doesn't actually specify any amount of bias by race - it says that race is
"considered", which is the least significance a variable can have before being
"not considered".

If we think that other universities are lying when they say race is not
considered, based on massive discrepancies between the records of admitted
freshmen of different races, why shouldn't we discount CalTech's statement
that race is considered, based on a lack of such discrepancies?

~~~
Anechoic
_For example, the UC system in California is currently prohibited by law from
discriminating by race in admissions. But we know they 're doing it anyway by
looking at the statistics of the students they keep admitting._

Do "we know they're doing it anyway"? When Prop 209 passed, minority
enrollment dropped. And there are any number of factors that the system may
consider that are not race, but may be correlated with race. In any event, the
numbers I can find show black and latino admissions combined are less than
expected based on CA and national numbers.

 _And the source you cite doesn 't actually specify any amount of bias by race
- it says that race is "considered"_

I was responding to a poster that said "CalTech doesn't discriminate by race
_at all_ " \- CalTech itself disagrees. I was not commenting on the extend or
magnitude of that consideration.

 _If we think that other universities are lying when they say race is not
considered,_

I'm not sure I accept this premise.

 _why shouldn 't we discount CalTech's statement_

Occam's razor. In any event, we know that CalTech does target minorities via
outreach programs [0] so it would not be out of character for them to consider
race. And anecdotally (I'm black), I was _heavily_ recruited by CalTech
despite my showing no interested in attending and having below (CalTech)
average SAT scores (and above average grades/school rank/extra curricular)

[0]
[http://diversitycenter.caltech.edu/resources/rfus](http://diversitycenter.caltech.edu/resources/rfus)

~~~
thaumasiotes
All right, I think I agree with you on many points. Let me try to summarize my
view here:

1\. We can only see the effect of race on admission at a very coarse
resolution, because universities try their hardest to obscure it.

2\. Even at this coarse resolution, it's easy to see that at most US
universities, race has a massive effect. We see this by noting that when you
break down admitted freshmen by race, they show very large group differences
on all the characteristics that the universities will admit they're looking
for.

3\. Although minority enrollment in the UC system dropped after Prop 209, we
still see these large differences. As they are our only way of inferring any
effect of race, we conclude that race still has large effects, despite the
fact that this is now illegal. Ward Connerly will tell you any number of
stories (well, write stories down that you can read) about other UC regents
specifically plotting to subvert prop 209 and get minorities in by whatever
pretexts they can think of.

4\. We _fail_ to observe significant differences among the racial groups at
CalTech.

5\. You are almost certainly correct to estimate that, since CalTech says it
considers race, we should believe that it does consider race.

6\. _But_ I, personally, while admitting that in the sense of point (5)
CalTech does consider race, still think that it's usefully correct to go
around telling people "CalTech, unlike other US schools, doesn't discriminate
by race". This is because when we use our own metric, which is what we have to
do for other schools, we can't detect any discrimination on the part of
CalTech. When we compare it to other schools, it seems reasonable to measure
them all the same way.

