Economist: Model Minority is losing Patience.

[THE Bigzoman]

http://www.economist.com/news/briefi...losingpatience


I'm not quoting the entire article. It has many facets that we can discuss. Here are some of the noteworthy tidbits.

ACT score was 36, the maximum possible; he sang at Barack Obama’s inauguration; he got third place in a national piano contest; he was in the top 150 of a national maths competition; he was in several national debating-competition finals. But when it came to his university application he faced a serious disappointment for the first time in his glittering career. He was rejected by six of the seven Ivy League colleges to which he applied.

“I saw people less qualified than me get better offers,” says Mr Wang. “At first I was just angry. Then I decided to turn that anger to productive use.” He wrote to the universities concerned. “I asked: what more could I have done to get into your college? Was it based on race, or what was it based on?” He got vague responses—or none. So he complained to the Department of Education. Nothing came of it. “The department said they needed a smoking gun.”

In May this year Mr Wang joined a group of 64 Asian-American organisations that made a joint complaint to the Department of Education against Harvard, alleging racial discrimination. That follows a lawsuit filed last year against Harvard and the University of North Carolina by a group of Asian-American students making similar charges. The department rejected the claim in July, but another two complaints have since been filed by Asian-Americans, one against Harvard and one against nine other universities

Why Asians do so well relative to other minorities:

In “The Asian American Achievement Paradox”, a study based on interviews with young Chinese and Vietnamese in Los Angeles, as well as Mexicans, whites and blacks, Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou argue that it is not just what happens at home that matters. They point to “ethnic capital”—the fact that these groups belong to communities that support education—as part of the explanation

AA comment:

Racial prejudice of the sort that Jews faced may or may not be part of the problem, but affirmative action certainly is. Top universities tend to admit blacks and Hispanics with lower scores because of their history of disadvantage; and once the legacies, the sports stars, the politically well-connected and the rich people likely to donate new buildings (few of whom tend to be Asian) have been allotted their places, the number for people who are just high achievers is limited. Since the Ivies will not stop giving places to the privileged, because their finances depend on the generosity of the rich, the argument homes in on affirmative action.

It'll be interesting to see if more Asian Americans start to get pissed off. If history has shown anything,it's that pissing them off collectively is a terrible idea.

[breadisfunny]

yeah i mean look at japan and world war 2 and unit 731.

[THE Bigzoman]

yeah i mean look at japan and world war 2 and unit 731.

Jokes aside, yeah.

Commodore Perry went to their shores in the 1860s. They didn't let that shit go.

[Damajin]

http://www.economist.com/news/briefi...losingpatience


I'm not quoting the entire article. It has many facets that we can discuss. Here are some of the noteworthy tidbits.






Why Asians do so well relative to other minorities:




AA comment:






It'll be interesting to see if more Asian Americans start to get pissed off. If history has shown anything,it's that pissing them off collectively is a terrible idea.

I'm sure some of them will, but they're also missing the opportunity to push for newer institutions that actually address the problem and provide the education they're seeking because right now it just looks like they're pissed off that they won't get the standardly acceptable stamp of approval of an Ivy League school which is starting to mean less and less as time goes on.

[Polyxo]

Asian American, not pissed off. Although from the look of me, I'm not the 'upper class' kind of Asian the article is talking about.

[THE Bigzoman]

Asian American, not pissed off. Although from the look of me, I'm not the 'upper class' kind of Asian the article is talking about.

There aren't a lot of high end Asians out there in institutions.

According to the article, the lot of ya are hung up on being an harmonious cog in institutions because of culture.

[Independent voter]

Not all Asians do well in school, it's a few nationalities.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

It's a theory I've heard before...and it's got some truth to it.

The other side of the argument is that, without affirmative action guidelines, many universities tended to favour whites over everyone else.

Ideally, only the most qualified individuals, regardless of racial or ethnic background, would be accepted. Even more ideal would be if those selected based solely on their own merits also happened to be correspond perfectly with the racial/ethnic breakdown.

[Hooked]

I would say far east Asians to be more specific.

[breadisfunny]

I would say far east Asians to be more specific.

could you be MORE specific?

[Underverse]

Affirmative action must take in order to give.

[Hooked]

could you be MORE specific?

Japanese, Chinese, Koreans I consider far east. Not south east Asians like Cambodians, Vietnamese or thai.

[PC2]

A lot of these universities can't take anymore Asians without displacing a perceived oppressed group. They can't even displace whites anymore because many campuses are around half white and pushing whites closer to 40% would fuel anti-AA sentiment.

[Underverse]

A lot of these universities can't take anymore Asians without displacing a perceived oppressed group. They can't even displace whites anymore because many campuses are around half white and pushing whites closer to 40% would fuel anti-AA sentiment.

A hilarious failure of a clearly racist program. I hope more East Asians speak out against this blatant discrimination.

