Some Asians' College Strategy: Don't Check 'Asian'

YahooNews ^ | December 03, 2011 | JESSE WASHINGTON

[Steelfish]

Some Asians' College Strategy: Don't Check 'Asian' JESSE WASHINGTON

Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white.

"I didn't want to put 'Asian' down," Olmstead says, "because my mom told me there's discrimination against Asians in the application process." For years, many Asian-Americans have been convinced that it's harder for them to gain admission to the nation's top colleges.

Studies show that Asian-Americans meet these colleges' admissions standards far out of proportion to their 6 percent representation in the U.S. population, and that they often need test scores hundreds of points higher than applicants from other ethnic groups to have an equal chance of admission. Critics say these numbers, along with the fact that some top colleges with race-blind admissions have double the Asian percentage of Ivy League schools, prove the existence of discrimination.

The way it works, the critics believe, is that Asian-Americans are evaluated not as individuals, but against the thousands of other ultra-achieving Asians who are stereotyped as boring academic robots. Now, an unknown number of students are responding to this concern by declining to identify themselves as Asian on their applications.

For those with only one Asian parent, whose names don't give away their heritage, that decision can be relatively easy. Harder are the questions that it raises: What's behind the admissions difficulties? What, exactly, is an Asian-American — and is being one a choice?

Olmstead is a freshman at Harvard and a member of HAPA, the Half-Asian People's Association. In high school she had a perfect 4.0 grade-point average and scored 2150 out of a possible 2400 on the SAT..

[PanzerKardinal]

As a graduate of one of the best engineering programs in the country, University of California Berkeley, I agree with you completely.

There was no curve in any of my programs.

The professors made it very clear.

Everybody could get an “A” or everybody could get a “F”.

They just didn’t care.

[Cruising For Freedom]

Eh? You yourself said the students knew the material better then the professors. While China has a culture of cheating, obviously these students did something right. You can’t “steroid” your way into that knowledge.

[manc]

funny thing is that the same woman goes to all the schools and she ended up at my daughters school <5th grade> She talks about an hour about healthy eating, living and that crap. Well my daughter comes home and told us that we have to write down what she eats every day and then what exercise she does every day for weeks and the winner gets tickets to the Jags. I told my daughter I am not singing anything and that it is not anyone's business what you eat etc My daughter told the woman and she replied to my daughter"Ah OK I remember your father and if he doesn't want to then that is fine" Find out later that the course is fat bum Michelle obama's healthy choice program. Since then my daughter has got half the class not to do it.

[alecqss]

Some institutions practice (without much publicity) so-called quotas. It means that whites and especially Asians are considered “over-represented” as scientists and hi-tech professionals. Hence, whites and especially Asians have to pass much tougher admission reqs.
This whole thing is not only a shame, it will with years degrade our society and turn it into a third-world country.

[freedumb2003]

>>Because it’ll be even more prestigious.

“The harder the challenge, the sweeter the victory.”<<

My Asian friends in my (very prestigious) college would disagree. The harder the challenge the harder the challenge. They HAD to make it in, else they shame themselves and their family. The unfair standards are just another weight on an already massive burden.

Likewise they are expected to excel. Which is where I saw them sort if crash and burn in classes where participation is a large part of the grade. Some had not encountered that requirement ever before and didn’t adapt well.

Often more sad than not the overall Asian college experience.

[Jack Hammer]

Asians, with their strong and traditional family backgrounds and well-established work ethics, coupled with their attention to study, tend to do better than a great many others in a college or work setting; therefore, yes, there is discrimination AGAINST them in both college admissions and job hiring/promotion.

Discrimination is most often viewed in the penumbra of affirmative action - as making room for either the poorly educated or incompetent.

Therefore, it is most often reserved for “others than Asians.”

[muawiyah]

Math, like running longdistance, is one of those things that develops to its greatest degree between 28 and 32 years of age. After that you're just an ordinary drudge condemned to teach.

I suspect the Chinese students you met were actually 'teachers" there to develop their knowledge base for teaching, not for "research".

I took a history course once called "The French Revolution". It's the sort of thing you can do in a two week summer session at any large university (with summer sessions).

It turned out that everybody but me was a teacher in European History at the highschool level.

The course was a nightmare ~ I literally could not keep up unless I memorized the text book, so that's what I did. Sometimes the words come back to haunt me in the middle of the night and the screams begin again!!!