Put another way, in the wise words of Cecil Adams, what we cannot reliably
measure we are entitled to ignore. CalTech has information that we don't, but
until it makes a difference that we can see, there's not much of a reason for
us to pay attention. Comparing our view of UCLA with CalTech's view of itself
is terrible statistics.

~~~
Anechoic
_We can only see the effect of race on admission at a very coarse resolution,
because universities try their hardest to obscure it_

I agree, that we can only see the effects at a coarse resolution, but disagree
that universities try to "obscure" that effect. I think the reason for the
coarse resolution is that there isn't a simple formula for each individual
student. Admissions officials look at each application and weigh factors
depending on each student's particular circumstances. This would be consistent
with another post in this topic about so many Asian applications being similar
(assuming the post was true) which would make it harder to tease out unique
factors (I'm speculating here).

 _they show very large group differences on all the characteristics that the
universities will admit they 're looking for._

I don't agree with this at all, especially looking at all U.S. universities in
aggregate. There are a lot of universities that look for different aspects
rather than pure academics, and look to serve different audiences (HBCU's
being the obvious example). Can you give an example of a college or university
that claims to look for a particular set of characteristics but has a student
body that conflict with those characteristics?

 _Although minority enrollment in the UC system dropped after Prop 209, we
still see these large differences._

California has a population that is (as of 2011) 40% white, 7% black, 14%
Asian and 38% Latino. [0]

The U.C. System (undergrad) is currently 30% white, 4% black, 34% Asian and
18% Latino. [1]

Are the "large differences" you're referencing referring to the
overrepresentation of Asians and underrepresentation of everyone else?

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California#Raci...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California#Racial_and_ancestral_makeup)

[1]
[http://www.cpec.ca.gov/StudentData/StudentSnapshot.ASP?DataR...](http://www.cpec.ca.gov/StudentData/StudentSnapshot.ASP?DataReport=UCEth)

 _We fail to observe significant differences among the racial groups at
CalTech._

CalTech (undergrad enrollment) is 2% black, 30% white, 42% black and 10%
Latino.[2] That's a lot closer to the UC system than to CA's population.

[2]
[http://finance.caltech.edu/documents/198-cds2014_final.pdf](http://finance.caltech.edu/documents/198-cds2014_final.pdf)
table B2

~~~
thaumasiotes
> [I] disagree that universities try to "obscure" that effect [of race on
> undergrad admission]

You can't be serious. Universities selectively deny access to their admissions
data based on the politics of the researchers asking for it. They've been
known to agree to allow access and then welsh after hearing the proposed topic
of the paper. They're acting with overt malice, here.

------
highoctane51
> "But there's an important part of their college applications that they can't
> improve as easily as an SAT score: their ethnicity."

As an asian american myself this is offensive. Why would I want to IMPROVE my
ethnicity? Furthermore I personally believe a 'holistic' application review
process is fair, if diversity in the workplace is valued shouldn't diversity
in universities be similarly valued? Yes I know this undoubtedly hurt Asian
American applicants but they will no doubt adapt and this community is the
furthest from believing that a 2400 on the SAT or 5.0 GPA is indicative of
success

------
jkot
Is not racial discrimination illegal in US?

~~~
patio11
Title VI, a federal law, prohibits discrimination by race in, most prominently
for the present discussion, any federally funded university, which is
substantially all of them due to how America does research budgets and federal
student aid. Many universities are government institutions, and in the United
States government cannot generally discriminate on the basis of race due to
the Equal Protection clause of the US Constitution (in the 14th Amendment)
and/or the Due Process clause (5th Amendment). Both are generally pretty
toothy.

 _However_ , a contentious series of Supreme Court cases (Bakke, Gratz,
Grutter) have held that universities are allowed to racially discriminate if
they do so with the intention of achieving compelling educational interests
and as long as their institutionalized racial discrimination is not a crass
point system but rather a "holistic" evaluation of applicants which uses race
as "one part of" the decisionmaking process.

Racial discrimination is pervasive at US selective universities, public and
private. It is described as a minor, marginal policy, but all players
understand that abandoning the formal racial discrimination policies would
cause instantaneous hits to enrollment of favored racial minorities of roughly
50% or more, as has indeed happened when particular formal racial
discrimination policies were found illegal. For example, the Gratz decision
illegalized a points system used by the University of Michigan, where 100
points were required for admission and being a member of a favored racial
group was worth 20 points. (For comparison: the best essay they received in a
year was worth 3 points and winning a gold medal in the Olympics was worth 5.
)

Some states have explicitly "No-we-really-mean-it-this-time" illegalized
racial discrimination in public education, a policy which commands a
supermajority of support with American voters. California is a prominent
example. The universities threatened massive resistance. (That phrasing would
be understood by educated Americans to be a grave insult. It is a callback to
a particular phrase used by a Southern politician refusing to comply with
federal laws prohibiting discrimination against racial minorities.) Enrollment
by favored minority groups declined by roughly half. Over the same period,
Asian enrollment (as a percentage) increased markedly and white enrollment was
roughly constant or declining.

