5 ms·

I don't understand why they require ethnic proportions to stay close to population averages. They don't reject high-performance black athletes for lower perfor

by narkee 15y ago

I don't understand why they require ethnic proportions to stay close to population averages. They don't reject high-performance black athletes for lower performing, asian athletes. I've never once heard anyone complain that their university's football team had a disproportionate number of non-asian people. Serious double standard there.

sliverstorm 15y ago
So that they can tell the public, "Look! We're not racist!" Even though they are pretty much making racist choices, the public is happy with it. Look not without, but within, for the enemy is us.
- reinhardt 15y ago
  Indeed, the myth of equality across racial and cultural lines must be protected at any cost.
  - barrkel 15y ago
    The myth of equality of opportunity is indeed to be protected; but it is a myth, because uncountably more opportunities are afforded to the children of the privileged - things like affirmative action are tiny in the overall scale. I really don't like what you are insinuating. You appear to be implying that some people are inferior due to the ancestry of their parents, or the daily practices of their parents. You should learn something: that variance within groups is far larger than variance in the averages of groups; and thus race and culture are poor signals for use in judgement. To protect against this bias, we do hold to equality across racial and cultural lines; to do otherwise, is to be racist and simply morally wrong.
    - yummyfajitas 15y ago
      You appear to be implying that some people are inferior due to the ancestry of their parents, or the daily practices of their parents. No, the implication is that P(inferior | race X) != P(inferior | race Y). ...we do hold to equality across racial and cultural lines; There are two types of equality under discussion: a) Statistical equality - P(Q > cutoff | race X) == cdf(Q > cutoff| race Y), where Q is some quality measure which is not a function of race. b) Equality of treatment - using the same cutoff value for race X and race Y. Which type of equality are you referring to?
      - barrkel 15y ago
        I'm referring to "equality" in this statement: Indeed, the myth of equality across racial and cultural lines must be protected at any cost. and trying to tease out its meaning in the context at hand. The context at hand appears to be in making decisions about people's lives. I don't see how to read it in any other way than "people should discriminate on the basis of race and culture"; and given reinhardt's previous comment against positive discrimination, he can only mean negative discrimination. Statistical equality does not seem relevant at all; I don't know why you brought it up. I'm suspicious that you are dissembling.
        yummyfajitas 15y ago
        I interpreted "equality" in reinhardt's statement to mean statistical equality. Statistical equality is an empirical claim - if people wrongly believe it to be true, it would be a "myth".
    - skeptical 15y ago
      I don't want to take either side, but it sounds like you have a huge taboo that you want to put to bed by saying 'I don't like what you are insinuating'. I'm not taking neither reinhardt's nor your side. But this 'don't touch this subject because it's sensitive' strategy is getting old and pretty ridiculous to resource to. A few lines after you wrote this __You should learn something: that variance within groups is far larger than variance in the averages of groups; and thus race and culture are poor signals for use in judgement.__ So, race and culture are poor signals for use in judgement, but you still admit that they are signals (poor or not) and that their averages does vary, even if less than within the group. All I can conclude is that you are afraid to touch the subject. You start by saying that it doesn't exist then you prove it is not relevant. That is not coherent, you can't believe them both because they are exclusive. Not saying that I agree or disagree with you, but if we're going to have discussions about this topic we're getting nowhere if we're stuck to the old taboos.
      - barrkel 15y ago
        I think taboos exist for very good reasons. The fact that something is a taboo does not, in and of itself, mean that it needs to be challenged. The problem is that very few people are rational. There are a lot of people who gain courage to do very unpleasant things once they've heard arguments that they can use as internal justifications, when they are not themselves sophisticated enough to understand how sound the arguments are. I live in a poor area of London. Racism isn't an abstract taboo; it's a daily sight, and it's disturbing to hear the rationales some people come out with. It's clear they didn't come up with it themselves.
        skeptical 15y ago
        I completely disagree with you. You might want whatever taboos you like, I'm ok with that and won't challenge them. But heck, if you are going to discuss something then you must be free of taboos in that particular mater, or else your opinion is just bananas. I mean, of what value is your opinion on something you're afraid of talking about? EDIT: I don't want to be a downvote bitch. But it I am noticing my comments on this thread are all downvoted. I guess some people has the taboo so strongly imprinted on their minds that they don't even want me to mention it.
    - sliverstorm 15y ago
      I really don't like what you are insinuating. You appear to be implying that some people are inferior due to the ancestry of their parents Is this just willful blindness? Do you really believe all ethnicity are perfectly matched in their potential? It's hard to study academia because we don't understand the brain well enough, but do a little reading about ethnicity and genetics as it relates to sports.
