Suit Accusing Harvard of Capping Asian-American Admissions Could Be Tried This Summer

[based mod]

School don't teach you ****... people put too much emphasis on education when education doesn't make anyone successful...

There needs to be an education overhaul from top to bottom.

I haven't used anything pass 5th grade in my day to day life...

I learned through self education a few computer courses and L.O.X

I wish I knew about credit ,tax preparation and the importance of self education when I was 16... but nah, romeo and Juliet and discrete mathematics was much more important... foh

Son.

Anyone who graduated college and didn't apply the knowledge gained obviously got the wrong degree.

It's also past* 5th grade

 

[TURBO UNO]

I've seen both sides. It all depends on how you move.

My brother recently graduated and is now working as an architect making good start up money. Says his day is easy going and the boss is cool.

On the flip side, my cousin is a 10th grade drop out, 1 week of community college experience and writes like a 9 year old..... holds a job making 70k a year doing car insurance paperwork. He got his job through a weed connect / buddy of his who juiced him in. He's a serial brown noser but I give him credit because otherwise he'd be mopping floors at McDonald's.

Edit: Come to think of it, my female cousin does alright as well and she's a high school dropout with zero college experience. Does office work. My sister is the same, handling doctors/surgeon bank accounts but little do they know she's never received anything higher than a D in math grades, lol. She only graduated because the school loaned her out to Walmart for free work.

I'm saying that school isn't the answer to everything but it sure makes life easier. I'd go back if I could but I'm too old and have a business to run.

 

[hand2handking]

Asian Groups See Bias in Plan to Diversify New York’s Elite Schools

Asian activists rallied in front of City Hall on Tuesday to protest Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to revamp admissions to the city’s specialized high schools, which they say unfairly targets them.CreditKevin Hagen for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/nyregion/carranza-specialized-schools-admission-asians.html

A new plan to change the way students are admitted to New York’s elite public high schools is infuriating members of some Asian communities who feel they will be pushed aside in the drive to admit more than a handful of black and Latino students.

But in a series of forceful statements on Tuesday, Richard A. Carranza, the schools chancellor, offered a blunt rebuttal to their claims. “I just don’t buy into the narrative that any one ethnic group owns admission to these schools,” he said on Fox 5 New York.

The battle revealed the charged emotions around who gets access to highly sought-after seats at the prestigious institutions, which include Stuyvesant High School and Brooklyn Technical High School.

“The test is the most unbiased way to get into a school,” said Peter Koo, a city councilman whose district includes Flushing, Queens, on Tuesday. “It doesn’t require an interview. It doesn’t require a résumé. It doesn’t even require connections. The mayor’s son just graduated from Brooklyn Tech and got into Yale. Now he wants to stop this and build a barrier to Asian-Americans — especially our children.”

The schools, which admit students based on a single test, look starkly different from the school system overall. While black and Hispanic students represent nearly 70 percent of public school students, they make up just 10 percent of students at the specialized high schools, a vast underrepresentation that has long been considered an injustice and a symbol of the city’s extreme school segregation.

Asian students, on the other hand, are overrepresented at the schools. While just 16 percent of public school students are Asian, they make up 62 percent of students at the specialized schools. White students also make up a disproportionate share of the students, though by a much smaller margin. They are 15 percent of the system overall and 24 percent of students at specialized schools.

Mayor Bill de Blasio offered a two-pronged plan on Saturday to address this, first by setting aside 20 percent of the seats at each of the specialized schools for students from high-poverty schools — which tend to have a high share of black and Hispanic students — who score just below the cutoff score.

But his administration’s ultimate goal, he said, is to eliminate the test entirely. In its place, top students would be chosen from every middle school in the city, a determination that would take into account their class rank and scores on statewide standardized tests. This move would require state action, because a state law dictates how specialized schools admit their students. The original law names just three schools, but the city has since created five more.

At a news conference on Monday, more than 100 people gathered in a second-floor dining room at the Golden Imperial Palace in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, to declare that the proposal was an attack on Asian-Americans.

“I’m not sure if the mayor is racist, but this policy is certainly discriminatory,” said Kenneth Chiu, chairman of the New York City Asian-American Democratic Club. “It’s like the Chinese Exclusion Act, is what I think,” he continued, comparing the plan to a 19th-century immigration law that effectively prohibited Chinese immigration. “Our mayor is pitting minority against minority, which is really, really messed up, to put it nicely.”

On Tuesday, Richard Carranza, the New York City schools chancellor, went on television and radio to push the mayor’s plan.CreditKevin Hagen for The New York Times

On Tuesday, a rally was held outside the gates of City Hall, where protesters held signs that said “End Racism” and “I Have a Dream.”

Soo Kim, president of the Stuyvesant Alumni Association, said that while the schools are often described as elite, the children who attend them exist worlds away from the lives of the 1 percent. Many of the students — and indeed, many of the Asian students — who attend specialized schools are poor. Many of them go to years of test prep in order to earn scores good enough to gain admission.

“I have dozens of emails from my members who say, ‘My dad was a taxi driver,’ or, ‘We ran a green grocer,’” Mr. Kim said. “Stuyvesant is an option for those who have no option. They don’t know how to interview or influence their way into the right public schools or the right private schools.”

Mr. Carranza went out on Tuesday to push the new plan. “The data is very clear,” Mr. Carranza said on television. “We are systematically excluding students in the most diverse city in the world from opportunities, in this particular case in specialized schools.”

