asians-are-smart-deal-with-it: asian-americans & affirmative action

since I seem to be the guy who starts all of ILX's asian & asian american threads why stop now

http://blog.angryasianman.com/2012/10/guest-post-by-carmina-ocampo-top-five.html

http://acpacsje.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/a-real-talk-primer-on-affirmative-action-fisher-college-admissions-and-race/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/opinion/asians-too-smart-for-their-own-good.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/19/fears-of-an-asian-quota-in-the-ivy-league?hp

probably the irony of all this is that white ppl who are against affirmative action talk a lot about 'merit' but if college admissions were truly merit based then white ppl would still get their lunches eaten by all the azns and they would not attain their ultimate goal (more white ppl in college)

(other goal: perpetuating the kyriarchy)

white ppl r dumb

if college admissions were truly merit based then white ppl would still get their lunches eaten by all the azns and they would not attain their ultimate goal (more white ppl in college)

ho ho ho, you nailed us

I got roped into a debate about this article recently:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/

It's long and I see a lot of flaws in the methodology, and some of the conclusions are slightly o_O, but still interesting and worth a read. I see a couple of separate but not unrelated issues: one is how we define merit in the first place. E.g. if Asians overall do better in math and science portions of admissions tests and other groups (e.g. Jews) do better in verbal portions of tests, and Harvard emphasizes the verbal portion more than MIT and CalTech, well, Harvard has a much heavier liberal arts and social sciences bent and MIT and CalTech are science and engineering-oriented schools, and I don't agree with the privileging of math and science "merit" over verbal "merit." If, on the other hand, there are arbitrary standards that are keeping down the numbers of otherwise equally qualified asian students, then obviously fuck that.

I think the latter is much more likely the case

A very good friend of mine works in Harvard admissions and the horror stories she tells us about entitled families who just assume that their wealth will get their kid admitted even though s/he is woefully unqualified are amazing. (Also the financial aid conversations, where families will call up and yell without irony that, since they only make $1 million/year, they are middle class and should qualify for financial aid.)

i read in the chronicle of higher learning just yesterday (fine i just read the headline) that more schools were using "non-cognitive measures" (not test scores) to determine acceptance. i didn't read any more because my school has an open admissions policy, but i bet it would be related to this topic.

http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/chinese-parents-sue-after-2-2-million-consultant-fails-to-get-sons-into-harvard/

If, on the other hand, there are arbitrary standards that are keeping down the numbers of otherwise equally qualified asian students, then obviously fuck that.

― space phwoar (Hurting 2), Tuesday, January 15, 2013 10:09 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think the latter is much more likely the case

― 乒乓, Tuesday, January 15, 2013 10:11 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

all standards are going to be on some level arbitrary / 'equally qualified' is hard to define when we're comparing people with extremely different skills/backgrounds/potential. but it is clear that the arbitrary standards that exist today don't work in the favor of asian american students who go to a public high school. i.e. none of the many forms of affirmative action that exist today (for athletes, legacies, private school kids, rich people and racial minorities) are particularly beneficial for asian americans. you could easily imagine a different set of - equally arbitrary standards - that would benefit asian americans. but they'd still be arbitrary.

yeah I agree w/ that

really we just need to lay to rest the foundational myth of our county that we are a meritocracy

a whiteocracy more like it

it is strange that no matter how many "arbitrary" standards you have they don't seem to militate against traditionally wealthy/powerful sections of a society

well even the arbitrary standards that aren't by nature 'beneficial for the rich' - for example 'meritocratic' SAT etc. scores - can be used to their advantage via personal tutoring etc.

that's true, i just don't believe arbitrary standards are ever really arbitrary

You can make the effort to select bright pupils from struggling schools over high-achieving pupils from private schools, and that works to some degree. There's evidence to suggest that it might not make that much difference in the long term though. State school pupils outperform private school pupils at university in the UK but private school students, presumably through better connections, find it easier to get prestigious graduate jobs. It would be interesting to see some of the principles of affirmative action applied to the workplace.

