4 ms·

This is a symptom of quota system that many schools and companies use to achieve diversity. Unfortunately, as Asian American, I have experienced it firsthand. A

This is a symptom of quota system that many schools and companies use to achieve diversity. Unfortunately, as Asian American, I have experienced it firsthand. Asian Americans are some of highest achieving minority, but due to their smaller number there is not enough quotas allocated to them. Many of my friends could not get into their first choice colleges or didn't get scholarships even with perfect grades, extracurricular activities, etc but some of my friends from other larger minority groups got full scholarships even with average GPAs. They laughed at us for working so hard, called us geeks, and then got scholarships because of only ethnicity. I know this is controversial topic, hence, throwaway account. But this is open secret in Asian communities. Hopefully, this lawsuit will change this ridiculous discriminatory quota system.

ryuker16 10y ago
Hiring asians count towards the quota i believe.
eruditely 10y ago
It's the politics of new england. Only once that very same ethnicity is functionally dealt with, will anything change, they prefer their preferred minorities to us.
jonnybgood 10y ago
> then got scholarships because of only ethnicity. Are you absolutely certain of that? How did you know?
- EJTH 10y ago
  I am not American. But don't you guys have that "affirmative action" thing, especially for the african american demographic?
  - GBond 10y ago
    Most top tier universities don't consider asian-americans as under-represented minorities and even hold higher standards via unwritten caps for the number of AAs admitted.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  Generally, under affirmative action programmes and the like, nobody gets anything “just because of their ethnicity”. Rather, they may be given slightly reduced entry requirements, for example, to compensate for their background potentially disadvantaging them.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    1.0 lower on GPA (e.g. 2.5 vs 3.5) is "slightly reduced entry requirements"? http://web.archive.org/web/20080423221308/http://www.umich.edu/~mrev/archives/1999/summer/chart.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20080423221308/http://www.umich.e...
    - rmxt 10y ago
      Surely college admissions procedures have changed significantly in the intervening 17 years, right? We're talking about the advent and removal of the 2400 point SAT, the rise of digital applications, and the rise of SAT subject tests, among other changes. Furthermore, this specific point system in question was ruled unconstitutional and is no longer in use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger
      - yummyfajitas 10y ago
        It's possible that the same organizations which were found directly discriminating on race, and desperately resist any transparency (both before and after), have secretly reformed. It's also possible that admissions numbers didn't change a lot because "holistic" admissions discovered previously unmeasurable mitigating factors for blacks having low SAT/grades/etc. And in yet another major coincidence, these systems also discovered that Asians are inferior in similarly unquantifiable ways, resulting in Asians who are admitted having SAT scores 450 pts higher than blacks and 140 pts higher than whites. I don't find this particularly likely, however. Do you?
        burkaman 10y ago
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  One can't be 100% certain of anything. However, between 2/3 and 5/6 of black students at top colleges probably would have been rejected under a meritocratic admission system. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11904256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11904256 Similarly, it's established that Asians tend to meet a much higher SAT cutoff than blacks and whites. http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/asian-american/article-admission.aspx http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/asian-... It's pretty safe to say that most blacks at Harvard don't deserve to be there and it probably should be an Asian in their place. You just can't say which specific blacks and Asians it should be.
  - burkaman 10y ago
    I don't think you can jump straight from "some people benefit from affirmative action" to "they don't deserve to be there". Obviously supporters of affirmative action do think they deserve to be there, despite their lower test scores, and it's worth at least considering that point of view.
eruditely 10y ago
by the way, it's not dutch, or germans that are the problem, it's just anglo-saxons.

ryuker16 10y ago

Hiring asians count towards the quota i believe.

eruditely 10y ago

It's the politics of new england. Only once that very same ethnicity is functionally dealt with, will anything change, they prefer their preferred minorities to us.

jonnybgood 10y ago

> then got scholarships because of only ethnicity. Are you absolutely certain of that? How did you know?

EJTH 10y ago
I am not American. But don't you guys have that "affirmative action" thing, especially for the african american demographic?
- GBond 10y ago
  Most top tier universities don't consider asian-americans as under-represented minorities and even hold higher standards via unwritten caps for the number of AAs admitted.
TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
Generally, under affirmative action programmes and the like, nobody gets anything “just because of their ethnicity”. Rather, they may be given slightly reduced entry requirements, for example, to compensate for their background potentially disadvantaging them.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  1.0 lower on GPA (e.g. 2.5 vs 3.5) is "slightly reduced entry requirements"? http://web.archive.org/web/20080423221308/http://www.umich.edu/~mrev/archives/1999/summer/chart.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20080423221308/http://www.umich.e...
  - rmxt 10y ago
    Surely college admissions procedures have changed significantly in the intervening 17 years, right? We're talking about the advent and removal of the 2400 point SAT, the rise of digital applications, and the rise of SAT subject tests, among other changes. Furthermore, this specific point system in question was ruled unconstitutional and is no longer in use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      It's possible that the same organizations which were found directly discriminating on race, and desperately resist any transparency (both before and after), have secretly reformed. It's also possible that admissions numbers didn't change a lot because "holistic" admissions discovered previously unmeasurable mitigating factors for blacks having low SAT/grades/etc. And in yet another major coincidence, these systems also discovered that Asians are inferior in similarly unquantifiable ways, resulting in Asians who are admitted having SAT scores 450 pts higher than blacks and 140 pts higher than whites. I don't find this particularly likely, however. Do you?
      - burkaman 10y ago
yummyfajitas 10y ago
One can't be 100% certain of anything. However, between 2/3 and 5/6 of black students at top colleges probably would have been rejected under a meritocratic admission system. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11904256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11904256 Similarly, it's established that Asians tend to meet a much higher SAT cutoff than blacks and whites. http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/asian-american/article-admission.aspx http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/asian-... It's pretty safe to say that most blacks at Harvard don't deserve to be there and it probably should be an Asian in their place. You just can't say which specific blacks and Asians it should be.
- burkaman 10y ago
  I don't think you can jump straight from "some people benefit from affirmative action" to "they don't deserve to be there". Obviously supporters of affirmative action do think they deserve to be there, despite their lower test scores, and it's worth at least considering that point of view.

eruditely 10y ago

by the way, it's not dutch, or germans that are the problem, it's just anglo-saxons.