He offered a stark figure: Of 900 incoming freshman admitted to Stuyvesant, only 10 are African-American. He also said that while there are more than 600 middle schools in New York City, half of specialized students come from just 21 middle schools. He said that looking at a student’s academic record was a “much more holistic way of looking at student ‘talent’” than a single test.

"As the mayor has very, very eloquently stated, we’re not trying to penalize anybody,” Mr. Carranza said on WNYC. “This should be good news for our poor, our immigrant communities, that you’re not going to have to spend thousands of dollars on test prep for one test to get an opportunity to go to a specialized school.”

Mr. Carranza emphasized that relying on one test was out of step with admissions to other elite institutions. “If you’re applying to Harvard today, you would not be admitted based on a test score,” Mr. Carranza said. “It’s multiple measures.” (He might have chosen a different school to cite as an example: Harvard University is being sued by a group that says the school discriminates against Asian-American applicants.)

The mayor’s plan does have a basis in research. A study by Sean P. Corcoran, an associate professor of economics and education policy at New York University’s Steinhardt School, examined six strategies to diversify the specialized schools and found that taking students from every middle school was the only one that had a large effect on demographics. It also found that plan would lower the academic performance of admitted students, a key argument of those in favor of retaining the test. But a similar study, by Lazar Treschan at the Community Service Society, which included a minimum academic standard applicants must achieve, found no such diminution.

The city’s proposal also includes an academic minimum. Students must be among the top 25 percent of performers citywide. An education department spokesman said the city’s projection found that students admitted under its proposed model would have the same grades as current specialized students, and that their state test scores would be virtually unchanged.

The specialized schools carry enormous symbolic weight in the city, and a seat in one of them is seen as a glittering prize. They are among the most distinguished schools in the city, some on par with elite and expensive private schools, and they offer a real pathway out of the working class for many families.

Nonetheless, their impact is actually quite narrow. Of the more than 300,000 high school students citywide, just 16,000 attend these schools. And there are many other schools that screen students academically, like Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Manhattan, where just 16 percent of students are black or Hispanic. Sixty-four percent of the students there are white, and just 21 percent of its students are poor.

Changing admissions at schools like Eleanor Roosevelt would make more sense, argued some opponents of the plan. “Why go to Albany on three schools,” said Mr. Kim, “when you can fix those schools right now.”

 

[Deleted member 42060]

I have a relative on a University board that chooses who gets in or not. The politics

They check to see who your parents are,where they work and live,there past if they have anything on record. If your married,they're checking the checking the background of your mate. Some of these board members are older white people who are going to profile you no matter how good your grades are.

Trust me ive heard stories about who they chose to get in. Youll defenately have an upper hand if your parents either went to that same university,or donated large amounts of money to that specific university behind the scenes. If your from a lower class family with an exceptional GPA going up against an affluent kid (especially white),who parents have relationships and donations to that school with a lower GPA.

Most of the times the barely passing average rich kid is getting up in there. I dont care about peoples opinions on here. Because this comes from a member that im related to who chooses to accept students in there university.

messed up

 

[Deleted member 42060]

Unfortunately thats how the world is. Its not what you know, its who you know.

looks like it yea

 

[thegooch]

While a lot of elite schools have definitely favored applicants from wealthier backgrounds, it's cool to see that more schools are focused on attracting first generation, lower income students. Plus, most of the Ivy League and comparable schools have strong enough endowments that most students are now graduating with no student loans. Of course, the hard part is still getting in lol

Here's an example of how Princeton is attracting and supporting students from all backgrounds:
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2018...transformative-efforts-increase-socioeconomic

Spoiler

‘60 Minutes’ features Princeton’s transformative efforts to increase socioeconomic diversity
by the Office of Communications
April 29, 2018 9:05 p.m.
The CBS program “60 Minutes” featured Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber and several students Sunday evening, focusing on how Princeton and other colleges and universities are increasing college access and success for first-generation and low-income college students.

“We have to be a place where people can come together from lots of different backgrounds,” Eisgruber noted during the program. “(T)his commitment we have to be a real leader on socioeconomic diversity is a big part of taking the next step for us and making the right kind of difference in the world.”

Eisgruber told correspondent Scott Pelley, “It’s a new way of making sure that we have the diversity on our campus to deliver the kind of education that we care about and that the world needs.”

Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber walks on campus with “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley, who interviewed Eisgruber about the University’s efforts to increase access and success for first-generation and low-income students.

Still from “60 Minutes” broadcast
Pelley spent time on campus last fall with several “FLI” — first-generation, low-income — students. One of the students, Jaylin, was wearing a T-shirt that said “FLI is Fly.”

“So, ‘FLI is Fly’ is a campaign educating Princeton students on the resources available to first-generation low-income students,” Jaylin said. “And also working to destigmatize the sort of first-generation, low-income, low-socioeconomic status.”

Pelley said that Eisgruber is “leading the nearly 300-year-old school through a radical transformation,” noting that this year, 28 percent of Princeton’s first-year students are first-generation or low-income, and 60 percent of all students receive financial aid.

The transformation Pelley identified is the result of a range of efforts involving numerous offices across campus, including enhanced outreach to students from low-income backgrounds, improved abilities to recognize talented applicants from all backgrounds, and on-campus programs that provide first-generation and low-income students with mentorship, academic enrichment, leadership opportunities, and scholarly community throughout their time at Princeton.