~~~
kenjackson
_It is described as a minor, marginal policy, but all players understand that
abandoning the formal racial discrimination policies would cause instantaneous
hits to enrollment of favored racial minorities of roughly 50% or more, as has
indeed happened when particular formal racial discrimination policies were
found illegal._

It's marginal for the majority population. Not for the minority group. Its
like handicapped parking. If you were to remove them, your parking situation
only sees a marginal improvement, but for the handicap it's probably a big
deal.

~~~
jkot
Are asians part of majority population or minority group?

~~~
kenjackson
The minority population. The small percentage of Blacks in college doesn't
impact greatly the percentage of Asians at Ivy League schools. It's a red
herring.

------
wodenokoto
Of course people shouldn't be rejected by their race.

But according to the article, "all" asians have the same profile. If this is
true, I can understand why some of the similar profiles are rejected in the
name of diversity.

Once an SAT score is sufficiently high, it makes sense to look at other
things. I can see why a college would want 50/50 gender, and a wide spread of
social backgrounds.

If I was teaching a class and I had to choose between 2 students for the last
seat, I might choose the one with the (insignificantly) lower score if that
student seemed more fun to be around.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> If I was teaching a class and I had to choose between 2 students for the
> last seat, I might choose the one with the (insignificantly) lower score if
> that student seemed more fun to be around.

This doesn't bear any resemblance to current admissions policies.
Discrepancies between races in average SAT score at a given college are in the
hundreds of points, not the low tens.

~~~
skwirl
The article and the person you are replying to are specifically talking about
disadvantages faced by Asian Americans, and they have an SAT penalty of 50
points, according to the article and the paper it references:
[http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/files/webAdmission%20Pre...](http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/files/webAdmission%20Preferences%20Espenshade%20Chung%20Walling%20Dec%202004.pdf)

Without making a judgment one way or the other on the core issue - given that
this paper is looking at "highly selective private research universities" with
average SAT scores of over 1300, a 50 point difference is not very big and
probably within each individual student's margin of error. When you are in
that scoring range, each incorrect answer has a magnified score penalty to
maintain the normal distribution.

~~~
thaumasiotes
So, two points.

1\. Asians suffer a penalty of 50 points _relative to whites_. We can equally
say, using the numbers from rjdagost's comment, that whites themselves suffer
a penalty of 230 points.

2\. The entire concept of the normally curved scores is that one 50-point
difference is just as significant as any other 50-point difference. That's why
we use standard deviations to compare things. It is true that scores at the
very high end are more volatile, since most of the test's "space" is devoted
to distinguishing between people in the middle of the range, but 1300 does not
seem to be at a level where that worry would make sense; the data I have to
hand is a score report from 2000 saying "on average, a person with a math
score of 710 loses 2 points on a second testing", which is pretty reliable.
And regardless, while an individual student might easily lose 30 points by
retesting, group averages don't move so easily.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> "on average, a person with a math score of 710 loses 2 points on a second
> testing", which is pretty reliable

On thinking about this further, I've grossly misused the word "reliable". What
that quoted bit says is precisely that while an individual's score may vary
from test to retest (and is thus not necessarily reliable), the average score
of a group is highly stable.

------
negamax
So throwing away meritocracy for vote appeasement? Nice

~~~
Zigurd
You might be surprised to learn that "meritocracy" was word coined in the
process of satirizing the idea of meritocracy.

------
skywhopper
The study at the core of this article appears to make the assumption that SAT
scores are the only factor that ought to be considered when making college
admissions decisions. But I don't think that's right. Certainly the mission of
these universities is not solely to educate the best test-takers in the world.

And unless I missed it there's also no evidence that the schools studied
actually do use race in their admissions decisions. There are a variety of
other factors that could be considered which would end up skewing the
admissions results on the basis of race. Should colleges not be allowed to
give extra consideration to students from poorly performing schools simply
because doing so might have the effect of giving "bonus points" to African
American or Hispanic applicants?

------
nutjob123
Aren't you allowed to abstain from declaring race on college applications?