that american conservative article was weird -- 2/3 of it was about implicit quotas for asian applicants and then suddenly it pivots to "the fault is with the shadowy jewish power structure and the real victims here are non-jewish white people"

jews are just the worst

harvard et al. don't really have incentives to be part of an oligarchic conspiracy but they also don't have incentives to help more middle class asian kids when the opportunity cost is another $100m donation. so you can say the standards are ultimately arbitrary in a way that reflect the interests of the institution (this includes a limited amount of racial affirmative action, which is good PR and allows these places to avoid the trickier subjects because they're already 'doing the right thing')

xp

meanwhile, while we're talking about the weird racial anxieties attached to Asia and cognition, this bit of business from the Edge's "What Should We Be Worried About?" special:

These IQ gene-sets will be found eventually—but will probably be used mostly in China, for China. Potentially, the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximize the intelligence of their offspring by selecting among their own fertilized eggs for the one or two that include the highest likelihood of the highest intelligence. Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of "preimplantation embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness.

http://edge.org/responses/q2013

those

^ classic thread

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/how-americas-top-colleges-reflect-and-massively-distort-the-countrys-racial-evolution/267415/

haha oh Princeton

for an article where he 'let graphs speak for themselves' he made dumb graphs

like, UT has more hispanics than the national average...also...texas has a more hispanics than the national average...which means that they're underrepresented at UT not overrepresented. likewise california has more than twice 'the national average' of asians and hispanics...which put each berkeley graph in a different perspective

My parents were hopeless idealists who believed that education was supposed to make you educated, not wealthy or high status. I say, Harvard and Yale should admit asian-american students to the point where they crowd out almost everyone else, if that's what is fair. it's no skin off my nose. all the saddo rejects can go to Brown U. and be damned.

de facto quotas for asian americans can severely limit the opportunities for asian americans who are part of distinct ethnic subgroups that are separate from east asians or south asians. groups like cambodian americans, laotian americans, hmong americans have really different immigration patterns from other asian americans - in fact, iirc, almost all of them are refugees from the fallout of the vietnamese war. when they immigrated they were handled by the us government but in ways that were really... not opportune. i think 'smart' admissions departments probably have ways of allowing for diversity at this level through inferring from surnames, maybe, or maybe they have an open-ended ethnicity box or something. but i think in general it's really easy to look at a university's demographics and say "wow, 20% asian american? way overrepresented!" and move on.

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did i not start a thread on this?

― the late great, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean there was something ridiculous like 10 afrocaribbean students in a single year compared to 30 people from eton or whatever

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah we did discuss it and the bias against east asians at ivies etc was prima facie clear iirc

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

even within east asian and south asian communities there are huge gaps between those who are skilled professionals who migrated over during times of oppressive political climate or limited opportunity and those who are economic immigrants (i.e. from the coastal regions). it seemed that all the asian americans i knew at yale had parents who were doctors, scientists, researchers.

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xxp - I don't think the quotas work the same way now as they did back in the day where there were official quotas on the number of jewish students.

― You must be very cold in the sack. (sarahell), Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the landscape of asian in america changed dramatically after 1965 when the de facto ban on asian immigration was lifted by new federal legislation. coincidentally that's also around the time of the cultural revolution etc.

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no they're soft quotas, and they're not reachable by law at most private universities. but it's been statistically proven that asian americans have to score 100-150 higher on sats than a white student to get admitted

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:23 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

white ppl r dumb

― You must be very cold in the sack. (sarahell), Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're right though that the 'holistic' admissions process that lessened the focus on raw testing scores was implemented to keep the number of jewish students down

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

white people have other valuable things to offer universities, such as rich parents and lacrosse skills

― iatee, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's been said that affirmative action or diversity concerns for underrepresented minorities takes away from spots for asian americans. that's not true. letting in more white kids takes away spots from deserving asian american students.

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and everybody else. except white kids.