Pelley asked Eisgruber if the idea of increasing socioeconomic diversity in higher education was a movement in the United States.

“I think it is a movement right now, at least among college and university presidents,” Eisgruber replied. “I think there’s a recognition that in this country right now some of the divisions that we need to heal are around economic class and we need to be paying attention to that.”

The program also interviewed Bill and Melinda Gates, who have played a leadership role on college access, spending more than $1 billion to put low-income students through college, and Gates Millennium Scholars at the University of Central Florida. Also interviewed was Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University, who heads the University Innovation Alliance, a group of public research universities committed to increasing the number and diversity of college graduates in the United States.

For a transcript of the broadcast, visit the “60 Minutes” website.

 

[Chiron]

Son.

Anyone who graduated college and didn't apply the knowledge gained obviously got the wrong degree.

It's also past* 5th grade

Ehh.. at the bachelors level you may find yourself using a fraction of what you learned due to the fact that you are bombarded with worthless Gen Eds so that school can rake in tuition. specialized jobs are pretty competitive so your entry level work to get in somewhere and move up the chain could be pretty basic stuff even with 50-80k salaries.

 

[Brownstone]

Good luck winning that case. Harvard power goes deep.

This reeks of a similar case with the University of Michigan years prior. Its trying to attack affirmative action from the inside. Lol. Funny how conservatives want Government out of everything, but now want to mingle with private university admissions. The hate goes deep, perhaps it's because Trump always felt belittled at his Ivy League classes he rarely went to?

At the end of the day Harvard should decide their own process, as long as they are not discriminating against asians (which I don't think anyone says they are) They should be allowed to allocate spots to underrepresented minorities they deem fit.

 

[ninjahood]

Asian Groups See Bias in Plan to Diversify New York’s Elite Schools

Asian activists rallied in front of City Hall on Tuesday to protest Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to revamp admissions to the city’s specialized high schools, which they say unfairly targets them.CreditKevin Hagen for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/nyregion/carranza-specialized-schools-admission-asians.html

i was talking bout this.

 

[hand2handking]

i was talking bout this.

i just selected some interesting excerpts

While black and Hispanic students represent nearly 70 percent of public school students, they make up just 10 percent of students at the specialized high schools, a vast underrepresentation that has long been considered an injustice and a symbol of the city’s extreme school segregation.

Of 900 incoming freshman admitted to Stuyvesant, only 10 are African-American.

Many of the students — and indeed, many of the Asian students — who attend specialized schools are poor.

“I have dozens of emails from my members who say, ‘My dad was a taxi driver,’ or, ‘We ran a green grocer,’” Mr. Kim said.

Many of them go to years of test prep in order to earn scores good enough to gain admission.

This should be good news for our poor, our immigrant communities, that you’re not going to have to spend thousands of dollars on test prep for one test to get an opportunity to go to a specialized school.”

They are among the most distinguished schools in the city, some on par with elite and expensive private schools, and they offer a real pathway out of the working class for many families.

 

[ninjahood]

hollistic approach = glad handing for da elite.

asian numbers which are 2/3rds of da specialized schools will definitely go down as a result.

 

[...So]

.

 

[hand2handking]

Harvard Lawsuit is About Affirmative Action, Not Asian Americans

NEW YORK TIMES
The lawsuit over Harvard’s admission practices was not filed by Asian Americans, but by a white man, Ed Blum (center), who lost a court challenge to race-based admissions at the University of Texas involving a white student, Abigail Fisher (left).

https://www.bostonglobe.com/busines...n-americans/mZ0tQiuNnKAt7VnOsWSAvL/story.html

For Asian Americans like me, it’s treated like a fact of life: Yes, it seems harder for us to get into an Ivy League school. That’s because so many Asian Americans are vying for a slot that schools are likely pitting us against each other.

Recent filings in a federal lawsuit accuse Harvard University of discriminating against Asian Americans by capping the number admitted in each class. The plaintiff’s proposed remedy: Stop using race as a factor in selecting students.

The case has divided the Asian-American community. Some of us want to preserve affirmative action to ensure diverse campuses. Others believe race-blind admissions is the only way to make sure that Asian American applicants don’t experience bias.

All of which raises some big questions: If admissions officers do limit the number of Asian Americans they accept, do we have affirmative action policies to blame for it? By seeking a mix of white, black, Latino, Asian American, and other students, do Asian Americans get penalized because we apply in such large numbers to top schools?

Complicating matters is that the suit was not filed by Asian Americans, but by a white man, Ed Blum, who lost a court challenge to race-based admissions at the University of Texas involving a white student.

Let’s not kid ourselves. This is not about Harvard and how many Asian Americans can get in. Affirmative action is really on trial here, and a victory for Blum and his nonprofit, Students for Fair Admissions, could set a precedent that unwinds race-conscious policies not only at Harvard but at other schools. Blum’s University of Texas case went all the way to the US Supreme Court in 2016, and his Harvard suit may ultimately be decided there, too.

Harvard, in its court filings, argues that it does not discriminate against Asian-American applicants and defends its use of race in creating a diverse class. Since 2010, the percentage of Asian Americans in the admitted class has grown significantly, by 27 percent. Asian Americans make up nearly 23 percent of the incoming Class of 2022.

For decades, colleges have been using affirmative action as a powerful tool to ensure minorities get a fair shot at an education. How Americans feel about that can be hard to gauge. A Gallup poll in 2016 found that about 70 percent of Americans believe colleges should admit applicants based solely on merit. But in a 2017 survey by the Pew Research Center, 71 percent of respondents said affirmative action for students was “a good thing.”

