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Most of my Chinese-American friends in CA are voting for Trump, mainly for education

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Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Well that's one problem. Some focus on the overall university ranking, which isn't a good thing necessarily. The more important factor generally is individual program rankings. So yeah a school may be top 200, but they may have a top 50 business school or engineering school or top 10 individual majors. That speaks to best fit, which is an aspect of the college search/education process that is lacking mightily both on the college side and high school/parent side.

And that school may offer good scholarships or incentives and be located in an area with great internship/company/research access. I've been at events where schools are just dismissed based on overall ranking and it feeds into the perception that there aren't a lot of options or if you don't get into that top school you can't be successful. It's incredibly frustrating. And the event was led by Asian-American leaders to Asian-American parents/students.

That like I said in addition to many examples of a school say offering a scholarship where if you earn at least $X amount you now also qualify for in-state tuition, which makes costs very competitive. Hell, many state school tuition across the US rivals in-state California costs. And that's just looking at Top 100 overall and especially Top 100 public school rankings. You don't even have to go down to top 500 or unranked regional focused schools.

I'm applying this measure across the country though as while the OP article focuses on Asian's in California it's a problem that effects many everywhere.

The difference between going to LSU and the next best thing public school wise is a big drop off. The difference between getting into GT for engineering or going to the next choice in GA is a big drop off. The difference between going to UF or settling for USF is a big difference and can gave lasting effects on your career.

Plus while it's cheaper for people in California to go out of state sometimes it's the opposite for some girl in Oklahoma who wants to go to school in Cali.

If people disregarded geneal rankings and focused on say best colleges for their major they might have one school in their state in the top 20? The next school might be top 200? That's a big diff.
 

Cels

Member
No, of course not, but we don't have to swing from one extreme to the other. The problem with AA and quotas is that if you have two applicants that are equal in all but race, the one with the less favorable race is going to lose out to the other. This is discrimination--even if its intent is good and its result is arguably beneficial for society at large.

This is the problem with getting in or not getting in through their own merits, as you say, because the merits of one applicant are held to a higher standard for an arbitrary reason. No individual applicant is actually ever going to know if they don't get in because of this, but if you look at the trends at large, fewer Asians get into these schools with AA than without, which implies that AA is negatively affecting their rate of admittance.

But, like I said, I'm not actually against AA. What I'm pissed about is the blatant assumption that Asians are less deserving of equal opportunity because of the nonsense belief that they are less well rounded or bland or only achieve high scores because of cram schools or tiger moms or whatever other bullshit.

you don't need to look at GPAs. just look at SAT scores. on a 1600 SAT scale, being black is worth a 230 point bonus, hispanic 185, being an athlete is worth 200, and being asian gives a 50 point disadvantage

https://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/Admission Preferences Espenshade Chung Walling Dec 2004.pdf
 
I'm applying this measure across the country though as while the OP article focuses on Asian's in California it's a problem that effects many everywhere.

The difference between going to LSU and the next best thing public school wise is a big drop off. The difference between getting into GT for engineering or going to the next choice in GA is a big drop off. The difference between going to UF or settling for USF is a big difference and can gave lasting effects on your career.

Plus while it's cheaper for people in California to go out of state sometimes it's the opposite for some girl in Oklahoma who wants to go to school in Cali.

If people disregarded geneal rankings and focused on say best colleges for their major they might have one school in their state in the top 20? The next school might be top 200? That's a big diff.
That I don't disagree too much on. If you're limiting your search to only your home state, then yeah depending on your major, you can be limited.

Although I will disagree specifically on engineering programs like UF versus UCF or USF or something. While UF is very strong, the other two are quite nice too and ultimately are not going to be the barrier to someone being very successful in their careers. That's just my UCF Knight side coming out!

But my overall position was that if someone has the means to prep like that for standardized tests and minimize outside involvement and employment in favor of focusing so much on school, they probably have the means to look outside of their state. And if they do, they likely can find still very strong programs nationwide. And beyond that, find strong nationwide programs that will offer tuition costs that after scholarships, will be competitive at least.

Yes, if they are coming from Alabama or Georgia or Florida, it will always be hard for an out of state school to compete with their tuition/scholarship costs/incentives. Especially if they are looking for a program that public schools in that state do not offer or are not nationally competitive in.
 
Your friends are statistically an aberration.

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Sweet. Koreans are crazy for Hildawg from my own perspective. That and fuck Trump. I take some small comfort in that.
 

Tripon

Member
Given that only Berkeley is the only "top school" affected by Proposition 209 and SCA5, the voters' and students' interest in these policies likely aren't just about top schools. You keep talking about being able to get into your state school instead of Yale or Stanford, but these policies are about getting into state schools, including poor ranking ones.
Berkeley is a top 15 school. UCLA is a top 25 school. UCI, UCSB, UCSD and UC Davis are top 50 schools. UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside are top 100 schools. Only UC Merced is unranked among the UCs. Only Merced has the room for more students right now. And that's the UCs.