~~~
jqm
Maybe, but you certainly aren't allowed to abstain from declaring your name.

~~~
Glide
Which is why a lot of people have legal western names while using an ethnic
name at home.

------
kaitai
I was part of a program that changed to graduate admissions based solely on
subject GRE score. The first such resulting class was 88% Chinese, 4%
Taiwanese, and 8% white American. Did they do that well as a class in graduate
studies or in academia? No. Some were great, some were terrible, just like
every other year. The years where admission was done based on prior math
research instead resulted in a more interesting group of students, although
again some were great, some were terrible.

It's well-known that in subject GREs Chinese students score very well compared
to American students of any racial or ethnic background. (As a Chinese friend
asked, "Why don't you Americans just study for it, like we do?") However,
subject GRE scores are not that predictive of success in a graduate program.
Research skills, writing ability, grit, and the simple capacity to get stuff
done are not well-predicted by multiple choice exams. It is useful to know
that students who do well on, for instance, the math subject GRE can do triple
integrals quickly. That's about it.

So, since subject GREs don't predict graduate success, and SATs are not that
well-correlated with college success either [1], admissions committees use
other factors to evaluate students. In fact, a number of schools do not
require any standardized test [2]. These other factors range widely and
include high school grades, which are most predictive of college success,
volunteer work, interestingness, etc. And they do include race and geographic
origin. Small colleges in the Midwest are currently targeting California,
Texas, and Florida for recruitment because of their huge numbers of graduating
seniors, and the coastal schools let in some token Midwesterners to provide
some leavening to their provincial views of flyover country.

There is discrimination against Asian Americans in admissions in the US. It's
not written into policy explicitly: it's just like discrimination against
women and blacks today, taking the form of discussion of "fit" or subjective
evaluation of how interesting someone's work is. It should stop, and the
comparison to the "Jewish quotas" is apt. At the same time, test-based
admissions are ludicrous, and evaluation of extracurricular activities and
accomplishments given the student's environment are necessary. I had friends
at Caltech who went to high schools that didn't offer calculus: smart people
come from all sorts of backgrounds.

[1]
[https://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/Validity...](https://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/Validity_of_the_SAT_for_Predicting_First_Year_College_Grade_Point_Average.pdf)

[2] [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/02/19/study-
finds-l...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/02/19/study-finds-little-
difference-academic-success-students-who-do-and-dont-submit-sat)

------
doctorstupid
Sending affluent students to volunteer in poor neighbourhoods to get them into
college is disgusting.

~~~
VinhSama
When I was in 12, I volunteered to help feed the poor at a soup kitchen. When
I was in high school, there was a mandatory volunteer requirement of 40 hours
just to graduate. Volunteering isn't disgusting, it's valuable experience.
It's no different than putting volunteer experience on a resume to get a job.
Volunteers are in short demand; it'd be much more disgusting to deny help just
because their intents aren't purely altruistic. Heaven forbid you help someone
and help yourself at the same time.

~~~
gaius
Uhh its not volunteering if its mandatory...

~~~
superflit
This.

Volunteer has to be free from pressure.

But we have a society that try to push "moral"values instead of freedom and
pursuit of your OWN happiness (obeying laws).

------
karmacondon
_“I don 't want to be racist or anything,” Lawrence said. “Everyone works hard
and struggles. But there's this feeling that it's going to be harder for us.”_

No, it's going to be harder for someone who's parents can't afford tutoring
academies named "Little Harvard", tennis lessons, violin lessons or 4 hours of
extracurriculars a day.

This sounds like someone who has been given every advantage in life
complaining about not being given more advantages. Maybe more of them should
do volunteer programs in poor communities so they can think about how
difficult it would be for _those_ kids to get into Harvard. After seeing what
a life of poverty is like, having your SAT score adjusted down by a couple of
points will seem like quite a bargain.

~~~
Rygu
According to you, it's even more racist then. Because, what about the asian
students that come from poverty? Why is the adjustment (still can't believe
they do this) based on ethnicity and not on the parents income or bank
account?

~~~
personlurking
This occurs in Brazil with racial quotas at university. The only problem is
that most Brazilians have some African blood (some say one drop is enough to
claim they are black). It'd make more sense, as you mentioned, if it were
based on income.