[A'elian' nation]

For my foreign language requirement I took German.

I was born in Germany.

Being able to cruise in foreign language class gave me the extra time I needed to tackle the hard science and math classes.

We all have an edge in certain departments - a musician in music class, a Black guy from Kenya getting an Acorn degree, a lesbian in women studies . . . Need I go on?

Why would I take Spanish or French ? Duh
Definitely had no plans to be a cruise director.

[reg45]

Asians have the same problem that Jews used to have. There are many more highly qualified Asians than their population proportions would expect.

Oh! By the way. Didn't 0bama claim to be an Asian.

[freedumb2003]

>>Hence, whites and especially Asians have to pass much tougher admission reqs.<<

And blacks and Hispanics get to suffer with the specter (whether it applies to the individual or not) of having gotten in AND gotten through with a massive thumb on the scale.

And anyone who DOESN’T consider that when choosing a professional that can change your life like a doctor or a lawyer is crazy.

Case in point, we KNOW barry and moochele were AA entries (did you ever read her “thesis” written in a language never seen on Earth?) and I wouldn’t trust them to read a phone book in public.

[Elsiejay]

Any person born in the U.S.A. is a native American.
Period!!
Refuse to participate in racial classification games.

[freedumb2003]

>>Hence, whites and especially Asians have to pass much tougher admission reqs.<<

And blacks and Hispanics get to suffer with the specter (whether it applies to the individual or not) of having gotten in AND gotten through with a massive thumb on the scale.

And anyone who DOESN’T consider that when choosing a professional that can change your life like a doctor or a lawyer is crazy.

Case in point, we KNOW barry and moochele were AA entries (did you ever read her “thesis” written in a language never seen on Earth?) and I wouldn’t trust them to read a phone book in public.

[MrEdd]

My solution on race is to check or write in “mixed” or “multi-ethnic” and refuse to offer any attempt at providing a list or ratios.

[WoofDog123]

you’re kidding? where do you think they find slots for under-achieving minorities from? By reducing non-preferred races’ admission quota. They are only going to admit x students each fall no matter what.

[LibWhacker]

I have a bachelor's in math and a master's in statistics from a good university.

You've shown yourself to be naive among other things and I don't give a fig what you think. I do KNOW that grading on the curve does indeed come into the picture in some classes even at the graduate level and even in the sciences. You want to compete with cheaters? Be my guest.

I always loved getting the highest grade in class, as I did many, many times. But always through hard work. I never once cheated doing it. If you're going to go back to school, how about choosing a school that doesn't issue grades? There are lots of them nowadays.

[Aevery_Freeman]

Liberals are all hypocridiots.

[freedumb2003]

>>For my foreign language requirement I took German.

I was born in Germany.<<

Well, some people here would call you a “cheater.” I still don’t understand it, but they would.

[Eldon Tyrell]

Cornell had a deal with PRep China when I was there -early ‘80s.

Competing against Chinese Army soldiers whose parents livelihood and home is based ontheir performance in school.

Yeah - pretty normal competition.

Asians are NOMINALLY discriminated against - by a few points, compared with whites in the modern world. That is why the author uses weasel words “hundreds of points when compared with others” - yeah - blacks. 10 points vs whites - 210 points vs blacks.

I like poor little missy - she is in at Harvard - for what? 2150 SAT? That is a pretty average score for a smart kid. I could do that tomorrow - and could pop it back in the day - and wouldn’t have been in at Harvard.

[sickoflibs]

RE :”And in some school districts, Asians are seen as overachievers. So they don’t get into certain schools because there’s too many of them”

And that makes sense.
Diversity is more important than anything, even our rights under the constitution. The SCOTUS has ruled that in the past. What we need is a diversity constitutional amendment passed that puts it above all the other rights,

Those schools should have to take me (as a white male) over some Asians even if I don't study as hard as them to get in . That will make the world a better place to live in . Lets’ all hold hands and sing now. "It's a small world after all.."

[LibWhacker]

They already have PhDs. They want an American degree because it's a lot more prestigious.

What are you not getting here? Do you think you can get a PhD in math from an average university in America, teach the subject for 10 years, then decide you want a more prestigious PhD from Princeton, say, and get admitted into their PhD program? Why do you think that's not allowed? There's a reason for it, you know.