The Cal States are just as impacted in a different way since they are also overcrowded, especially in SoCal and Norcal. It's a competition to get into a public school in college, so yeah, people are wary of the changes in the system.
 
you don't need to look at GPAs. just look at SAT scores. on a 1600 SAT scale, being black is worth a 230 point bonus, hispanic 185, being an athlete is worth 200, and being asian gives a 50 point disadvantage

https://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/Admission Preferences Espenshade Chung Walling Dec 2004.pdf

Standardized test scores are problematic. They largely correlate to family income and they are not the best indicator of college success. If your family is rich, there are many more opportunities to go to high schools with individualized attention, emphasis on true test prep, and of course hiring test-focused private tutors.

Admissions is complicated. Especially at highly selective schools. It is a tough process.

So when a black person is potentially "spotted" a number of points, it's basically a recognition that, in general, blacks do not have as much access to preparation resources. And I'd assume that other factors, like their school performance, is looked at closer to paint a picture to see if the student would be successful at a given school.
 
Nailed it.

He really didn't. Generally, highly selective schools have very limited spots to fill with everyone applying with good enough grades to be successful there.

At some point, they are going to start looking at other factors beyond pure academics. So yeah if someone can paint a better view of themselves in the application and show adversity and growth and overcoming certain situations based on a wide-range of factors (including race), they're going to stand out better than the wealthy person that basically has been setup for success from day one. That's the reality. And that's not necessarily wrong.

Universities are not necessarily looking for an entire class of students than can score a perfect or almost perfect on the SAT/ACT. They want a good mix based on a range of factors both academic and non-academic.
 

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
Trump can't do anything about a state law. At best, he can decline to veto a law blocking affirmative action nationwide. But I don't see Congress getting behind something like that.

In addition, Republicans tend to cut educational spending in favor of lower taxes. So that hurts their chances of going to college indirectly. A situation like that is far more likely to come to pass.
 

Qvoth

Member
my aunt who in SF said she's voting for trump because she has always voted for a republican and she's a registered republican voter or something lol
 
Single issue voters who are unaware of how this actually doesn't even affect local and state laws.....it's always frustrating and even scary thing how ignorance can cloud the issues.
 

Cyrano

Member
Any single issue Trump could potentially... ok, I can't seriously say that. Trump is human cancer. He will not help any of these single issue voters. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either entirely unaware (which seems unlikely) or simply part of the same hate-filled group of idiots who support him.

And as has been posted elsewhere, no reasonable Christian would support him.
 
OP here. I see my anecdotal experience has "stirred some shit" here XD. The intention of my post was to share some perspectives why some people are voting for Trump, and seek discussion about SCA5 specifically.

SCA5 aims to abolish California Proposition 209, and the point of California Proposition 209 is that "the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education". To me this is the definition of equal opportunity: no racism, sexism etc is allowed at all in admission or employment. And in terms of political position this is quite far on the left, no? So how come a left-wing party in California actively tries to abolish it? And how is it not racism? Shouldn't admission and employment be based on merit and merit alone? Hardship and family background can be fully taken into consideration as merit, regardless of race or sex. That is where I don't understand.

Also, my friends are definitely my anecdotal experience, I was not trying to argue beyond that. But what is not anecdotal though, is the source one of my friends keeps posting on social media. Most of her posts are from Zhihu, a Chinese website that is dedicated to spread expert knowledge and insights into various topics. The website is quite successful at doing so and it is highly regarded among young generation. The website operates as reddit r/ELI5 with top answer as the most upvoted ones. If you go to that website and search for US16 election, you will see many top posters cites various reasons why they are voting for Trump.

For example this post (it is in Chinese, duh) asks the question "If you are a Chinese who have live in the U.S. more than 2 years, who will you vote for?", and all top answers (with hundreds or thousands upvotes) would vote for Trump, citing feel oppressed under the reign of democratic party. The top answer cited various historical evidence to argue that "whenever Chinese people worked very hard to gain an advantage, there will always be a political force trying to eliminate such advantage under the mask of law, tax, or equality". The examples includes the "foreign miner's tax" in 1850 to drive Chinese out of mining industry, "Fisherman's tax" and Scott Act to drive Chinese out of fishing industry, Yick Wo v. Hopkins to drive Chinese out of laundry business, and the most recent ones being SCA5 and AB1726 spun by democratic party.

Who knows, that post and website might be an Trump echo chamber, but I can guarantee it is nothing like r/Donald but the exact opposite. They mostly cite sources when making an argument and most of the time the reasons are sound, at least at the first glance. But the lop-sided answers do however, influence many Chinese voters to "not vote for democrats" in the upcoming election, including my friends and other potential voters who upvoted those answers.