― contenderizer, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thank u all very much for listening. if u have any questions now is the time to ask

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:27 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i am white btw

― You must be very cold in the sack. (sarahell), Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:27 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well there is a quota for white kids, it's just a big quota

― iatee, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:27 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, we're not really taught to think of the admission of white kids as fulfilling a 'quota' - it's easier to assume that they got there by their merits & dedication to hard work & overcoming adversity

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you post about college stuff a lot

― You must be very cold in the sack. (sarahell), Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is v much a disinterested view from afar so caveat lector but american elite private college admissions both historically and currently seem centred on creating an ideal type of student coterie rather than seriously addressing socioeconomic disparity, so they seek a platonically apt proportion of this or that subgroup (not just races but athletes, legacies, science bros etc)

hence the headline figure of black students which might seem quite 'reasonable', even if there are a lot of people like my friend (the scion of nigerian oil trader) who mostly idled through school in england while the chance of someone going from whichever deprived inner city suburb to columbia is still fairly remote

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

american elite private college admissions both historically and currently seem centred on creating an ideal type of student coterie rather than seriously addressing socioeconomic disparity, so they seek a platonically apt proportion of this or that subgroup (not just races but athletes, legacies, science bros etc)

"platonically apt proportion" = 'diversity.' don't get me wrong, i'm a huge fan of the concept but i acknowledge that we really only talk about this stuff in terms of 'diversity' because we're no longer allowed to think about racial make-up in terms of remediation for past historical discrimination and continuing structural discrimination that still exists

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the concept of diversity was iirc pioneered by harvard and other elite colleges in the 80s when it looked like racial quotas were not gonna be upheld by courts? i dunno if the ivy league ever practiced *real* affirmative action in their admissions.

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it tends to just end up being mostly upper and upper-middle class kids of whatever racial background -- like when I went to college and realized how many of my classmates' parents were professors, all I could think of was "reproducing the means of production"

― You must be very cold in the sack. (sarahell), Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not in their economic interests to practice real affirmative action, it is good pr to practice a tiny bit

― iatee, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is p much what 'diversity' means to white ppl, a heuristic to solve the aesthetic affront of having 100% white people, which might be predicated to some degree on guilt but isn't essentially about justice

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

http://i.imgur.com/hj3fe1D.png

'hmong'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_people

yeah i googled it a few seconds after i posted it because i realised i was being that guy

poverty is very high hmong them

the largest Hmong community in the US is in the Twin Cities, which is the main reason I know about them

xp

dude

yeah the hmong refugee immigration was handled by the us government who stuck them in the midwest

I actually know two of General Vang Pao's sons (not that big a deal, he had quite a few of them). When he passed a few years ago it was kind of a huge event in Manitowoc and Sheboygan.

when i went to see room 237, there was a short mini-doc that showed beforehand about the plight of iraqis who had cooperated with the US during the war... basically the bar for them to legally immigrate to the US is very high, and there's no political willpower to pass something like the refugee immigration acts in the 70s and 80s that allowed southeast asians to immigrate over. i think the fear is that you dont want to be the guy who signed off on the bill that POTENTIALLY LETS TERRORISTS IN. so iraqis who helped the US have been systematically targeted + tortured + killed by insurgent groups inside iraq, it's p terrible. reminds me a lil of the hmong american immigration history

I wonder how much of the hmong poverty is due to being sent to like fresno/detroit

would be interesting to see stats on social mobility for those groups as well - poverty among first generation vs. non first generation

I remember visiting relatives in wisconsin about 20 years ago and hearing them talking about "mongs" and at first I thought they were using some kind of horrible ethnic slur.

i read a book about communications difficulties between hmong refugees in california and the medical community there called the spirit catches you and you fall down (three guesses!) and it was rly interesting

Excellent book. Been assigned to classes on reserve here for a while which is how I learned about it (seeing I'm the reserves guy).

that's a really great title

I have heard of that book before; think it's been mentioned on ilx somewhere before

ugh, what a sad story

yeah but he wanted to get into all of them

because Penn wasn't good enough apparently

Come on dude college campuses are filled to the brim with underachieving white ppl who are legacies / go to feeder schools / paid $$$$ to college admissions prep counselors / are athletes / etc.

harvard doesnt want white people like this either tho

I feel like this guy should be disqualified just on grounds of having taken both the ACT and the SAT. Who loves standardized tests that much?

