Posted on 12/03/2011 2:53:51 PM PST by 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..
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
>>How else is an 18-yr-old kid from Billings who has decided to major in math, say, going to compete academically against a Chinese ringer; i.e., a 30-yr-old math professor from China?<<
Boo hoo. Math isn’t graded on a curve. I have 30+ years IT experience and am thinking about going back and getting a graduate degree. I am qualified to TEACH most of the courses I will be taking. Is this unfair?
Whaaaat?
You mean asians aren’t part of that?
They always seem to be represented in advertisements and sitcoms where they have a woman, an asian guy with glasses, a sarcastic gay white guy, a hip black guy, a latino and a dumb white guy for good measure.
Always made me think they WERE part of that “rainbow coalition”...
I like “Meat Popsicle” better...:)
no bs, its a fact. Asians need to score significantly higher on their SATs to have the same chance of admission.
I don’t blame them.
In Florida you self-identify your race. You can be anything you want.
WIt’s a good idea to only speak of things you know something about.
McChong, Chongson, Chonginelli, Chongowski, Chongawali
You’d probably draw inspiration from an athlete using steroids, which says a lot about you.
Arrogant b*stards. It isn't a sub design or a sonar array.
Time for a FOIA request...
The question is: why are they asking?
The other question is: why are we answering (honestly)?
It’s obvious and documented that the bell curve for Asians is shifted to the right for many aspects of intelligence that relate to academic ability , but the fact that they are stupid enough to consistently vote Marxist trumps mere book learning, IMO.
Just say you’re a blackispanic lesbian transexual and you’ll get in no problem.
THAT IS SO TRUE.
The black guy is always put out as the cool guy.
The Asian is always geeky and smart
and the white guy is dumb, stupid , mostly with a southern accent in movies, dirty, redneck etc
Nah the media don’t portray any bias ARF.
BS, depends on where you go. Depends on the professor. I wouldn't take a class if I knew my presence there was unfair to the other students or cheated them in some way. But to each his own, I guess.
my oldest is on middle school and got accepted in a college summer course.
The form we had to fill in asked if he were white , etc.
I asked the woman at the college why are you asking this, surely it does not mean anything and why are we looking at race and people’s color.
She looked like she had forgot who she was, she totally looked dumb and surprised.
I then told her that I do not feel that anyone needs to know what color someone is and that I do not want to put down any race for fear of discrimination.
In the end we left it blank and he still got to do the course but I think it’;s because I caused more of a stink about the question
>>BS, depends on where you go. Depends on the professor. <<
BS on your BS. The only ‘soft’ part of math is showing your work. And answer is right or it is not. And proofs are the same. I have never heard of any hard science being graded on a curve. You never took any science clases because you were chicken.
>>I wouldn’t take a class if I knew my presence there was unfair to the other students or cheated them in some way.<<
No offense but that is one of the dumbest things I have ever read. I am in class for ME, not for others. The fact I come into the class already with the knowledge cheats no one and helps most students to learn about the real world applications of the course work.
>> But to each his own, I guess.<<
You never went to college at all, did you?
She probably filled it in after you. They’ll claim they need it to make sure there is no discrimination. In fact they use it to discriminate.
This is the difference between Asian and Black and Hispanics.
You make it harder for Asians to gain admissions to elite schools?
We’re not going to protest and claim discrimination.
We’re just going to work harder.
In fact the harder it gets, the better.
Why?
Because it’ll be even more prestigious.
“The harder the challenge, the sweeter the victory.”
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