Also I saw someone posted an interesting poll graph. What is the source for that graph? What is the demographics for the poll? Is it from one state or national-wide? And how skewed is the case in California?
 

SeanC

Member
So they're voting for Trump out of spite, not because there's any logic to their reasoning.

The line drawn from a State Amendment to a POTUS vote makes no sense whatsoever. It shows immense ignorance on their part.
 

Lesath

Member
OP here. I see my anecdotal experience has "stirred some shit" here XD. The intention of my post was to share some perspectives why some people are voting for Trump, and seek discussion about SCA5 specifically.

SCA5 aims to abolish California Proposition 209, and the point of California Proposition 209 is that "the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education". To me this is the definition of equal opportunity: no racism, sexism etc is allowed at all in admission or employment. And in terms of political position this is quite far on the left, no? So how come a left-wing party in California actively tries to abolish it? And how is it not racism? Shouldn't admission and employment be based on merit and merit alone? Hardship and family background can be fully taken into consideration as merit, regardless of race or sex. That is where I don't understand.

Also, my friends are definitely my anecdotal experience, I was not trying to argue beyond that. But what is not anecdotal though, is the source one of my friends keeps posting on social media. Most of her posts are from Zhihu, a Chinese website that is dedicated to spread expert knowledge and insights into various topics. The website is quite successful at doing so and it is highly regarded among young generation. The website operates as reddit r/ELI5 with top answer as the most upvoted ones. If you go to that website and search for US16 election, you will see many top posters cites various reasons why they are voting for Trump.

For example this post (it is in Chinese, duh) asks the question "If you are a Chinese who have live in the U.S. more than 2 years, who will you vote for?", and all top answers (with hundreds or thousands upvotes) would vote for Trump, citing feel oppressed under the reign of democratic party. The top answer cited various historical evidence to argue that "whenever Chinese people worked very hard to gain an advantage, there will always be a political force trying to eliminate such advantage under the mask of law, tax, or equality". The examples includes the "foreign miner's tax" in 1850 to drive Chinese out of mining industry, "Fisherman's tax" and Scott Act to drive Chinese out of fishing industry, Yick Wo v. Hopkins to drive Chinese out of laundry business, and the most recent ones being SCA5 and AB1726 spun by democratic party.

Who knows, that post and website might be an Trump echo chamber, but I can guarantee it is nothing like r/Donald but the exact opposite. They mostly cite sources when making an argument and most of the time the reasons are sound, at least at the first glance. But the lop-sided answers do however, influence many Chinese voters to "not vote for democrats" in the upcoming election, including my friends and other potential voters who upvoted those answers.

Also I saw someone posted an interesting poll graph. What is the source for that graph? What is the demographics for the poll? Is it from one state or national-wide? And how skewed is the case in California?

Source of the linked graph is 538, which sourced their data from the National Asian American Survey's report here.

With regards to the site "highly regarded among young generation", do you realize that a sizeable portion of the Chinese-American population cannot read Chinese? Shocking, but true!
 
He really didn't. Generally, highly selective schools have very limited spots to fill with everyone applying with good enough grades to be successful there.

At some point, they are going to start looking at other factors beyond pure academics. So yeah if someone can paint a better view of themselves in the application and show adversity and growth and overcoming certain situations based on a wide-range of factors (including race), they're going to stand out better than the wealthy person that basically has been setup for success from day one. That's the reality. And that's not necessarily wrong.

Universities are not necessarily looking for an entire class of students than can score a perfect or almost perfect on the SAT/ACT. They want a good mix based on a range of factors both academic and non-academic.
The problem with your post is that you assume that these applicants only have academics going for them. Why? What is it about them that makes you think that?
 
Tell your friends that Trump can't do absolutely anything about it even if he wanted (he is too dumb to notice these problems, tbh) and instead they should vote locally and at the state level.

The problem with your post is that you assume that these applicants only have academics going for them. Why? What is it about them that makes you think that?

Asians have no life nor social skills cause they spend all the time studying, didn't you know!?
/s
 
Whenever the discussion boils down to "based on merit" you know that the people arguing it are full of shit. AA isn't a flaw free process by any means but if the entirety of merit in getting in a top school is who can get the best marks on a standardized test I already have a massive issue with you're argument. If we are actually gonna argue that then I encourage that we look at this by access to resources and dollar amount spent for preparation because what you'll undoubtedbly see is income playing a large role in the equation. Having more access to resources is going to boost you up. The whole point of AA is to level the playing field to make up for a large deficiency.

