Posted on 02/09/2010 6:08:26 AM PST by outpostinmass2
Obama didn’t release his grades from Harvard but he did graduate magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. It would be interesting if he had low grades but was still bestowed the honor.
Indeed, as Princeton’s Nieli suggests, most elite universities appear determined to keep their Asian-American totals in a narrow range. Yale’s class of 2013 is 15.5 percent Asian-American, compared with 16.1 percent at Dartmouth, 19.1 percent at Harvard, and 17.6 percent at Princeton.
I'm an alumnus of MIT. I'm one of those alumni that do prospective freshman interviews. What I see with the Asian kids is that they are focused on academic excellence. Their families make this very clear to them from 1st grade on. The kids often go to school on Saturday as well, either for tutoring or for Chinese school to learn the Chinese language and about their ancestors' culture. They rarely play sports, and if they do it's going to be tennis or golf. Sports are considered frivolous and they take away too much time from what's important. They are very often involved in performing music, generally piano or violin. They rarely have more than one sibling and are often an only child.
MIT's policy with regards to minorities has been to establish two classes; minorities, and "underrepresented minorities". The latter are those minorities whose percentage in the MIT student body is lower than that in the U.S. population at large. Blacks are an example of an underrepresented minority. Underrepresented minorities are automatically accepted IF their grades, test scores, etc. would otherwise qualify them for acceptance. Everyone else enters the pool equally.
MIT does not bend the minimum qualifications for underrepresented minorities - they can't afford to. If they can't hack it they'll get flushed out and that does nobody any favor. Here are the statistics for their most recent freshman class:
Incoming Freshman Class Profile For the MIT class of 2013
Gender
Male 55%
Female 45%
As you probably know, most schools are majority female
Ethnicity & Citizenship
US Citizens & Permanent Residents: 92%
African American 9%
Asian American 26%
Caucasian 36%
Mexican American 8%
Native American 1%
Puerto Rican 2%
Other Hispanic groups 5%
Other/No Response 5%
International citizens 8%
It would appear that the Institute does not have a ceiling on Asian-Americans; if they do, it's significantly higher than the Ivy League schools. Also unlike the Ivy League schools, MIT does not give preference to children of alumni (a.k.a. "legacy admissions").
They added an essay portion several years ago, which counts for another 800 points, so now perfection is 2400.
The thinking at MIT is that there are numerous cultural differences between, say, a kid who was raised in the Bronx and a kid who was raised on a ranch from a rural Wyoming town. Geographic diversity yields cultural diversity, which they think is of benefit as the students get exposed to fellow students who have had many different kinds and ways of upbringing.
Understand that MIT gets applications from the best of the best. There are many more kids out there who would do well at MIT than MIT has room for. I've heard it said that their admissions office could throw out the applications for their entire admitted freshman class, take the next-ranked 1000 applications and still have a class that would excel. So they have the luxury of picking and choosing not just for academic excellence - which just about all their applicants have - but for other criteria as well.
When I went to MIT the male:female ratio was 10:1. Addition of the essay has led to the uptick in female admission. I’m not against this. You need good communication skills to work together in a team. Development of new science and technology does not good if you cannot communicate it to the world. It does not seem to have slowed down innovation from alumni.
MIT is a lot different than most universitiies. Not everyone can pass or understand differential equations. Just about anyone can pass and understand American History. The latter therefor can be a little more lenient in their admission policy.
My objection to the essay portion is that scoring it can be very subjective. But I do realize the importance of being able to communicate ideas and complex technical issues: I’ve worked with some brilliant engineers over the years, but when it came time to do a report or present a paper, it was often gobbledygook.
That it is. But my point is that they have a very high percentage of Asian-Americans, whereas if they wanted to they could hold it down and still have an exceptional student body. But they choose to favor admitting the best of the best over a quota system.
I forgot about that!
At UCLA and Berkeley the percentage of Asians is nearly 50%. California’s population is around 12% Asian. They have the highest grades and SAT scores overall. I think the only UC campuses that are plurality white are UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz (could have something to do with the geography of kids attending closer to home).
The only rationale that makes any sense for discrimination against Asians is a political one. That is, will the voters of California continue to support funding for higher education if a minority of the population is getting a majority of the college spots?
My son went to a high school with a 40% Asian population. Not surprisingly, it had the #1 HS orchestra in the country. And it produced a disproportionate share of National Merit Scholars. It excelled at academic bowl competitions, winning or placing first out of over 1300 schools worldwide in a certain competition even while these kids were in middle school. These kids were my son's peers. Many of them, of course, are steeped in liberal ideology.
My kid is very conservative politically and very Christian. It was understood that cheating was rampant among the Asian students. Their parents were extremely competitive with each other in the community, and some actually beat their kids to make them study. My son had none of those "advantages."
Yet, I thank God that he had the natural ability and common sense to do things the right way. He was never a "grinder", but he kept his grades up. His teachers loved him, and some from middle school even came to his graduation party. He excelled at working in groups and coming up with creative ideas-- things the Asian kids were not trained at home to do especially well. As a result, he was made captain of the academic team and captain of the band. While leading a well-balanced life, he managed to come out #1 nationally on the National Geography Challenge and win 2 gold medals on the National Latin Exam. He also won the Sousa Award as top band student (played brass and woodwinds) and the Louis Armstrong Award as top jazz student (lead guitar, bass, and arrangements for ensembles and percussion groups). He finished with 44 AP hours, and scored 2290 on the SAT- 800 verbal, 740 math, 770 essay-- with the months of expensive courses that many of the Asian kids took. While his peers went to Ivy League and other top northern schools, he wanted to stay in the Bible Belt and attend public school on academic and music scholarships.
Needless to say, some of the very competitive Asian kids hated him, while others admired him and were (and still are) his friends. He's proved what an American kid can do, and that the values that made this country the best in the world still work.
Good for him, and you.
My kids have excelled as well and were all invited to join the honors programs at the colleges to which they applied.
They know how to work with others and think outside the box, and not at the expense of beating them either.
We’d still love and approve of them without being top in anything.
And yet Asians are solidly Democratic. Like American Jews they don’t seem to have their own self-interest very well thought out.
Meant without such courses. We did nothing special academically in raising him--the glory belongs to God.
ping
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.