They still take them to make sure alumni donations are up to par

People who know they can't rely on extracurricular factors like rich parents and legacies? xp

My best friend tutors UES white kids exclusively in NYC and the stories he tells of the deals they cut w/ ivy league schools to get admission

yeah that was my point, harvard doesnt want middle class strivers with great test scores regardless of race.

i mean i also wonder how much mike wang would want go to a harvard w/o any well-connected idiots? americas oligarchy is just as capable of ensuring its continuity at connecticut college as it as at yale

the stories he tells of the deals they cut w/ ivy league schools to get admission

As a guy who lives in the Midwest and is very aware of how hard it is for extremely smart HS kids here to get into Harvard, please tell me more

Drop out/transfer rate at Ivies after freshman year is pretty significant iirc.

Retention rate after freshman year at Harvard is 97%. http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/harvard-university/academic-life/graduation-and-retention/#

My best friend tutors UES white kids exclusively in NYC and the stories he tells of the deals they cut w/ ivy league schools to get admission

I have a friend from undergrad who works for Harvard admissions and she openly laughs at these people and calls them morons with too much money.

wonder what will happen when john paulson's kids apply, she'll laugh at them too I bet

If they aren't qualified, she will.

Of course, Harvard's applicant pool allows it to craft the shape of its student body down to the millimeter. Even the other Ivies can't laugh at rich morons with as much impunity as Harvard can.

As a guy who lives in the Midwest and is very aware of how hard it is for extremely smart HS kids here to get into Harvard, please tell me more

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, June 9, 2015 10:30 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

Don't really want to divulge too much on a public forum

I would say that yr average midwestern applicant probably has 'geographical diversity' going for him but not by much, it's probably a bigger effect for the Southern states

Why would anyone from the South care about Harvard, they're not even BCS.

Of course, Harvard's applicant pool allows it to craft the shape of its student body down to the millimeter. Even the other Ivies can't laugh at rich morons with as much impunity as Harvard can.

― Aimless, Tuesday, 9 June 2015 18:24 (41 minutes ago)

Kushner is the eldest son of Seryl (née Stadtmauer) and the New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner.[1][2] He was raised Orthodox Jewish in northern New Jersey.[3] He graduated from the Frisch School, a private, coed yeshiva high school in Paramus, New Jersey, and from Harvard University in 2003. His father had made a $2.5 million donation to the university.[4]

he met Harvard's criteria, obv

dude you're just wrong on the numbers here. a 2230 salutatorian is average or lower stats at an ivy, with urms included.

i'm sure there are asian students out there who deserve white students' spots, he's just not one of them

― een, Tuesday, June 2, 2015 2:10 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

Lol so 'average asians' can't get into Ivy's? Fuck off, average white ppl go to Ivy's all the time

― 龜, Tuesday, June 2, 2015 7:23 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"average or lower" was too nice: a 2230 salutatorian is considerably below average for a non-urm student at an ivy league school.

reducing an applicant to their grades and test scores is troubling. but 1.) colleges obviously do this to everyone regardless of race, and 2.) it's a strange argument for Mike Wang to make, because it seems like his whole claim to being discriminated against is that his grades and scores were the same or better as those of white people who got into schools he wanted to get into (which again, go to collegeboard and look up the statistics on SAT scores by race, then go look at the average SAT scores at ivy league schools, then go look at the percentages of asians and white people admitted to ivy league schools, is not true).

that people are able to buy their way into college is horrifying. again i'm failing to see what this has to do with differentiating asian and white applicants. asian americans are wealthier than white americans on average (look it up, that's true too), and they make donations to colleges all the time.

maybe the component of your argument i missed is that historically speaking the way white people got the money they have right now was much more unfair than the way asian people got the money they have right now. i don't think any fair minded person could disagree with that. i would say that this is not just a good reason asian applicants should be treated the same as white applicants, but that it means asian people should receive preferential aa-type treatment over white people in the admissions process.

legacies (as in, in a tie-break situation, admitting one student over another solely because his parent went to the same school) are also atrociously inappropriate as a consideration in college admissions. i can't think of any way to research whether or not legacies still impact college decisionmaking. nevertheless i'm pretty comfortable assuming that they do, and if that's true it's fucked up.