I'm not gonna argue it makes sense that Asian students need to do so much better on an SAT for an equivalent level of acceptance. I think all this really does is create this race where it's a competition to do better against odds that aren't chsnging. I also don't know why whites are considered the baseline by which we compare plus or minus. I am going to argue that a lot of the best schools in the world have enough perfect GPA applicants to fill every spot 3 times over. A lot research has shown diversity improves performance. Groups with less experience but better matching personalities can out perform significantly more talented groups on paper.

It's not beneficial to treat merit like a number. It's not just number of years or X score. Admissions are and should be considered more deeply than "highest score wins". They should really look into economics as well as race too. Because I definitely do think there are lower income Asian families with kids who get knocked for this while not enjoying any of the wealth advantages AA helps lower. They should look into extra ciriculars and community involvement. Should strive for diversity. Not everything should boil down to marks. You talk to recruiters, do you think they all care about marks over soft skills?
 
There's no good answer for this, because there is no purely objective way to judge applicants.

SAT scores and GPA themselves are intrinsically biased, are heavily affected by outside bias, are incomparable (in the case of GPA), and do not encapsulate everything important about an applicant.

On the other hand, it seems likely that an in depth "holistic" approach is both too difficult to accomplish in many cases (and therefore simplified to just race, ignoring the diverse backgrounds and activities within groups such as "Asian-American") and rife with its own bias and incomparability (what specific background or activities get you in, how is that decided, and are they truly the important backgrounds and activities for an applicant).

If we want to be mathematical about it, one method would be studying results, rather than qualifications. Do long term studies to see what the outcomes are. Does a Black applicant, with greater probability, wind up practicing medicine in a majority Black community which needs doctors? That kind of thing.

We would somewhat get past racial discrimination with that method (perhaps we would find Asian-American or White applicants are more likely to practice in majority Black areas!) but the end result would still be based on the race of an applicant (just as car insurance can be based on gender).

And all of the methods I mentioned (numbers, activities, background, outcomes) ignore the fact that diversity is important for its own sake, perhaps the strongest argument for AA in the first place. So... it's hard.
 

norm9

Member
They should really look into economics as well as race too. Because I definitely do think there are lower income Asian families with kids who get knocked for this while not enjoying any of the wealth advantages AA helps lower.

I think a problem is that a lot of people are assuming that just because the Asian kid is doing well and taking AP classes is because he is rich and taking one on one specialty tutoring and that isn't the case, but theyre lumped into the higher income Asian kid. It obviously can't be because they bust their ass studying because they don't wanna be poor anymore like all other poor kids who see that college is the way out. But they get punished.

They should look into extra ciriculars and community involvement. Should strive for diversity. Not everything should boil down to marks.

We don't know if the applicant doesn't do extracurricular actives or involves themselves in the community. They're assed out even if they do.
 

toneroni

Member
The problem with your post is that you assume that these applicants only have academics going for them. Why? What is it about them that makes you think that?
Bingo.
There are countless stories of ridiculously high achievers with tons of extracurriculars being passed over.
Hell, if he actually knew anything about asians, he would know that their parents push extracurricular activities like crazy.

Sucks that race is still such a big issue in 2016. (for all minorities)
Still, voting for Trump is lunacy.
 
Here is something to consider: we all know that admissions looks at more than just academics and test scores. We've been talking about it a lot in this thread.

So, if we're talking about these obsessive applicants who believe their lives depend on getting into the best school, don't we think they would also know that academics alone aren't enough, and wouldn't they max out on extracurriculars and tune up their essays so they have the best possible chances? They're not stupid.
 

Totakeke

Member
Here is something to consider: we all know that admissions looks at more than just academics and test scores. We've been talking about it a lot in this thread.

So, if we're talking about these obsessive applicants who believe their lives depend on getting into the best school, don't we think they would also know that academics alone aren't enough, and wouldn't they max out on extracurriculars and tune up their essays so they have the best possible chances? They're not stupid.

Anyone who visited the college confidential forums before would know that this is true.
 
Here is something to consider: we all know that admissions looks at more than just academics and test scores. We've been talking about it a lot in this thread.

So, if we're talking about these obsessive applicants who believe their lives depend on getting into the best school, don't we think they would also know that academics alone aren't enough, and wouldn't they max out on extracurriculars and tune up their essays so they have the best possible chances? They're not stupid.

The problem is, even the greatest essay from a middle class Asian American from a nice suburban school in Orange County isn't going to be effective as the essay from the children of illegal immigrants or the son of a drug addicted single mother in Chicago. I'm going to extremes here, but when everybody's in the Honor Society, is on 8 different clubs, and volunteers to help sick kids, then it doesn't really help to have the standard stuff on there, especially when in a nation of 300 million people, there's likely to be a few thousand exceptional kids every year.
 