Polls of registered Asian-American voters indicate nearly two-thirds support affirmative action in higher education, but show a growing split between Chinese Americans (41 percent support) compared with Asian Americans from other backgrounds (73 percent support).

Blum’s group contends in its analysis of Harvard admissions data that affirmative action is being used against Asian Americans. We are, as the suit and others have called us, the “new Jews” in higher education, referring to a period decades ago when schools limited the number of Jewish students.

That kind of rhetoric is drawing some Asian-American groups to support Blum’s effort.

The Asian American Rights Association, a newly formed grass-roots organization in Washington state, recently raised about $78,000 from 800 donors to help pay Blum’s legal expenses. That’s likely to be a drop in the bucket; conservative and libertarian contributors have given several millions of dollars to bankroll Blum’s previous efforts, according to The New York Times.

The Asian American Rights Association caters to new immigrants to educate them about discrimination and has been translating into Chinese what the Harvard lawsuit means for them.

“The concept of affirmative action used to be very good,” said Y. Liu, a software engineer who is cofounder and president of the association. “Now it’s turned into a bad system where everyone is penalized.”

S.B. Woo, a former lieutenant governor of Delaware and Asian-American activist, is president of the 80-20 National Asian American Educational Foundation, which backs Blum’s effort against Harvard and previously at the University of Texas Austin.

The foundation even cowrote an amicus brief in support of Abigail Fisher, the Texas student who sued the university, alleging she was rejected because she is white. In 2016, the Supreme Court, in a 4-to-3 vote, decided that colleges could continue to use race as one of several factors in admissions.

Woo said his organization got engaged on the issue after hearing so many complaints from Asian-American parents saying their kids had experienced discrimination in the admissions process. So in 2012, 80-20 surveyed 50,000 Asian Americans and found overwhelming support for “race-neutral” admissions.

“Upon that, we decided to enter the battle,” Woo said.

In the Harvard court case, both sides have analyzed the same set of admissions data but have come to different conclusions on the impact of race. The Harvard expert found that race does not determine admissions outcomes any more than a number of other factors.

Woo doesn’t buy it. “Harvard’s whole-person admission policy, that is nonsense,” he said. “That is a whole-race admissions policy.”

Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a civil rights and legal services group, has been following the Harvard case closely and so far has not found evidence the university discriminated against Asian Americans. The group — which is representing prospective Harvard students, current students, and alumni — plans to file an amicus brief defending Harvard later this month.

“We support Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policy,” said Nicole Gon Ochi, an attorney with the group. “We don’t believe that there is any credible evidence of discrimination against Asian Americans, and even if there were, it wouldn’t be caused by affirmative action. Based on what we know, any negative effects are the result of policies that benefit white students or implicit bias, both of which also detrimentally affect other minority student applicants.”

Jeannie Park, president of the Harvard Asian American Alumni Alliance, said her members have worked closely with the admissions office over the past three decades and have seen the university go out of its way to recruit Asian Americans from neighborhoods and schools that might not normally send kids to Harvard.

“I find it hard to believe that they are simultaneously sitting there deliberately trying to keep Asian Americans out,” said Park, who graduated in 1983. “But if there is intentional discrimination, of course we would oppose that and would fight them hard on it.”

Pore through the dueling expert analyses filed in the Harvard case, and it will make your head spin. I’ll leave it up to the court to decide whether the university discriminates against Asian Americans. We’re a group that has been called the “model minority,” but in reality we’re hardly a monolith — 20 million of us with no single country of origin dominating the US population and spanning an economic spectrum made up of the poorest and richest Americans.

I am clear-headed on one aspect of the case: America isn’t ready to be a race-blind society. If people of color didn’t face discrimination at all, I’d be the first to say we don’t need affirmative action. This country isn’t there yet.

Now more than ever, we need race-conscious policies to achieve diversity. If we’re not intentional, diversity won’t happen.

Harvard Lawsuit Divides Many in Asian American Community

CRAIG F. WALKER/GLOBE STAFF/FILE 2017
Some Asian American students and organizations have argued that Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policies hurt Asian American applicants. Others insisted that affirmative action helped land them a coveted spot at Harvard.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2...n-community/7jEv3Gc2LrIA7b7Ll5a0wK/story.html

Asian-Americans may be at the center of a discrimination lawsuit against Harvard University, but the case has left them deeply divided about whether they are penalized in elite college admissions and whether affirmative action policies are at fault.

In intensely personal stories and sweeping accounts of past legal battles, Asian-American students and organizations from across the country staked out positions on the case in court documents filed this week.

Some argued that Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policies hurt Asian-American applicants and compared their treatment to the anti-Semitism that Jewish applicants encountered at the Cambridge university in the first half of the 20th century. Others insisted that affirmative action helped land them a coveted spot at Harvard.

“The discrimination in education against Asian-American applicants causes real and tangible harm,” the Asian American Legal Foundation and the Asian American Coalition for Education said in legal filings that backed the complaint against Harvard’s policies. “It causes Asian-Americans to feel that they are not valued as much as other citizens. It causes many young Asian-Americans to feel a sense of inferiority, hopelessness and anger.”

But Thang Diep, 21, a rising senior at Harvard whose family immigrated from Vietnam to Los Angeles when he was in elementary school, said he believes race-conscious admission policies gave him a boost. Diep recounted how as a young boy he would stick a pencil between his teeth and read hundreds of books aloud just so he could improve his pronunciation and minimize his accent.