Lol what. Your arguments are so bad

asian americans are wealthier than white americans on average (look it up, that's true too)

http://i.imgur.com/hj3fe1D.png

That's as of 2000. Even if asians are slightly wealther on average than whites now it's only because they aggregate all asian americans together without accounting for subethnic groups within the asian american population

i would say that this is not just a good reason asian applicants should be treated the same as white applicants, but that it means asian people should receive preferential aa-type treatment over white people in the admissions process.

Yes this is exactly my point. Admit asians over white ppl every day of the week

You're acting like the bottom 25% of Ivies are made up only of URMs. That's simply not true, tons of mediocre white kids in there too

Based on SAT score obv

and they make donations to colleges all the time.

Man no asian americans in the US are throwing around money like Pulitzers, Bernsteins, Mellons (to name a few families who sent kid to the ivy i went to)

Picking an Ivy at random 2230 puts this guy right in the middle of Columbia's middle 50% between 2150 and 2320 http://undergrad.admissions.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/classof2017_profile.pdf

IDK where you're getting ex-URM numbers. You probably have friends in an admissions office, maybe

he got into princeton. he has no case

lacrosse

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21669595-asian-americans-are-united-states-most-successful-minority-they-are-complaining-ever

itt we confuse over 3 billion people with the highest-achieving thousands sprung off mostly of the self-selecting 20 million who, often with means or a job offer, jumped the backyard pond

oh i didn't realize there were 3 billion Asian Americans

oh i didn't realize the thread title said "asian americans are smart"

that's cause you're a dullard

rly enjoying listening to wesley yang discuss entrance to stuyvesant on this wk's longform podcast. tangentially fascinated hearing his thoughts on language, delivered in incredibly balanced clause-ridden paragraphs

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/opinion/stuyvesant-new-york-schools-de-blasio.html

I support this policy. tell me why I’m wrong

I'm half asian and made the mistake of putting ssian on my college applications. It worked against me for 2 schools. I still support the above though. (I actually turned down one school because when I visited...too many asians).

ssian=asian...derp

Lol, I never considered before whether ticking that box could work against me when it comes to job applications. (I imagine no.)

I remember my guidance counselor called one school to find out, because it was like that asian guy above who wanted to get into all the ivy schools: weighted above 4.4 gpa, salutorian, national awards, clubs, sports, nailed my interviews. The school told her it was because I was ranked against the other asians. I was mad at the time but whatever. Part of education is being around different people. But yeah, my old boss (who was also asian american) and I used to take long lunches from our corporate job because "white people are slow" and we didn't understand why it took them so long to do everything. We had a lot of spare time.

There are billions of Asians. Some of them must be a bit slow, too.

Oh yeah, my brothers are really not bright. One's a cop.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-secret-joke-at-the-heart-of-the-harvard-affirmative-action-case

well, there is an awful lot to chew on here

Trying to parse this part, I have no idea what the author is suggesting here:

This raises complicated questions about how we define racial discrimination—if white applicants are implicitly favored over Asian American ones, is it right to place the blame for that on race-conscious affirmative action? Or does that instead suggest that an even more transparent consideration of race for underrepresented minorities could help reduce the risk of hidden discrimination against racial minorities who are overrepresented?

I struggled with that as well

I just read it five times and need someone to break it down for me more better

"should we blame affirmative action for 'prioritizing white people' over Asian Americans? ...just kidding, we don't actually give it a shit, but it's a good wedge for us to kill the whole thing and bring it back to the way it was before."

the origin of the term "affirmative action" was simply a description of the sorts of action that would be necessary to redress the effects of nationwide organized injustice and oppression against racial minorities, in a federal court ruling that such organized oppression was illegal and could not be addressed simply by repealing unjust laws that had done massive continuing damage to whole populations for centuries.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/nyregion/specialized-high-schools-black-students-stuyvesant.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

this is seems like something that can’t possibly continue forever

Thought this affirmative action revive might be about: Civil service interns must be working class, government says

The aims and objectives seem good - but having dabbled in the CS and observed its senior management, I have zero confidence that this will be run effectively.

yeah kevin k, i read that article and found it mildly disturbing, to say the least.