Posted on 04/07/2015 5:29:32 AM PDT by reaganaut1
A group of Asian-American students has filed suit against Harvard’s admissions policy, charging that it seeks to limit the number of Asian students much like quotas held down the number of Jewish students until the 1920s. For example, one of the students Harvard rejected, an unnamed child of Chinese immigrants, had perfect scores on three college-admission tests, graduated first in his (or her) class, led the tennis team, and raised money for National Public Radio.
Harvard officials respond that one in six of its students have an Asian background, its admissions policy was singled out for praise in a 1978 Supreme Court decision, and it rejects thousands of impressive overachievers every year.
But the group bringing the lawsuit, Students for Fair Admissions, won a powerful PR ally this week: Vijay Chokal-Ingam, an Indian American who happens to be the brother of Fox comedy star Mindy Kaling, revealed that he won acceptance to medical school by claiming to be black. Frustrated at being rejected by medical schools in part because of mediocre test scores and a 3.1 grade point average, Chokal-Ingam shaved off his slick black hair in 2001, began using his middle name, “Jojo,” and checked the “black” box on his applications. He soon won interviews at Harvard and Columbia and a spot on waiting lists at the University of Pennsylvania, Washington University, and Mt. Sinai. He eventually went to Saint Louis University Medical School but dropped out after two years. He then applied as an Asian American to UCLA’s business school and graduated with an MBA. He now works in Los Angeles as a résumé coach.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
People judge on appearances, and currently we are a nation of around 300 million with bad schools and good colleges in competition with a nation of 1.3 billion that would just love to flood our colleges with their students.
The solution is simple, judge incomming students only on merit of grades and if all the students end up being asian and jewish...
Well then the other groups need to stop whining and start pullling their shyte together.
Your simplistic rhetorical questions are mostly ridiculous. China's universities are not in the Top 100 on earth for a variety of reasons (Communism, Mao's purge of the educated, their propensity for plagiarism, their centuries of poverty and authoritarianism, their culture of hyper-bureaucracy, etc etc etc)... None of those have anything to do with the simple and very clear fact that almost EVERY Chinese will do whatever they can, often for 16 hours per day for years at a time, to try to get into the best-available schools.
Oddly, most actually DO prefer Peking and Tsinghua Universities to foreign study... but I have to believe that this is mostly due to the expense of foreign study, the desire to not be THAT far from home, the Chinese preference for the Han culture, etc. If they don't get into Bei-da or Tsinghua (and only a few thousand of the million or so applicants every year can get in), they next look to the top universities on earth... and 26 of the top 34 are in the US (as well as 52 of the top 99). Begrudging them a chance at admission, simply for their race, is stupid and short-sighted.
Pretending that they usually don't focus on education FAR FAR more than US students because they don't have the top schools is also moronic.
But please, do go on.
I doubt there have been many barbecued bats in her family tree in many years, LOL.
I have it on good authority that there is a great depth to the hatred the average Chinese citizen feels for us. It would seem reasonable to me that we should get our house in order, correct our trade imbalance, repay our debt, and stop blythely playing citizen of the world when much of the world hates our guts.
You're confused.
This lawsuit isn't about 1.3 billion Chinese. It's about Americans. Americans of Asian (not just Chinese) heritage. Schools like Harvard deal with international admissions separately from domestic admissions. This case is about domestic admissions and the fact that Americans of Asian heritage face higher standards for admission than other Americans.
sitetest
What part of me pointing out a fact to which I am hardly wedded don’t you get? If it is hearts and minds you are looking for you are in for some headwinds from anyone of the average person’s experience.
To wit, I just filled out college forms (though certainly not for Harvard) and they made ZERO distinction between a citizen and someone from another country with any sort of legal standing. They did make distinctions on race but I declined, which is a thing you can do if you feel so strongly.
Your posts are fact-free.
This lawsuit is about race-based affirmative action as used in admission to top schools. You appear unfamiliar with the territory of admission to highly-selective colleges and universities.
” If it is hearts and minds you are looking for you are in...”
I'm not looking for anything. It's not my lawsuit. I'm not a plaintiff, nor a member of the plaintiff class. I don't share ethnicity with the plaintiffs, and besides, based on where my kids were admitted, they could claim no injury.