“When I applied to Harvard, I had good grades, but I did not have competitive SAT scores,” Diep said in court filings. But he did discuss his struggles as a Vietnamese immigrant in his personal statement for Harvard. “I benefited from Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policy because it allowed the university to look at me as a whole person and take into account the adversity that I have overcome because of my race.”

The lawsuit, brought by Students for Fair Admissions on behalf of some Asian-American students, alleges that Harvard’s race-based selection process discriminatesby limiting the number of Asian-American students it admits every year — a contention that Harvard has denied.

Students for Fair Admissions points out that its review of six years of Harvard admissions data and internal documents found that Asian-American applicants across the academic spectrum received lower ratings on their personal traits, such as courage and kindness, from the university’s admissions office than their peers.

The organization also contends that a preliminary report by Harvard’s Office of Institutional Research in 2013 showed that Asian-Americans face a penalty in the admissions process. Harvard has said that report was incomplete.

Harvard has rejected allegations that it discriminates against Asian-American applicants. The university has defended its use of race to ensure a diverse campus as legal and fair. It said its admissions rate for Asian-Americans has grown by 29 percent in the past decade and accused Students for Fair Admissions of cherry-picking data.

Edward Blum, president of Students for Fair Admissions, who has been involved in anti-affirmative-action cases and most recently backed a challenge to race-based admissions at the University of Texas that centered on a white student, has also been the target of criticism. Harvard and its allies claim that because Blum and his organization failed to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn the use of race in college admissions in the University of Texas case, they are now trying again with Asian-Americans.

The case is scheduled for trial in US District Court in Boston in October, but experts anticipate that it will eventually be decided by the US Supreme Court.

The lawsuit has highlighted longstanding splits within the Asian-American community based on ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and political persuasion.

“A lot of Asian-Americans are feeling really torn; they don’t know where people are coming from,” said Sally Chen, 21, a rising senior at Harvard who was among about two dozen Harvard students to submit declarations in the case.

Chen, a Chinese-American who grew up in San Francisco living in a one-bedroom apartment with her parents and three siblings, said she worries that the lawsuit oversimplifies the experience of Asian-Americans. Students for Fair Admissions emphasizes a myth of Asian-Americans as the “model minority” who perform well academically and don’t need affirmative action and are harmed by it, Chen said in an interview.

But that masks the situation of many Asian-Americans who are struggling, who may have fled war and have gaps in their education, or who may live in poverty and attend under-resourced high schools, Chen and other Asian-American students said.

For example, more than one-third of Laotians, Cambodian, and Hmong adults in the United States don’t have a high school diploma, according to the US Census.

“We are still impacted by racism,” Chen said, calling the lawsuit “misleading and harmful for Asian-Americans.”

But Harvard’s data about how Asian-Americans are scored on personality traits used by admissions officers suggest that the university’s policies are harmful and discriminatory, said Lee Cheng, an attorney for the Asian American Legal Foundation.

Cheng, a Harvard graduate, said he has spent 25 years conducting alumni interviews of applicants for the university and believes that Asian-Americans must meet a higher bar.

“Out of 100 students I have interviewed, I have never interviewed an Asian-American who has gotten in,” Cheng said. “In some cases, it was shocking.”

He questioned the Harvard students who said they had benefited from race-conscious admissions and said these students were an anomaly, considering the analysis of the admissions data by Students for Fair Admissions.

And, he said, because they benefited from Harvard’s procedures and got in, these Asian-American students also don’t have a right to speak out about these policies that others see as unfair.

Cheng said it would be akin to a child of a slave-owner arguing that slavery should remain in place, or a beneficiary of segregation arguing in favor of it.

“You can’t say there’s any legitimacy to a beneficiary of an unfair program,” Cheng said. “They don’t have a right to speak for all those other kids who haven’t gotten in.”

But Asian-American Harvard students who have filed court documents in support of the university said they felt compelled to speak out about what they’ve seen of the university’s admissions process and what a diverse campus community has meant to their college experience.

Many also stressed that Harvard can still be an isolating place for minority students, where elite clubs charge exorbitant fees for membership and exclusive social spaces are still dominated by white students. For years, students have been urging Harvard to develop an Asian-American Studies academic track but have seen little progress. And many are concerned about the lower ratings given by admissions officers to Asian-American applicants on their personal qualities and urged the administration to consider additional training against bias.

Jang Lee, 21, a Korean-American from Texas, said the lawsuit has sparked conversations among his friends about race and Harvard, issues that many have shied away from because they can be controversial and polarizing.

“This is one of the biggest issues for Asian-Americans that has come up in years,” Lee said. “For me, it’s been empowering to talk about it.”

 

[hand2handking]

Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits, Suit Says

Johnston Gate at Harvard University. A group suing Harvard says a trove of newly released documents show that admissions officials discriminated against Asian-American applicants.CreditHadley Green for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html

Harvard consistently rated Asian-American applicants lower than others on traits like “positive personality,” likability, courage, kindness and being “widely respected,” according to an analysis of more than 160,000 student records filed Friday by a group representing Asian-American students in a lawsuit against the university.

Asian-Americans scored higher than applicants of any other racial or ethnic group on admissions measures like test scores, grades and extracurricular activities, according to the analysis commissioned by a group that opposes all race-based admissions criteria. But the students’ personal ratings significantly dragged down their chances of being admitted, the analysis found.