OP here. I see my anecdotal experience has "stirred some shit" here XD. The intention of my post was to share some perspectives why some people are voting for Trump, and seek discussion about SCA5 specifically.

SCA5 aims to abolish California Proposition 209, and the point of California Proposition 209 is that "the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education". To me this is the definition of equal opportunity: no racism, sexism etc is allowed at all in admission or employment. And in terms of political position this is quite far on the left, no? So how come a left-wing party in California actively tries to abolish it? And how is it not racism? Shouldn't admission and employment be based on merit and merit alone? Hardship and family background can be fully taken into consideration as merit, regardless of race or sex. That is where I don't understand.

Also, my friends are definitely my anecdotal experience, I was not trying to argue beyond that. But what is not anecdotal though, is the source one of my friends keeps posting on social media. Most of her posts are from Zhihu, a Chinese website that is dedicated to spread expert knowledge and insights into various topics. The website is quite successful at doing so and it is highly regarded among young generation. The website operates as reddit r/ELI5 with top answer as the most upvoted ones. If you go to that website and search for US16 election, you will see many top posters cites various reasons why they are voting for Trump.

For example this post (it is in Chinese, duh) asks the question "If you are a Chinese who have live in the U.S. more than 2 years, who will you vote for?", and all top answers (with hundreds or thousands upvotes) would vote for Trump, citing feel oppressed under the reign of democratic party. The top answer cited various historical evidence to argue that "whenever Chinese people worked very hard to gain an advantage, there will always be a political force trying to eliminate such advantage under the mask of law, tax, or equality". The examples includes the "foreign miner's tax" in 1850 to drive Chinese out of mining industry, "Fisherman's tax" and Scott Act to drive Chinese out of fishing industry, Yick Wo v. Hopkins to drive Chinese out of laundry business, and the most recent ones being SCA5 and AB1726 spun by democratic party.

Who knows, that post and website might be an Trump echo chamber, but I can guarantee it is nothing like r/Donald but the exact opposite. They mostly cite sources when making an argument and most of the time the reasons are sound, at least at the first glance. But the lop-sided answers do however, influence many Chinese voters to "not vote for democrats" in the upcoming election, including my friends and other potential voters who upvoted those answers.

Also I saw someone posted an interesting poll graph. What is the source for that graph? What is the demographics for the poll? Is it from one state or national-wide? And how skewed is the case in California?

Admission to a good college shouldn't be based on merit and merit alone because the entire system in America that leads to "good" merit is completely broken. Read Joseph Stiglitz's "The Price of Inequality." Poor people, and if we looked at race specifically black people, come from disproportionately poor neighborhoods, and have disproportionately worse schools (astoundingly so), have disproportionately worse support at home (lack of college educated parents), and therefore do disproportionally worse on grades and tests. The system is rigged for them the minute their born. If we admit people to college based on merit only, then a disproportionately lower amount of poor minority groups will be admitted.

Look at how insanely rigged the SAT is. You're going to do dramatically better on the exam if you can afford to take tutoring classes - many minority applicants cannot afford it.

It's like you pushed someone 100 meters behind the start line of a race and tied them to a 100 lb weight. Ignoring race and race alone is like you untied them from the weight and proclaimed it a "fair race" even though they are way behind.
 
https://newrepublic.com/article/73365/disadvantages

But as the article notes, it's complicated.

And others have taken Espenshade and Chung's research to task for ignoring negative action:

The problem is that Espenshade and Chung’s study is internally contradictory: their research design confounds the role of negative action against APAs with the role of affirmative action for African Americans and Latinos, yet the research question they posed was about the “impact of affirmative action” and their conclusion that APAs “would gain the most” appears to attribute causation to affirmative action per se (or at the very least, Espenshade and Chung’s blurry conclusion will mislead many reasonable
readers into believing that a strong causal claim about affirmative action has been made).

Such a conclusion about affirmative action is untenable Chung conservatively estimate that the penalty APAs confront because of negative action typically translates to about 50 points on the SAT. Moreover, given that there were 5,134 Whites in the admit pool, compared to 1,691 African Americans and Latinos, it follows from this three-to-one ratio that Whites must be the primary beneficiaries of negative action against APAs. By implication, ending negative action would primarily involve a transfer of admission offers from Whites back to APAs; inevitably, the number of African American and Latino admission offers that would be at play with the end of negative action is substantially smaller.

Essentially, the assumptions are thus: affirmative action pulls in a black and Hispanic students of lower ability and removing those rules would allow for more Asian-American entries. The issue with that assumption is those spots would probably end up going to white students instead. Focus on affirmative action is aimed at these chunks, instead of another major one that varies from school to school, butr is primary a part of these Ivy League schools: legacy and donor kids, who end up usually being white.