      - barrkel 15y ago
        I don't think "all ethnicity are perfectly matched in their potential" is an interesting statement one way or the other. I believe individuals are more interesting than arbitrarily chosen groups. I believe we should judge people on their own merits, rather than choosing groups, taking averages of those groups, and then using those groups to make judgements.
        sliverstorm 15y ago
        While I am all for treating individuals as individuals, this discussion thread is not about individuals, it is about groups.
        barrkel 15y ago
        I thought the thread was about college admissions, which at their best, really ought to be about individuals, not groups.
        sliverstorm 15y ago
        Perhaps in an ideal world, but for better or worse we're currently stuck with everyone looking at ethnic distributions and being really upset about them. Affirmative action, for example, is probably the counterpoint to admissions being about individuals...
      - chegra84 15y ago
        "In the mosaic of America, three groups that have been unusually successful are Asian-Americans, Jews and West Indian blacks — and in that there may be some lessons for the rest of us." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=kristof&st=cse http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=... "Do African immigrants make the smartest Americans? The question may sound outlandish, but if you were judging by statistics alone, you could find plenty of evidence to back it up. In a side-by-side comparison of 2000 census data by sociologist John R. Logan at the Mumford Center, State University of New York at Albany, black immigrants from Africa average the highest educational attainment of any population group in the country, including whites and Asians." http://thesouthern.com/news/opinion/editorial/page/article_2b589221-b917-54e5-a6b6-b57e3c25bf63.html http://thesouthern.com/news/opinion/editorial/page/article_2... I think it is more cultural than genetics.
    - abracat1 15y ago
      > You should learn something: that variance within groups is far larger than variance in the averages of groups; and thus race and culture are poor signals for use in judgement. To protect against this bias, we do hold to equality across racial and cultural lines; to do otherwise, is to be racist and simply morally wrong. I don't want to take sides in this debate, but I often see your above post appearing on debates about this issue. Can you explain what your first three sentences even mean? It is basically vague, ambigiuous and devoid of any meaning (while sounding academic - perfect for online debates). That spiel is known as Lewtonin's Fallacy (please look it up). PS: typed from cellphone so please forgive typos.
BlackJack 15y ago
That is simply wrong. US Population: White - 72.4 % Black or African American - 12.6 Asian - 4.8 Some other race - 6.2 Source: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf Princeton class profile: African America - 7.4 Asian - 18.6 Hispanic - 7.1 etc. Source: http://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/admission_statistics/ http://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/admi... Asians are "overrepresented minorities", or ORM's, by admission standards because, in Princeton anyways, the ratios are nearly 4x the population average.
- narkee 15y ago
  I understand they're overrepresented. What I meant was why is that a problem? According to the article, that degree of over-representation (relative to population) is below what it would be, given a completely blind admissions process. So why not have 25% asian population? What's the problem? On the other hand, why isn't anyone saying there is a problem with ORM in football?
  - BlackJack 15y ago
    Ah okay, I fully agree then. One issue is that you want a "diversity of interests" on a college campus, but there is no evidence to convincingly say that schools would be more or less diverse if we admitted people in a race-blind manner.
    - sirclueless 15y ago
      Diversity of interests wasn't always a priority in college admissions though. Malcolm Gladwell has a good piece on how the current Ivy League admission focus on non-academic indicators was originally a racially driven policy. One could make a good case that "diversity of interests" is a policy put in place to ensure that highly performing performing demographic can dominate admissions. I imagine colleges con't want that to happen because it would jeopardize the long-term health of their institution. Malcolm Gladwell's article is here: http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html
jpdoctor 15y ago
> I don't understand why they require ethnic proportions to stay close to population averages. Thank god, I hope it means the world is a different place. First, I'm guessing you're about 30 yo. (Sorry if I'm way off.) When I applied to colleges in late 1981, there were still some dumbass amounts of discrimination for being black. Affirmative action occurred in the 60s/70s to try and rectify some of that. It was a given back then that admissions would overlook somewhat lower SATs if you were otherwise promising, and if you could be identified as being from a disadvantaged background. The downside was that some completely kickass guys I knew felt that they had been admitted because of their skin color. I assume there's still discrimination out there, but perhaps it's a lot less than 30 years ago.
- reinhardt 15y ago
  The more common downside is that some qualified guys are passed up in favor of others that are just "promising" but have the right skin color.