The court documents, filed in federal court in Boston, also showed that Harvard conducted an internal investigation into its admissions policies in 2013 and found a bias against Asian-American applicants. But Harvard never made the findings public or acted on them.

Harvard, one of the most sought-after and selective universities in the country, admitted only 4.6 percent of its applicants this year. That has led to intense interest in the university’s closely guarded admissions process. Harvard had fought furiously over the last few months to keep secret the documents that were unsealed Friday.

The documents came out as part of a lawsuit charging Harvard with systematically discriminating against Asian-Americans, in violation of civil rights law. The suit says that Harvard imposes what is in effect a soft quota of “racial balancing.” This keeps the numbers of Asian-Americans artificially low, while advancing less qualified white, black and Hispanic applicants, the plaintiffs contend.

[Read the court documents here and here.]

The findings come at a time when issues of race, ethnicity, admission, testing and equal access to education are confronting schools across the country, from selective public high schools like Stuyvesant High School in New York to elite private colleges. Many Ivy League schools, not just Harvard, have had similar ratios of Asian-American, black, white and Hispanic students for years, despite fluctuations in application rates and qualifications, raising questions about how those numbers are arrived at and whether they represent unspoken quotas.

Harvard and the group suing it have presented sharply divergent views of what constitutes a fair admissions process.

“It turns out that the suspicions of Asian-American alumni, students and applicants were right all along,” the group, Students for Fair Admissions, said in a court document laying out the analysis. “Harvard today engages in the same kind of discrimination and stereotyping that it used to justify quotas on Jewish applicants in the 1920s and 1930s.”

Harvard vigorously disagreed on Friday, saying that its own expert analysis showed no discrimination and that seeking diversity is a valuable part of student selection. The university lashed out at the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, Edward Blum, accusing him of using Harvard to replay a previous challenge to affirmative action in college admissions, Fisher v. the University of Texas at Austin. In its 2016 decision in that case, the Supreme Court ruled that race could be used as one of many factors in admissions.

“Thorough and comprehensive analysis of the data and evidence makes clear that Harvard College does not discriminate against applicants from any group, including Asian-Americans, whose rate of admission has grown 29 percent over the last decade,” Harvard said in a statement. “Mr. Blum and his organization’s incomplete and misleading data analysis paint a dangerously inaccurate picture of Harvard College’s whole-person admissions process by omitting critical data and information factors.”

In court papers, Harvard said that a statistical analysis could not capture the many intangible factors that go into Harvard admissions. Harvard said that the plaintiffs’ expert, Peter Arcidiacono, a Duke University economist, had mined the data to his advantage by taking out applicants who were favored because they were legacies, athletes, the children of staff and the like, including Asian-Americans. In response, the plaintiffs said their expert had factored out these applicants because he wanted to look at the pure effect of race on admissions, unclouded by other factors.

Both sides filed papers Friday asking for summary judgment, an immediate ruling in their favor. If the judge denies those requests, as is likely, a trial has been scheduled for October. If it goes on to the Supreme Court, it could upend decades of affirmative action policies at colleges and universities across the country.

Harvard is not the only Ivy League school facing pressure to admit more Asian-American students. Princeton and Cornell and others also have high numbers of Asian-American applicants. Yet their share of Asian-Americans students is comparable with Harvard’s.

In Friday’s court papers, the plaintiffs describe a shaping process that begins before students even apply, when Harvard buys data about PSAT scores and G.P.A.s, according to the plaintiffs’ motion. It is well documented that these scores vary by race.

The plaintiffs’ analysis was based on data extracted from the records of more than 160,000 applicants who applied for admission over six cycles from 2000 to 2015.

They compare Harvard’s treatment of Asian-Americans with its well-documented campaign to reduce the growing number of Jews being admitted to Harvard in the 1920s. Until then, applicants had been admitted on academic merit. To avoid adopting a blatant quota system, Harvard introduced subjective criteria like character, personality and promise. The plaintiffs call this the “original sin of holistic admissions.”

They argue that the same character-based system is being used now to hold the proportion of Asian-Americans at Harvard to roughly 20 percent year after year, except for minor increases, they say, spurred by litigation.

White applicants would be most hurt if Asian-American admissions rose, the plaintiffs said.

On summary sheets, Asian-American applicants were much more likely than other races to be described as “standard strong,” meaning lacking special qualities that would warrant admission, even though they were more academically qualified, the plaintiffs said. They were 25 percent more likely than white applicants to receive that rating. They were also described as “busy and bright” in their admissions files, the plaintiffs said.

One summary sheet comment said the Asian-American applicant would “need to fight it out with many similar” applicants. The plaintiffs’ papers appeared to offer other examples of grudging or derogatory descriptions of Asian applications, but they had been redacted.

In its admissions process, Harvard scores applicants in five categories — “academic,” “extracurricular,” “athletic,” “personal” and “overall.” They are ranked from 1 to 6, with 1 being the best.

Whites get higher personal ratings than Asian-Americans, with 21.3 percent of white applicants getting a 1 or 2 compared to 17.6 percent of Asian-Americans, according to the plaintiffs’ analysis.

Alumni interviewers give Asian-Americans personal ratings comparable to those of whites. But the admissions office gives them the worst scores of any racial group, often without even meeting them, according to Professor Arcidiacono.