The plaintiffs may be looking for “minds and hearts,” I don't know. I haven't asked them. I think what they're really looking for is for this to go to the Supreme Court, where there are only nine minds and hearts that they will need to win over. The ultimate goal is to ban race-based affirmative action in college admissions.
But I think that ordinary Americans who are not racist will listen to the argument the plaintiffs make, and will probably see merit in it: Americans, no matter their ethnic background, should compete on a level playing field. Race should not be a factor in admissions decisions. Are you opposed to that idea?
“To wit, I just filled out college forms (though certainly not for Harvard) and they made ZERO distinction between a citizen and someone from another country with any sort of legal standing.”
This past spring (2014), I finished several years of college search and application with my two sons, who each applied to a range of highly-selective schools, and I know that anyone who applies to highly-selective schools knows the score: Americans of Asian heritage have a higher hurdle to leap to be admitted to top universities and colleges. We would go on tours of top colleges and programs, and invariably, the Asian-American kids with us on tour would have a whole set of jokes about what it was like to apply as an Asian-American.
As for mixing international admissions with domestic, anyone who has applied to highly-selective schools also knows that domestic admissions are separate from international admissions, and that international admissions are restricted, and thus, much more difficult to obtain than domestic admission.
By the way, you still haven't explained how admission of Asian-Americans is tied to deporting illegal immigrants from Latin America. Or do they all look the same to you?
sitetest
That’s a “highly selective” collage y’all are applying to, eh? Well good luck to you!
The Chinese Exclusion Laws are back??
lol
Their fellow leftists hate them for their eyes (brains)
“Well good luck to you!”
Thanks! But your well-wishes are a little belated. The younger one graduated high school this past May and is now completing his freshman year of college.
sitetest
Much of my focus is on avoiding debt, does your youngest have the option of CLEP? At $80 for 3 to 6 credits you can’t beat it IMO!
Avoiding debt was important for us, too. Both will likely go to graduate school. Carrying a large debt load into graduate school didn't seem very rational.
But they both received good financial aid packages that are affordable for our family, out of current income. My older son could have gone to our flagship for free, but chose a school with a better reputation in his chosen field. He could have “skipped” a year of school through “advanced standing” (he had enough high AP scores to skip a full year), but that would have meant fewer opportunities to develop in his field, because he'd have had less time at school. The cost of the various trips and internships he's received far exceeds what I will pay in a fourth year of tuition.
I wouldn't want the younger guy to skip any time at school, either. He's a math guy. High school was rough for him, because his school was always trying to hold him back from taking higher level math courses. They have very specific ideas of what young men can handle. He proved them wrong. Now, he's somewhere where he can take all the math he wants. He's like a kid in the candy store. It is a great joy to me to see him frolic with his studies. He came home for Christmas, asked me for a math book from Amazon, and then spent the entire break working through it. I can afford for him to be in college four years.
They'll each graduate debt-free, and have degrees from the top school in their fields with which to apply to graduate school.
sitetest
You don’t do the CLEP in your major, you use it for GURs to keep any potential weak spots from being computed into your GPA (and to save $$$). This is going to actually allow me to load up on more courses in my major than I would otherwise be allowed to take while letting me graduate on time.
Best of luck to you and yours in all future endeavors, so long as that doesn’t include electing Rand Paul to the presidency ;)
In other words, they don't value education.
However, many chinese parents would like to tell other chinese parents that their kid is at Harvard. They do value that.
For students going to college immediately upon graduation from a traditional high school, one will find the use of AP exams is more frequent than CLEPs. Most students who use AP scores to obtain college credits do so in hopes of reducing the time needed to complete their degree. When I went to college, decades ago, I graduated a year early in part by use of AP scores.
Top tier schools often don't take CLEP credits and may be limited in their use of AP scores. Some top schools don't accept either one.
sitetest
CLEP is just one my school will take, there’s a ton of veterans around too so more than likely DSST is acceptable as well. UExcel is another popular one that has been used by Harvard and Yale, among numerous others.
No, I worked for about thirty years before heading back after working out such a great package for my kid that I was tempted to tag along (in a building, far far away, at the other end of campus ;)
What I said about no differentiation between citizens and non-citizens was on forms we filled out this year. In light of that I’ve concluded that it might be nice if our immigration problem were dealt with before quotas are knocked down if we want to have a country left.
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