University Admissions: How many Asian-Americans are too many?

By Jeff | Sunday, February 21, 2010 | 10 Comments

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University Admissions: How many Asian Americans are too many?

Flickr Photo Credit: yellowtailshark
CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

How many Asian-Americans are too many? That’s one of the key questions that I see coming out of the Boston Globe‘s op-ed piece “Do Colleges Redline Asian-Americans?” I’ve talked before about the Princeton study cited in the article, which says that Asian-Americans applying to elite colleges have to work harder than whites to get in. One part that piqued my interest was this section about diversity in California colleges:

Some Asian-American students feel that they lost something by going to school at a place where almost half of their classmates look like themselves – a campus like UCLA. The students said they didn’t feel as well prepared in intercultural skills for the real world.

The point about college as a place for learning intercultural skills has some validity. I asked The Daughter how she felt that her K-8 school prepared her for high school. She said that she felt that the school, which happens to be about 70-80% Asian-American, mostly Filipino and Vietnamese, prepared her well academically, but didn’t prepare her socially for her high school, which is about 50% Asian-American, with the rest being mostly white and Hispanic.

I think that admissions committees go wrong, as do some of the Asian-Americans students mentioned in the article (along with Daily Candy and producers of The Karate Kid remake), when they “see Asians as a unit.” Asians-Americans are an incredibly diverse group. I never interacted with Korean-Americans until I finally met some in college. Although The Daughter grew up around a lot of Asian-Americans, she had few interactions with Indian-Americans. In high school, she ended up having a lot of Indian-American friends, going with them to Indian festivals, and dancing bhangra at their parties. She also learned about Hispanic culture and went to her friends’ quinceaneras. And yes, for the first time, she had really close friends who were white. This was at a high school that was 50% Asian-American, so I don’t see how going to a school with a significant number of Asian-Americans like this necessarily limits your chances for intercultural learning.

The article says certain elite colleges seem to cap their percentages between 15-20%. My daughter’s experience says that you can still have intercultural learning even at 50%. If intercultural learning is the excuse for not accepting them, it looks like a large number of Asian-Americans are being rejected unnecessarily.

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DiscriminationEducationObservations

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http://my.8asians.com/profile/D Sticky Rice!

There are so many…

At major universities (in Canada), there are a lot of foreign students from the East. There are certain programs where people from all over the world get a chance to engage in student life on campus and adjust to Canada. The idea is to enrich the community. Tolerance…

However, some may stick together in their own ‘cliques’ and stay happy doing so for the time at university/college.

What does that do to the rest of the students? who need friendship, openness and work? This school environment then fosters…

I think the focus is more about demographics. Make the school appropriately reflect the ‘current’ population/workforce? Does that sounds applicable? School and work can be two completely different environments. Or are they the same thing? Or trying to?…

SR
dexhuang

The idea that schools might have a legitimate reason to discriminate against Asians in order to prepare them for intercultural experiences is a load of b.s., and we shouldn’t dignify such suggestions with equal time.

First, the experience descibed by Jeff’s daughter related to grade school, and not college.

Secondly, the daughter expressed being socially unprepared for attending a high school that was “about 50% Asian Amercan.” The demographics at her high school might not have been the same as those at her grade school, but I can’t imagine that she experienced that much difficulty finding a supportive group of friends at high school that was fully one-half Asian-American.

Finally, the hours that a student spends in grade school, high school or college aren’t the only opportunities for a young Asian-Amerian to meet non-Asian people. Local sports leagues, summer jobs, scout troops, etc. all provide chances for Asian-Americans to meet non-Asian people.

Discriminating against Asian-Americans in college admissions is both unfair and wrong. We suffer the same cultural handicaps that other minorities suffer, but we not only receive no preferential treatment, we are penalized for studying harder and testing better than everyone else.

When colleges discriminate against Blacks or Jews, Black and Jewish groups don’t openly say, “Well maybe there are good reasons why we ought tbe discriminated..” They loudly protest until the discrimination is removed. As a group that has done relatively poorly in poliics, we should learn from their example. Let’s not give reasons for non-Asians to practice what is essentially poorly disguised racism against Asians.
mifocals

There’s a book called “The Price of Admission” that discusses how many elite college (mainly Ivy League schools) limit the number of Asian Am students they admit.
antlee22

We have similar experiences in Australia , although they don’t explicitly state a desire to restrict the number of asians entering popular degrees such Medicine, the entry criteria has changed from just getting excellent Secondary School marks to being accepted based on your “interviews” with the university. No doubt the asian student numbers have dropped.
DC1234

So let me get this straight…the argument is that a college should artificially limit the number of “Asians” so that they appeal more to “Asians” who don’t want to be at a school that’s dominated by “Asians”…that has got to be the dumbest argument for blatant discrimination that I’ve ever heard. (I use quotes because to put all people of Asian descent into one category is ridiculous.)

Whether you, as an Asian-American individual, would prefer to go to a school with a higher/lower percentage of Asians should be up to you, but don’t let universities hide behind this argument to discriminate against us as an entire group.

Personally, I’ve experienced both types of environments and would say that it’s up to the individual to make the types of connections that he/she wants. My high school in NYC had a student body of 50% Asian-Americans. My college (Dartmouth), at least when I attended, had far less than 15% Asians, which was small relative to other Ivy League schools at the time. Making friends with people from different ethnic/cultural/regional background is completely up to you. In fact, I would argue that I got as much intercultural learning through my friends who were international students from Korea (I’m Korean-American) as I did through friends who were white, black, etc.
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http://www.macleans.ca NicholasKohler

My name is Nicholas Kohler and I am a writer with Maclean’s, a national news magazine in Canada. I’m trying to put together an article looking at whether the “cultural mosaic” Canada is so famous for is, on this country’s university campuses at least, turning into something more like a “collection of solitudes.” In other words, different cultural groups that have little to do with each other–to such a degree that our universities are being fundamentally transformed as a result.

In reading this discussion, I was particularly interested in Sticky Rice’s comments, as Sticky’s concerns seem to capture something like what I’m trying to explore.

If Sticky, or anyone else, would like to write me for my article, they can do so here: nick.kohler@macleans.rogers.com.

Thanks, good post, Nick
ekek

Contrast to this article, when i was in high school, i was only one asian student in my classroom. Everyone looked at me kindda myterious or werid looking towards me, when i entered the classroom. Majority of my classmate are white and some mixed white race. There was no hispanic, african, indian or arab. I currently in the university, where near to my home and I’m only one asian student in my faculty… They don’t look at me with werid looking or whatever, but because of all professors are white, there’s some racisms towards me, by saying some racial joke, or showing some researchs that prove why white people are superior than other races, etc. I’m in America too so it sounds kindda unfamiliar or unrelistic for some people, but it’s true. I sometimes feel lonely due to the fact that there’s no one look like me around me. Also, there’s some kinda of racisms going on in my faculty. It’s pretty sad that asian is minority race group in america, therefore, asian- american are still faced with a lot of racism issues.
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