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..

[LibWhacker]

Are you and dumbdumb twins? Dropping a course doesn’t mean I didn’t take the course. Quit, my eye.

[elkfersupper]

I have always been in the habit of checking the "other" box and then leaving the delineation blank.

Started out that I don't know. Ended up that it is nobody's business.

[elkfersupper]

I have always been in the habit of checking the "other" box and then leaving the delineation blank.

Started out that I don't know. Ended up that it is nobody's business.

[freedumb2003]

[Tainan]

I always wondered what would happen if I put "Hispanic" on an application. Really, that's such a bogus distinction because Hispanics can look White, Black or Asian.

LOL...Good idea. Although both me Father and Mother are from Scotland, who knows?
I may very well be able to find an ancestor who was from....SPAIN!
(and I do speak Spanish...Castilian Spanish)

Side-note. On many gov't forms I used to check the "other" box and then write on explanation line...Scottish-Hillbilly.
Throwing wrenches in the cogs whenever I could...lol

[QBFimi]

>> “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will ... be judged by the ... content of their character.” - Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have A Dream” speech, August 28, 1963

Well, Dr. King, they ARE judged by character, and they’re slimebags:
In 2009, the Associated Press revealed that the King family had negotiated an $800,000 licensing deal with the foundation for the use of King’s words and image in fundraising materials for the MLK memorial.

[rlmorel]

Sure. It is a zero sum game. Slots preferentially given to one group have to be taken from another.

[Tainan]

MISS!

Reload, adjust and fire again.

[rlmorel]

I couldn’t agree more. This policy translated to a national level, is our legal immigration policy. We accept without question applicants from sub-Saharan Africa, or any other area where the people are certain to have no marketable skills, but God forbid we raise the quota for Eastern Europeans or anywhere else where they might be an engineer or machinist.

[Marine_Uncle]

RE: "What we need is a diversity constitutional amendment passed that puts it above all the other rights."
ROLF! Then again, he might just think it would be a good idea.

[rabscuttle385]

I have never heard of any hard science being graded on a curve. You never took any science clases because you were chicken.

I was curved down in a chemistry class once.

Depending on where you take the class, there may (or may not) be a curve.

Averages are still low.

[rmlew]

How many Chinese and Koreans are named “Lee”?

[freedumb2003]

I always wondered what would happen if I put "Hispanic" on an application.

Mark Sanchez (Hispanic):

Jeff Garcia (Hispanic):

Selena Gomez (Hispanic)

All clearly in need of Affirmative Action after a lifetime of persecution for their obvious non-white heritage.

[dangerdoc]

“As a white male I am offended that these asians are checking the ‘white’ box get the same diversity benefit that I have earned by not studying as hard as them. The whole system could break down if this continues. “

I am in awe of your grasp of the matter and your succinct sarcasm.

Well done!

[A_Former_Democrat]

With the result that many of them wind up over their heads and failures whereas they had a much better chance of success at a lesser college or lesser law firm, etc. Friends who sit on “Diversity Committees’ have some real stories to tell about how low some are willing to go, especially the ‘officer’ who’s sole criterion for being hired is to run this committee. Typically minority who wants to bend the rules to ridiculously low standards in order to justify his/her own existence.

And just how often do we see Deans and Presidents/Chancellors give up their own positions for ‘diversity’ or surrender Li’l Darlin’s admission to the school of choice/

Hypocrites and racists all. A system after 5 decades still doomed to failure, the results are in and they’re not pretty.

[freedumb2003]

Then there's Latvian ~ they have some really hot chicks!

Can't let that one go by...

:)

[SampleMan]

More likely is that Asians are not considered a special protected race the way blacks and hispanics are.

Protected classes are not based on being a minority, nor skin tone. Protected classes are based on dependence and voting habits.

Asians don't squat on the Dem plantation, so they don't get protected statuse.

Asians are in fact treated as "super caucasions" in admissions processes, because they aren't a "real minority" and they are over represented in colleges and under represented in welfare programs.

[muawiyah]

Virtually everyone with a Jewish ancestor has an ancestor who lived in Spain!

[muawiyah]

I actually keep my Latvian grammar book close at hand. You never know when you'll need it. BTW, one of my Swedish ancestors actually has a square named in his honor in the capital city, and there's an equestrian statue of him somewhere around there.

Something about whuthing some Russians once up on a time. These folks have long memories!

[SampleMan]

Ironically, I know a kid who got accepted at the University of North Carolina by checking the “African-American” box. (He otherwise would not have been accepted, believe me.) He cancelled plans to go there after his father got suspicious about strange invitations he was getting in the mail to join various African-American clubs and fraternities.

This would be an interesting way of fishing for lawsuits (the way the Libs do). Put in two identical applications to a school in a state that has made it illegal to discriminate by race, with one as a white male named Jack O'Malley and a second as a black female named Latisha Jackson. Put in about 50 such duplicated applications and then sue the hell out of them when they pick all 50 black females and zero white males.