And hey, people acknowledge that.

http://www.economist.com/news/brief...successful-minority-they-are-complaining-ever
Top universities tend to admit blacks and Hispanics with lower scores because of their history of disadvantage; and once the legacies, the sports stars, the politically well-connected and the rich people likely to donate new buildings (few of whom tend to be Asian) have been allotted their places, the number for people who are just high achievers is limited. Since the Ivies will not stop giving places to the privileged, because their finances depend on the generosity of the rich, the argument homes in on affirmative action.

You could make it a pure meritocracy, but then you lose many legacy and donor kids, which means the school has less money. It's a big problem.
A researcher at Harvard University recently examined the impact of legacy status at 30 highly selective colleges and concluded that, all other things being equal, legacy applicants got a 23.3-percentage-point increase in their probability of admission. If the applicants' connection was a parent who attended the college as an undergraduate, a "primary legacy," the increase was 45.1-percentage points.

In other words, if a nonlegacy applicant faced a 15-percent chance of admission, an identical applicant who was a primary legacy would have a 60-percent chance of getting in.

http://www.ibtimes.com/are-legacy-p...students-how-supreme-court-case-could-2361713
Román cautioned that legacy status doesn't automatically equal acceptance, but legacy admit numbers often end up being much higher than the college's general acceptance rate. At Harvard in 2011, for example, the legacy acceptance rate was about 30 percent, the Harvard Crimson reported. That same year, the overall acceptance rate was 6.2 percent. Yale told the New York Times in 2011 it admitted about a quarter of legacy applicants and about 7.35 percent of all applicants overall.

Data backs this theory up. More than 70 percent of students at the most competitive universities are from families with income in the upper 25 percent, according to a study from January. Meanwhile, the median family income for all families in 2014 was about $67,000. For white families, it was about $77,000; for Hispanic families, it was about $45,000; and for black families, it was about $43,000, according to the College Board.

"I don't think there's any question that the majority of beneficiaries come from already privileged backgrounds, particularly privileged white backgrounds," said David Hawkins, the executive director for educational content and policy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, a professional organization based in Arlington, Virginia.

The trick has always been: How do you strike down race-based preferences, while allowing other preferences to abide? (See also: preferences for players of certain sports.)

And note, again, "Asian-American" is a broad brush covering Chinese, Japanese, Kroean, Cambodian, Laotian, Indian, and more. Polls have found most under that umbrella remain in support of affirmative action because it does help them. (Clarification: AA does help certain Asian-American demographics.)

Some key, thorny questions remained: Was the opposition to SCA-5 a sign that Asian American voters had shifted en masse in their opinions on affirmative action? Or was this shift primarily among Chinese Americans, while the rest of the Asian American population remained supportive?

Or, perhaps there was an altogether different explanation: that opposition was primarily concentrated among a small group of Asian American activists, with the more numerous silent majority still supportive of affirmative action. And where did whites and other minorities stand on the issue of affirmative action?

The Field Poll results indicate a slight erosion in support for affirmative action among Asian American registered voters. In 2012, 80% were in favor of affirmative action; in 2014, 69% were in favor. However, this still means that about 2 in every 3 Asian American registered voters in California support affirmative action. Even among Chinese Americans, where opposition to SCA-5 seemed to be the strongest, the Field Poll data indicate that 60% support affirmative action. And the figure for those who oppose it has remained steady at 13% from 2012 to 2014, while the proportion who are uncertain on the issue has risen, from 6% in 2012 to 18% today.

All that above does not change the fact that affirmative action and holistic admissions processes do in fact hurt certain Asian-Americans. The entire process is treated as a zero sum game because no matter what happens, a college can only accept so many students.

And all that is before you get to the fact that Trump has no education policy. I guess the mental calculus is replacing Alito's spot with another conservative justice, as Alito was the most against affirmative action?
 

norm9

Member
The problem is, even the greatest essay from a middle class Asian American from a nice suburban school in Orange County isn't going to be effective as the essay from the children of illegal immigrants or the son of a drug addicted single mother in Chicago. I'm going to extremes here, but when everybody's in the Honor Society, is on 8 different clubs, and volunteers to help sick kids, then it doesn't really help to have the standard stuff on there, especially when in a nation of 300 million people, there's likely to be a few thousand exceptional kids every year.

Admission to a good college shouldn't be based on merit and merit alone because the entire system in America that leads to "good" merit is completely broken. Read Joseph Stiglitz's "The Price of Inequality." Poor people, and if we looked at race specifically black people, come from disproportionately poor neighborhoods, and have disproportionately worse schools (astoundingly so), have disproportionately worse support at home (lack of college educated parents), and therefore do disproportionally worse on grades and tests. The system is rigged for them the minute their born. If we admit people to college based on merit only, then a disproportionately lower amount of poor minority groups will be admitted.