  - jpdoctor 15y ago
    I chose my above words carefully: It was an issue of SATs, not qualifications in general. Prior to affirmative action, SATs were the be-all-and-end-all of equilibration for GPAs; A GPA of 3.9 at the Bronx school of science was not the same as 3.9 at Rural High. Along came some studies showing that the SATs (esp English) had some cultural biases. The admissions depts were truly trying to figure out: Which candidates will have the biggest impact after graduation? SATs were called into question as a predictor of that, and that "standardized" tests were maybe not so standard after all.
    - gujk 15y ago
      Also which candidates have the greatest opportunity for growth by attending that school vs not. Global opitimization can mean admitting a slightly less accomplished student who will do better with that degree than without, where a more accomplished high school will end up at the same academic/professional outcome even without the special support from the institution.
calibraxis 15y ago
To help ensure university doesn't look as racially and sexually homogenous as the tech industry?
- JVirissimo 15y ago
  Are you bothered when professional sports leagues are racially homogeneous? Would you prefer that they practice affirmative action?
  - hackinthebochs 15y ago
    Professional sports leagues aren't the keys to wealth and power in this country. That's why there's a big fuss over college admissions and not about sports.
    - reinhardt 15y ago
      No, there's no big fuss about sports because an affirmative-action-privileged race happens to be superior in this area.
      - hackinthebochs 15y ago
        I'm failing to find a more colorful way to put this so here it is plainly: One becomes an affirmative-action-privileged race precisely because there are systematic barriers to the keys to wealth and power. If sports were that, and there were systematic barriers to it, we would be having this same discussion about Asians. Being good at sports is overall irrelevant to wealth and power in this country. This stuff isn't hard.
wan23 15y ago
That's not really a good comparison. In both cases they're trying to put together the best team. Right or wrong, the idea is that having diversity of experiences improves the academic experience for everyone. I don't know why people have such a hard time understanding this. It's fair to disagree with the idea, but it's completely different from racism.
- narkee 15y ago
  Actually that's exactly racism. In this case, the assumption is that asian are a homogenous group, and that having a class full of asians in necessarily not diverse. That's in line with the "violin playing automatons" perception of asian students. Why is it not possible to have diversity of experience without artificially restricting access by race. The assumption that people of a certain race are defined by the same experiences is exactly racism.
  - hackinthebochs 15y ago
    >The assumption that people of a certain race are defined by the same experiences is exactly racism That's not what's being implied, nor is that implication racist. What's implied is that people of a similar ethnicity who have similar profiles on a college application probably have a similar backgrounds. This is both logical and entirely not racist.
sirclueless 15y ago
When someone offers the opinion that rejecting high-performing Asians is a "serious double standard" I ask myself a few questions. Do Asians have considerably higher academic performance than most other ethnic groups? Yes, they do. Do I believe Asian people are inherently more intelligent and capable? No, I do not. Do I think that colleges should admit students based on academic performance or intelligence and capability? I think intelligence and capability are clearly more important qualities. The only conclusion I can draw is that academic performance is clearly a bad indicator in some ways, if it so severely favors one racial group. Therefore colleges' unwillingness to judge Asians with the same standards of academic performance is a reasonable policy to me.
- doktrin 15y ago
  This is plain silly. How do you plan to measure "intelligence and capability"? By this logic, a brilliant-slacker-underachiever should be the most sought after candidate. Who cares about results, after all, when all that matters is someone's raw intelligence (regardless of whether or not it has been or will be applied to anything at all).
- Atropos 15y ago
  I somewhat agree with you, however I do not know the US system very well. In Germany university admission is done by grades alone; however we don't really have elite universities like the ivies, but all universities are at a rather mediocre level. For example I could have easily gone to med school with my grades, which is one of the majors with the higher grade cutoffs, but it is maybe open for the top 10-15%? At this level I don't believe parental involvement matters too much, everyone at age 18-19 is mature enough to know: OK, if I want to study medicine, I should try to get these grades etc... But if admission is based in the 99,99% area, I don't know if a system based on merit alone is "fair". If I look at areas like competitive sports or piano competitions etc., I would believe at least 2/3 of the contestants at the national stage had "helicopter parents" relentlessly pushing them, often against their own will... So having a "tiger mom" simply gives you a huge competitive advantage over "normal" kids/families. So if your system is based on ideas like affirmative action, where people from disadvantage backgrounds get a boost, it seems sensible to give people from advantageous backgrounds a detriment.