Harvard said that while admissions officers may not meet the applicants, they can judge their personal qualities based on factors like personal essays and letters of recommendation.

Harvard said it was implausible that Harvard’s 40-member admissions committee, some of whom were Asian-Americans, would conclude that Asian-American applicants were less personable than other races.

University officials did concede that its 2013 internal review found that if Harvard considered only academic achievement, the Asian-American share of the class would rise to 43 percent from the actual 19 percent. After accounting for Harvard’s preference for recruited athletes and legacy applicants, the proportion of whites went up, while the share of Asian-Americans fell to 31 percent. Accounting for extracurricular and personal ratings, the share of whites rose again, and Asian-Americans fell to 26 percent.

What brought the Asian-American number down to roughly 18 percent, or about the actual share, was accounting for a category called “demographic,” the study found. This pushed up African-American and Hispanic numbers, while reducing whites and Asian-Americans. The plaintiffs said this meant there was a penalty for being Asian-American.

“Further details (especially around the personal rating) may provide further insight,” Harvard’s internal report said.

But, the plaintiffs said in their motion Friday, there was no further insight, because, “Harvard killed the study and quietly buried the reports.”

Harvard said that the review was discounted because it was preliminary and incomplete.

At the end of the admissions process, the class of applicants is fine-tuned through a so-called “lop list,” which includes race. Almost the entire page in which the plaintiffs describe that fine-tuning has been blacked out. Mr. Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, said Friday that it was “disreputable” of Harvard to complain that information was being taken out of context while at the same time insisting on significant redactions of the evidence.

In a heavily redacted section, the plaintiffs describe how Harvard and 15 other elite schools share notes about the race of admitted students at a meeting of the Association of Black Admissions and Financial Aid Officers of the Ivy League and Sister Schools every year. The court papers portray them as a sort of secret society of admissions officers exchanging information about race, a sensitive aspect of admissions.

Harvard’s class of 2021 is 14.6 percent African-American, 22.2 percent Asian-American, 11.6 percent Hispanic and 2.5 percent Native-American or Pacific Islander, according to Harvard’s website.

 

[fac3 tak30v312]

I could understand the anger since you want your kids to have a better life but they’re not giving spots for white kids to Asians. Now the black community is fighting back because “mixed” kids and Asians have been getting a lot of the minority spots. It doesn’t help that Asian communities are so segregated except for when they’re kids want to become upper management in predominantly white companies.

Plus you have your own country that is a superpower and is rising in world dominance, so you know rich benefactors/ donors do not want to educate them. Then you have the middle class kids saying they’re poor, when their parents own middle class businesses. I’ve went to these test prep school, no poor parent is affording those schools without subsidies or their kids selling product

 

[Kinfolk]

This topic came up in the office earlier today and wow.

Asian people that can't see this as an attack on affirmative action (with as the article says, the suit being brought by a white person who lost his affirmative action case in Texas) are unbelievable. The fact that Tr*mp is throwing his weight behind it in support doesn't make it any more obvious to Asians is beyond me.

In what Asians view as an effort to get more of a leg up on other minority groups, they're gonna end up shooting themselves in the face.

This is hilarious and extremely frightening at the same time.

Sacha Baron Cohen needs to be all over this for an episode of Who is America.

Interview Peter Liang, Asian Harvard rejects (that we'll find out probably ended up at Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth and Stanford ironically) and miscellaneous other Asians in support of this case. That would be a riot.

 

[moderndarwin]

I don’t like affirmative action because I feel it’s subjective. Don’t have a lot of knowledge on the matter.

Is the general principle that because some kids have had a harder growing up experience (generally black kids) they should have a different standard of being judged for admission?

I really don’t get this. There are so many schools. I really don’t get why it’s wrong to make admissions based on a pure educational objective metric like the SAT test. Can’t the kids simply go to a different college?

Maybe it’s been too long since college and I’m out of touch with the topic. To me, it reeks of the consumeristic capitalistic hedonistic tendencies of America that place such importance on the “best of the best” schools. You can go to community college, finish up at a state school, and if you have actual knowledge and skills be able to carve out a great career and life.

 

[Kinfolk]

I don’t like affirmative action Don’t have a lot of knowledge on the matter.

Well that’s all we needed to know to invalidate your opinion completely, lol!

“I don’t like something. That something I don’t like, I don’t know anything about it.”

 

[moderndarwin]

I’m just being honest that I don’t have a thorough knowledge instead of pretending I do. Doesn’t mean I can’t have an opinion (that’d can change upon learning more). Being so right and wrong is why I stay out of most of these threads.

 

[W)taps]

I really don’t get this. There are so many schools. I really don’t get why it’s wrong to make admissions based on a pure educational objective metric like the SAT test. Can’t the kids simply go to a different college?

Its because not all people are given the same opportunity in education. You think some kid living in a poor district is going to have the same access to resources as a kid whos living in a wealthy district? Textbooks, computers, and even the quality of teachers.

I'm Asian and was brought up in a ****** county here in the DMV and did absolutely terrible (My HS AVG SAT (not me) score was 1100/2400). I wont lie, many times I just didnt put in the work and also I was surrounded by friends who also didnt care either. But my teachers were terrible, our textbooks were old af, and im sure our computers were on Windows XP lol. Eventually I put in the work my last 2 years and was able to barely get into the best public university in my state but only because my older sister tutored me. If it wasnt for her, I wouldnt have made it. But not everyone in my county can find a personal tutor or afford one.