Look at how insanely rigged the SAT is. You're going to do dramatically better on the exam if you can afford to take tutoring classes - many minority applicants cannot afford it.

It's like you pushed someone 100 meters behind the start line of a race and tied them to a 100 lb weight. Ignoring race and race alone is like you untied them from the weight and proclaimed it a "fair race" even though they are way behind.

Both of these are under the assumption that Asians can't be poor.
 

watershed

Banned
Asian Americans are gonna vote for Hillary over Trump by a large margin. I'm not worried about a small minority supporting Trump though I wish they wouldn't.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
At some point, they are going to start looking at other factors beyond pure academics. So yeah if someone can paint a better view of themselves in the application and show adversity and growth and overcoming certain situations based on a wide-range of factors (including race), they're going to stand out better than the wealthy person that basically has been setup for success from day one. That's the reality. And that's not necessarily wrong.
The reality also is that Asian students looking to min/max their admissions also supplement their academic achievements with extracurricular accomplishments too. Just like any other college hopeful.
 
I disagree. Also most people can achieve an higher education. It's an issue for certain people that they didn't get into Yale, but they got into their state school.


People can't face the fact that their application is bland.

One example let's imagine two demographics are applying for Yale:

Chinese-American
Wealthy
4.0 GPA out of 5.0 GPA (took 20+ AP courses)
Simple community service
No job experience (they are wealthy so they did not have to get a job)
Graduated from a top tier high school
(300+ applicants that fit this profile)

vs

Latina
Lower-Middle Class
4.0 GPA out of 5.0 GPA (took 3 AP courses because that is all her school offered)
A lot of community service (active in her local church which helped her stay focus in life)
Some job experience (had to buy her own luxury items)
Graduated from a poor performing school district
(~50 applicants that fit this profile)

Top tier universities (think top 30 within any given year) care about seeing an underdog story and they do not want to get the same narrative in their starting classes. Diversity of thought is extremely valuable for recruiting departments.

Bruh

could you stereotype Asians anymore?

Fuck! Asian is such a terrible descriptor anyways. How do you categorize the world's largest continent, with over half the world's population, into one catch-all term. What does Asian even mean? Is there a difference between Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, India, etc. being taken into account? There are more than 1500 languages spoken in India alone, each of them typically accounting for at least one ethnic group, and they don't even get a South Asian option?

I generally feel like AA is needed, but the way it currently is is dumb, and I both think that Asians being such a broad category as well as Asians being evaluated harder than whites is stupid (at the very least should be equally)

If anything, the assumption that Asian-American applicants have nothing significant on their resume as they spent all their time focusing on academics, or that the sports and activities they commonly do "don't count", gives me the impression that the bias exists. Most of all, it shouldn't be the sort of shit where Asians stop marking the race or try and find excuses to mark other races on college apps.

But yeah I know people who talk about Affirmative Action and I always just sort of look at them like they're an idiot.

the issue here is not that Asians need to score 450 to equal blacks.

The issue is that they need to score 140 points more than whites. That's white supremacy at it's finest. And it's bullshit.

https://psmag.com/ghosts-of-white-p...om-an-asian-ethnoburb-b550ba986cdb#.kuv9iuvw4

"My little Johnny shouldn't have to deal with the pressure of having to compete against thse cold soulless Asian robots over there"

Yeah this is the part that bothers me the most

Have you noticed that my posts are about AA in general and not SCA5? Having an amendment to allow quotas is something very specific to SCA5. I have not once argued that quotas are good. So read my posts.

Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater they can mobilize to block SCA5.



You argued that criticizing student applicants as bland is racist. That is stupid. If there are similar applicants that share the same background in terms of resources, ethnicity, upbringing, and grades then there is nothing to distinguish them besides their essay. If their essay is bland, then they are a bland applicant. There are more affluent students applying to the same school. The top 100 private high schools in the US all apply to the same school. If a bunch of people that are very similar to you are applying to the same school how are you standing out with a bland essay? You aren't.

In 2016 Harvard accepted 5.2% of their applications. You are telling me that there are zero bland applicants within the 94.8% that were rejected? They all were stellar applicants? Some people need to look in the mirror and stop blaming everything around them and just own up to not getting accepted because that specific university did not want them as a student. No Jamal, and Juliana did not steal your spot. You never had one.

No one said that in your example, the bland Asian application shouldn't be rejected.

But do you honestly think that all Asian who apply to colleges naturally have bland applications and haven't ever had to struggle or come from poorer backgrounds. Is the Vietnamese community in the US generally wealthy? Sure, I know plenty of wealthy South Asian families, I also know plenty that struggle to make ends meet. Afghani refugees technically are classified as Asians, oh boy, I definitely am tired about hearing about their piano lessons and tennis classes and 4.0 gpa.