by narkee 15y ago

sliverstorm 15y ago

So that they can tell the public, "Look! We're not racist!" Even though they are pretty much making racist choices, the public is happy with it. Look not without, but within, for the enemy is us.

reinhardt 15y ago
Indeed, the myth of equality across racial and cultural lines must be protected at any cost.
- barrkel 15y ago
  The myth of equality of opportunity is indeed to be protected; but it is a myth, because uncountably more opportunities are afforded to the children of the privileged - things like affirmative action are tiny in the overall scale. I really don't like what you are insinuating. You appear to be implying that some people are inferior due to the ancestry of their parents, or the daily practices of their parents. You should learn something: that variance within groups is far larger than variance in the averages of groups; and thus race and culture are poor signals for use in judgement. To protect against this bias, we do hold to equality across racial and cultural lines; to do otherwise, is to be racist and simply morally wrong.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    You appear to be implying that some people are inferior due to the ancestry of their parents, or the daily practices of their parents. No, the implication is that P(inferior | race X) != P(inferior | race Y). ...we do hold to equality across racial and cultural lines; There are two types of equality under discussion: a) Statistical equality - P(Q > cutoff | race X) == cdf(Q > cutoff| race Y), where Q is some quality measure which is not a function of race. b) Equality of treatment - using the same cutoff value for race X and race Y. Which type of equality are you referring to?
    - barrkel 15y ago
      I'm referring to "equality" in this statement: Indeed, the myth of equality across racial and cultural lines must be protected at any cost. and trying to tease out its meaning in the context at hand. The context at hand appears to be in making decisions about people's lives. I don't see how to read it in any other way than "people should discriminate on the basis of race and culture"; and given reinhardt's previous comment against positive discrimination, he can only mean negative discrimination. Statistical equality does not seem relevant at all; I don't know why you brought it up. I'm suspicious that you are dissembling.
      - yummyfajitas 15y ago
        I interpreted "equality" in reinhardt's statement to mean statistical equality. Statistical equality is an empirical claim - if people wrongly believe it to be true, it would be a "myth".
  - skeptical 15y ago
    I don't want to take either side, but it sounds like you have a huge taboo that you want to put to bed by saying 'I don't like what you are insinuating'. I'm not taking neither reinhardt's nor your side. But this 'don't touch this subject because it's sensitive' strategy is getting old and pretty ridiculous to resource to. A few lines after you wrote this __You should learn something: that variance within groups is far larger than variance in the averages of groups; and thus race and culture are poor signals for use in judgement.__ So, race and culture are poor signals for use in judgement, but you still admit that they are signals (poor or not) and that their averages does vary, even if less than within the group. All I can conclude is that you are afraid to touch the subject. You start by saying that it doesn't exist then you prove it is not relevant. That is not coherent, you can't believe them both because they are exclusive. Not saying that I agree or disagree with you, but if we're going to have discussions about this topic we're getting nowhere if we're stuck to the old taboos.
    - barrkel 15y ago
      I think taboos exist for very good reasons. The fact that something is a taboo does not, in and of itself, mean that it needs to be challenged. The problem is that very few people are rational. There are a lot of people who gain courage to do very unpleasant things once they've heard arguments that they can use as internal justifications, when they are not themselves sophisticated enough to understand how sound the arguments are. I live in a poor area of London. Racism isn't an abstract taboo; it's a daily sight, and it's disturbing to hear the rationales some people come out with. It's clear they didn't come up with it themselves.
      - skeptical 15y ago
        I completely disagree with you. You might want whatever taboos you like, I'm ok with that and won't challenge them. But heck, if you are going to discuss something then you must be free of taboos in that particular mater, or else your opinion is just bananas. I mean, of what value is your opinion on something you're afraid of talking about? EDIT: I don't want to be a downvote bitch. But it I am noticing my comments on this thread are all downvoted. I guess some people has the taboo so strongly imprinted on their minds that they don't even want me to mention it.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    I really don't like what you are insinuating. You appear to be implying that some people are inferior due to the ancestry of their parents Is this just willful blindness? Do you really believe all ethnicity are perfectly matched in their potential? It's hard to study academia because we don't understand the brain well enough, but do a little reading about ethnicity and genetics as it relates to sports.
    - barrkel 15y ago
      I don't think "all ethnicity are perfectly matched in their potential" is an interesting statement one way or the other. I believe individuals are more interesting than arbitrarily chosen groups. I believe we should judge people on their own merits, rather than choosing groups, taking averages of those groups, and then using those groups to make judgements.
      - sliverstorm 15y ago
        While I am all for treating individuals as individuals, this discussion thread is not about individuals, it is about groups.
        barrkel 15y ago
        I thought the thread was about college admissions, which at their best, really ought to be about individuals, not groups.
        sliverstorm 15y ago
        Perhaps in an ideal world, but for better or worse we're currently stuck with everyone looking at ethnic distributions and being really upset about them. Affirmative action, for example, is probably the counterpoint to admissions being about individuals...
    - chegra84 15y ago
      "In the mosaic of America, three groups that have been unusually successful are Asian-Americans, Jews and West Indian blacks — and in that there may be some lessons for the rest of us." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=kristof&st=cse http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=... "Do African immigrants make the smartest Americans? The question may sound outlandish, but if you were judging by statistics alone, you could find plenty of evidence to back it up. In a side-by-side comparison of 2000 census data by sociologist John R. Logan at the Mumford Center, State University of New York at Albany, black immigrants from Africa average the highest educational attainment of any population group in the country, including whites and Asians." http://thesouthern.com/news/opinion/editorial/page/article_2b589221-b917-54e5-a6b6-b57e3c25bf63.html http://thesouthern.com/news/opinion/editorial/page/article_2... I think it is more cultural than genetics.
  - abracat1 15y ago
    > You should learn something: that variance within groups is far larger than variance in the averages of groups; and thus race and culture are poor signals for use in judgement. To protect against this bias, we do hold to equality across racial and cultural lines; to do otherwise, is to be racist and simply morally wrong. I don't want to take sides in this debate, but I often see your above post appearing on debates about this issue. Can you explain what your first three sentences even mean? It is basically vague, ambigiuous and devoid of any meaning (while sounding academic - perfect for online debates). That spiel is known as Lewtonin's Fallacy (please look it up). PS: typed from cellphone so please forgive typos.