[Nynax]

I'd like to see name and race removed from Applications for...basically everything, jobs, university, w/e. Just give applications numbers while administrators are making decisions. Only after all the choices are made do you reattach the names and send out the acceptance letters.

I'd like to see that happen, then see what the demographics really look like.

[Garnier Fructis]

If you get accepted to one Ivy League and rejected from the other 6, the problem isn't the universities. It's your inflated ego.

One aspect that people don't usually talk about in terms of admissions is that the committees also estimate how likely it is that you'll go there. If Brown thinks that you're very likely to get into Harvard, and your chosen major has a better program at Harvard, then Brown may very well reject you for that reason. This is especially true at the grad school application level.

Also, it really depends on what you're trying to do. Is he, say, going for Computer Science and his less qualified peers are going for Anthropology? Because the less qualified peer already has the advantage during admissions of not applying for a highly compacted major.

If this guy had been rejected from all the ivy leagues, then he probably has reason to be angry. But he got into one. Besides, why would you apply to all seven for any reason other than to maximize one's chances, since there's no such thing as a surefire application? One alternative would be that he really did believe he would get into all seven and applied to all so he could have bragging rights. Anyone applying for those reasons really deserves to be rejected.

[Underverse]

If you get accepted to one Ivy League and rejected from the other 6, the problem isn't the universities. It's your inflated ego.

One aspect that people don't usually talk about in terms of admissions is that the committees also estimate how likely it is that you'll go there. If Brown thinks that you're very likely to get into Harvard, and your chosen major has a better program at Harvard, then Brown may very well reject you for that reason. This is especially true at the grad school application level.

Also, it really depends on what you're trying to do. Is he, say, going for Computer Science and his less qualified peers are going for Anthropology? Because the less qualified peer already has the advantage during admissions of not applying for a highly compacted major.

If this guy had been rejected from all the ivy leagues, then he probably has reason to be angry. But he got into one. Besides, why would you apply to all seven for any reason other than to maximize one's chances, since there's no such thing as a surefire application? One alternative would be that he really did believe he would get into all seven and applied to all so he could have bragging rights. Anyone applying for those reasons really deserves to be rejected.

Sure - but what you're doing here is implying that discrimination doesn't exist simply because it's not likely for an individual to be accepted to all Ivy League schools. This is fallacious to be sure, but I'll go a step further and reject your premise as well:

Kid who got in to every Ivy League school is going to the University of Alabama

[Garnier Fructis]

Sure - but what you're doing here is implying that discrimination doesn't exist simply because it's not likely for an individual to be accepted to all Ivy League schools. This is fallacious to be sure, but I'll go a step further and reject your premise as well:

Kid who got in to every Ivy League school is going to the University of Alabama

It wasn't my intention to imply that at all. What is being implied is that his reasoning for why he didn't get into all of them is in all likelihood deficient.

It just rubs me the wrong way to see this level of arrogance.

Also, finding a kid that got into all of them really doesn't refute the statement that it's a totally unlikely occurrence. Probabilities aren't certainties.

[Underverse]

It wasn't my intention to imply that at all. What is being implied is that his reasoning for why he didn't get into all of them is in all likelihood deficient.

It just rubs me the wrong way to see this level of arrogance.

Also, finding a kid that got into all of them really doesn't refute the statement that it's a totally unlikely occurrence. Probabilities aren't certainties.

Maybe. But we've seen that academic requirements for college acceptance differ by ethnicity. And oh - affirmative action is a thing that people not only admit exists, but actively support. By definition, some ethnicities are being discriminated against in order to make room for others; there are only so many spots in an entering class. So I don't think this reaction is particularly misplaced.

I mean, just comparing a single metric (which I know is incomplete, but we have to work with incomplete data), this Asian kid got a perfect ACT score and got into one Ivy League, while the black kid got a 34 out of 36 on his ACT and was accepted to every single one.

[Garnier Fructis]

I mean, just comparing a single metric (which I know is incomplete, but we have to work with incomplete data), this Asian kid got a perfect ACT score and got into one Ivy League, while the black kid got a 34 out of 36 on his ACT and was accepted to every single one.

I don't know how SAT and ACT scores are handled by admissions committees, but I do know how graduate committees handle the only similar metric, the subject GRE: it's primary purpose is a threshold. After that, it's basically relegated to tie breaker after everything else has been considered in an application.

Which means, that at most universities they really don't give a shit if you got an 800 or a 990. All it is, like the ACT and SAT, is a measure of how well you can study a whole boat load of disconnected bullshit and then reproduce it in a timed setting.

Now if people were getting in with 28's on the ACT over him, then yes we've got a problem. Unless they're like a prodigy violinist or something. But people really, really need to stop thinking that a higher score should correlate with a higher ranking in the admissions process.