The issue here is that you immediately jumped to the most hilariously stereotypical Asian application I've ever seen. All community service is just the bare minimum to go to college. They went to a high school where they loaded up on AP courses and mostly sat at home doing nothing but study. They've never worked in their life. Oh, and based on your other profile, they aren't active in local religious centers (so much for those mosques, temples, etc. I always knew the Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, and Hindu communities in the US were typically overly secular, guess I should go tell the other Muslims that our masjids aren't considered terrorist recruitment centers anymore.)

Now I can't talk about whites scores in comparison to Asians. I'm only familiar with AA and the reasons why most top universities support it.

Guess what, data shows that colleges think put more white people over Asians is a stronger show of diversity

Most of the most vocal opponents of AA, sure, yeah, they often complain when they should've tried to gain more general life experience. But in my experience, and personally speaking too, you'll find it pretty common that Asian Americans support the diversity in colleges and AA but find that the current method of its implementation is still unfair towards Asian Americans, as well as hilariously generalizing given how many different things Asian can mean.
 

Erico

Unconfirmed Member
Also, my friends are definitely my anecdotal experience, I was not trying to argue beyond that. But what is not anecdotal though, is the source one of my friends keeps posting on social media. Most of her posts are from Zhihu, a Chinese website that is dedicated to spread expert knowledge and insights into various topics. The website is quite successful at doing so and it is highly regarded among young generation

For example this post (it is in Chinese, duh) asks the question "If you are a Chinese who have live in the U.S. more than 2 years, who will you vote for?", and all top answers (with hundreds or thousands upvotes) would vote for Trump, citing feel oppressed under the reign of democratic party. The top answer cited various historical evidence to argue that "whenever Chinese people worked very hard to gain an advantage, there will always be a political force trying to eliminate such advantage under the mask of law, tax, or equality". The examples includes the "foreign miner's tax" in 1850 to drive Chinese out of mining industry, "Fisherman's tax" and Scott Act to drive Chinese out of fishing industry, Yick Wo v. Hopkins to drive Chinese out of laundry business, and the most recent ones being SCA5 and AB1726 spun by democratic party.

OP, not to blow your mind, but it does seem you're being informed by a skewed subset of Chinese Americans, not representative of the majority.

OP, just letting you know: Zhihu is a Chinese website based in Beijing. Almost all of its readers are in China. What readership base it has in the US are primarily mainland Chinese immigrants of the most recent wave (within the last 10 years) which has a much higher proportion of wealthy families and H1B visa worker families compared to previous waves. Most of which either have or are trying to get green cards and are not allowed to vote.

Even with that said...That Zhihu link you posted, OH BOY. I can read Chinese, and I've read it all since I'm fascinated and never seen anything quite like it before.

The posters in there are the equivalent of One Percenters / Bootstrappers mixed with some classic Tea Party ideology. There's a plea to Asian and Chinese Americans (who are referred to as "ignorant") to renounce their leanings to the Democratic Party, and vote Trump. Hell, though they talk about opposing affirmative action, posters in that thread also blast Black Lives Matter, same sex marriage, and the transgender bathroom law. One post even refers to Obama as Mr. Hussein and talks about the Islamic holy war. Another post uses the old GOP talking point of Chicago handgun ban and homicide rate to argue against of Democrats' push for gun control. Jesus H. Christ, the second highest rated post in that thead even has a direct "Freedom isn't free" quote from Captain America himself lol. But even in this Chinese alt-right doozy of a thread, it's obvious these posters do not represent the opinion of the Chinese majority opinion, as there's a recurring theme in all the posts begging other Chinese to stop supporting Hillary.

chillybright said:
Who knows, that post and website might be an Trump echo chamber, but I can guarantee it is nothing like r/Donald but the exact opposite.
So, no, you actually did find the Chinese equivalent of r/Donald here. It's quite amazing. I'd also reevaluate who your friends are if they echo those opinions there.
 

Totakeke

Member
I did suspect the Chinese OP were referring to were not US citizens, so thanks for clearing that up.

I do wonder if the OP actually has those views himself though. Seems like substantial amount of research just for opinions of his friends.
 

jacksnap

Neo Member
The author referred to Asians as "yellows"...

What.

The.

FUCK?!

Asian author making rhetorical smear against opponents of affirmative action who presumably would generalize minority groups in offensive terms. Maybe study reading comprehension a little more for SAT prep.
 

S-Wind

Member
Asian author making rhetorical smear against opponents of affirmative action who presumably would generalize minority groups in offensive terms. Maybe study reading comprehension a little more for SAT prep.

I'm Canadian. No SATs up here.

It is a poor choice of words. Using it, even as a rhetorical smear, runs the risk of people, who may be less discerning in their choice of words, thinking that it's Ok to refer to people of Asian descent as "yellows".
 
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