BlackJack 15y ago

That is simply wrong. US Population: White - 72.4 % Black or African American - 12.6 Asian - 4.8 Some other race - 6.2 Source: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf Princeton class profile: African America - 7.4 Asian - 18.6 Hispanic - 7.1 etc. Source: http://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/admission_statistics/ http://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/admi... Asians are "overrepresented minorities", or ORM's, by admission standards because, in Princeton anyways, the ratios are nearly 4x the population average.

narkee 15y ago
I understand they're overrepresented. What I meant was why is that a problem? According to the article, that degree of over-representation (relative to population) is below what it would be, given a completely blind admissions process. So why not have 25% asian population? What's the problem? On the other hand, why isn't anyone saying there is a problem with ORM in football?
- BlackJack 15y ago
  Ah okay, I fully agree then. One issue is that you want a "diversity of interests" on a college campus, but there is no evidence to convincingly say that schools would be more or less diverse if we admitted people in a race-blind manner.
  - sirclueless 15y ago
    Diversity of interests wasn't always a priority in college admissions though. Malcolm Gladwell has a good piece on how the current Ivy League admission focus on non-academic indicators was originally a racially driven policy. One could make a good case that "diversity of interests" is a policy put in place to ensure that highly performing performing demographic can dominate admissions. I imagine colleges con't want that to happen because it would jeopardize the long-term health of their institution. Malcolm Gladwell's article is here: http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html

jpdoctor 15y ago

> I don't understand why they require ethnic proportions to stay close to population averages. Thank god, I hope it means the world is a different place. First, I'm guessing you're about 30 yo. (Sorry if I'm way off.) When I applied to colleges in late 1981, there were still some dumbass amounts of discrimination for being black. Affirmative action occurred in the 60s/70s to try and rectify some of that. It was a given back then that admissions would overlook somewhat lower SATs if you were otherwise promising, and if you could be identified as being from a disadvantaged background. The downside was that some completely kickass guys I knew felt that they had been admitted because of their skin color. I assume there's still discrimination out there, but perhaps it's a lot less than 30 years ago.

