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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

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 12y ago
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.