But all my other Asian friends from Howard county (one of he richest counties) had great education with like-minded people which created a culture that put value on college. They all got in easily to the state university without no damn tutor or SAT prep course. Matter fact, they aimed for better colleges like Hopkins, UVA, etc. State public school was a fallback for them lol

Admission should heavily take consideration into economic status. If an Asian and white person are both economically equal, then whoever does better academically should get it. Same goes with any race, black, asian, hispanic, white, etc. Base things off economic standards.

 

[moderndarwin]

That makes no sense. When you get into a top tier school you’d be competing against people way better prepared academically. Whereas at a state school you’d be at a level others are too. The curriculum would be set to build and fill in foundational gaps.

 

[Kinfolk]

I’m just being honest that I don’t have a thorough knowledge instead of pretending I do. Doesn’t mean I can’t have an opinion (that’d can change upon learning more). Being so right and wrong is why I stay out of most of these threads.

It wasn’t about being right and wrong.

You admitted your ignorance on the subject.

Commendable because a lot of people can’t/refuse to, but if your opinion is drenched in ignorance what are we supposed to do with that?

 

[moderndarwin]

Drenched in ignorance seems like a nice way to say it doesn’t matter.

That’s not really how change works though. It’s not the experts debating each other that matters - it’s shaping the perception of the general public that matters.

I’m definitely no expert on the matter but I’ve gone to college and have enough context to know this is an issue.

I’d say my opinion is actually more important because it’s millions of people like me who have a superficial interest or knowledge that shape what happens. If a lot of people feel the same way as me because of the way the perception is then all the in depth knowledge you have of the topic is meaningless.

Anyways. Back to the issue. Putting less academically qualified students up against more academically qualified students seems not fair to either side. It’s not like community college or state schools are trash. I don’t get this need of forced liberalism into these top tier schools.

Main question - do these affirmative action laws we have apply to any college (private or public)? What exactly (simply) is affirmative action within the college system?

 

[gry60]

Goes in line with Trump's campaign promises of trying to keep foreign students who are studying in elite post-secondary schools to stay in the US workforce instead of going back home.

B.S.

As a former foreign student, I can tell you that the number of interview rejections skyrockets when you mention that you are here on a student visa. Companies are not trying to deal with transitioning from F-1 to work visas/permanent residency because it's an expense for them and USCIS is a ***** to deal with.

If he truly wanted to keep US-educated foreign students, he would do what the Canadians do (basically, staple a green card to your Bachelor's or grad degree).

His support is in line with tearing down any policy that levels access to opportunity.

 

[fac3 tak30v312]

Its because not all people are given the same opportunity in education. You think some kid living in a poor district is going to have the same access to resources as a kid whos living in a wealthy district? Textbooks, computers, and even the quality of teachers.

I'm Asian and was brought up in a ****ty county here in the DMV and did absolutely terrible (My HS AVG SAT (not me) score was 1100/2400). I wont lie, many times I just didnt put in the work and also I was surrounded by friends who also didnt care either. But my teachers were terrible, our textbooks were old af, and im sure our computers were on Windows XP lol. Eventually I put in the work my last 2 years and was able to barely get into the best public university in my state but only because my older sister tutored me. If it wasnt for her, I wouldnt have made it. But not everyone in my county can find a personal tutor or afford one.

But all my other Asian friends from Howard county (one of he richest counties) had great education with like-minded people which created a culture that put value on college. They all got in easily to the state university without no damn tutor or SAT prep course. Matter fact, they aimed for better colleges like Hopkins, UVA, etc. State public school was a fallback for them lol

Admission should heavily take consideration into economic status. If an Asian and white person are both economically equal, then whoever does better academically should get it. Same goes with any race, black, asian, hispanic, white, etc. Base things off economic standards.

You're right. From my experience people from similar background as yours don't even go to college. It's usually their siblings or cousisn or some other family member that help them "overachieve." From the books to the teachers to the PCs everything is dilapidated. I don't understand why people that don't have children, have never taken any child psychology courses, and don't come from impoverished communities have the loudest voices on Affirmative Action; they really shouldn't. Which sadly isn't the case.
I know this gettting away from the thread topic but IDK man... it's really frustrating

B.S.

As a former foreign student, I can tell you that the number of interview rejections skyrockets when you mention that you are here on a student visa. Companies are not trying to deal with transitioning from F-1 to work visas/permanent residency because it's an expense for them and USCIS is a ***** to deal with.

If he truly wanted to keep US-educated foreign students, he would do what the Canadians do (basically, staple a green card to your Bachelor's or grad degree).

His support is in line with tearing down any policy that levels access to opportunity.

You're absolutely right gry60. The U.S is currently undergoing a massive shift. While Trump is publically bashing Mexicans, his anti-immigrant policies are actually aimed at the Chinese and Indians. These two nations especially China, have reached a level of dominance that is putting real fear in rich American businessmen. At this point what you're looking at is educating, training, fulling the pockets of foreign nationals that have strong ties to their native countries.

We've heard the numbers on population decline of whites. What happens when on the one hand Latin Americans dominate the workforce for blue collar jobs, while Asians steadily rise in dominance for white collar jobs? Forecast this rising tide over 1 to 2 more generations. ON top of that you have Black Americans, a group who these education subsidies/entitlements/grants and aides were supposedly created for are still struggling... not to mention they're not a rising minority group as well.

I really could see why Trump got elected ..... and man it's looking like he might have an even stronger claim for re-election