reinhardt 15y ago
The more common downside is that some qualified guys are passed up in favor of others that are just "promising" but have the right skin color.
- jpdoctor 15y ago
  I chose my above words carefully: It was an issue of SATs, not qualifications in general. Prior to affirmative action, SATs were the be-all-and-end-all of equilibration for GPAs; A GPA of 3.9 at the Bronx school of science was not the same as 3.9 at Rural High. Along came some studies showing that the SATs (esp English) had some cultural biases. The admissions depts were truly trying to figure out: Which candidates will have the biggest impact after graduation? SATs were called into question as a predictor of that, and that "standardized" tests were maybe not so standard after all.
  - gujk 15y ago
    Also which candidates have the greatest opportunity for growth by attending that school vs not. Global opitimization can mean admitting a slightly less accomplished student who will do better with that degree than without, where a more accomplished high school will end up at the same academic/professional outcome even without the special support from the institution.

calibraxis 15y ago

To help ensure university doesn't look as racially and sexually homogenous as the tech industry?

JVirissimo 15y ago
Are you bothered when professional sports leagues are racially homogeneous? Would you prefer that they practice affirmative action?
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  Professional sports leagues aren't the keys to wealth and power in this country. That's why there's a big fuss over college admissions and not about sports.
  - reinhardt 15y ago
    No, there's no big fuss about sports because an affirmative-action-privileged race happens to be superior in this area.
    - hackinthebochs 15y ago
      I'm failing to find a more colorful way to put this so here it is plainly: One becomes an affirmative-action-privileged race precisely because there are systematic barriers to the keys to wealth and power. If sports were that, and there were systematic barriers to it, we would be having this same discussion about Asians. Being good at sports is overall irrelevant to wealth and power in this country. This stuff isn't hard.

wan23 15y ago

That's not really a good comparison. In both cases they're trying to put together the best team. Right or wrong, the idea is that having diversity of experiences improves the academic experience for everyone. I don't know why people have such a hard time understanding this. It's fair to disagree with the idea, but it's completely different from racism.

narkee 15y ago
Actually that's exactly racism. In this case, the assumption is that asian are a homogenous group, and that having a class full of asians in necessarily not diverse. That's in line with the "violin playing automatons" perception of asian students. Why is it not possible to have diversity of experience without artificially restricting access by race. The assumption that people of a certain race are defined by the same experiences is exactly racism.
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  >The assumption that people of a certain race are defined by the same experiences is exactly racism That's not what's being implied, nor is that implication racist. What's implied is that people of a similar ethnicity who have similar profiles on a college application probably have a similar backgrounds. This is both logical and entirely not racist.

sirclueless 15y ago

When someone offers the opinion that rejecting high-performing Asians is a "serious double standard" I ask myself a few questions. Do Asians have considerably higher academic performance than most other ethnic groups? Yes, they do. Do I believe Asian people are inherently more intelligent and capable? No, I do not. Do I think that colleges should admit students based on academic performance or intelligence and capability? I think intelligence and capability are clearly more important qualities. The only conclusion I can draw is that academic performance is clearly a bad indicator in some ways, if it so severely favors one racial group. Therefore colleges' unwillingness to judge Asians with the same standards of academic performance is a reasonable policy to me.

doktrin 15y ago
This is plain silly. How do you plan to measure "intelligence and capability"? By this logic, a brilliant-slacker-underachiever should be the most sought after candidate. Who cares about results, after all, when all that matters is someone's raw intelligence (regardless of whether or not it has been or will be applied to anything at all).
Atropos 15y ago
I somewhat agree with you, however I do not know the US system very well. In Germany university admission is done by grades alone; however we don't really have elite universities like the ivies, but all universities are at a rather mediocre level. For example I could have easily gone to med school with my grades, which is one of the majors with the higher grade cutoffs, but it is maybe open for the top 10-15%? At this level I don't believe parental involvement matters too much, everyone at age 18-19 is mature enough to know: OK, if I want to study medicine, I should try to get these grades etc... But if admission is based in the 99,99% area, I don't know if a system based on merit alone is "fair". If I look at areas like competitive sports or piano competitions etc., I would believe at least 2/3 of the contestants at the national stage had "helicopter parents" relentlessly pushing them, often against their own will... So having a "tiger mom" simply gives you a huge competitive advantage over "normal" kids/families. So if your system is based on ideas like affirmative action, where people from disadvantage backgrounds get a boost, it seems sensible to give people from advantageous backgrounds a detriment.