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Nearly 100,000 Chinese students enrolled in American universities last year, either as graduate or undergraduate students. More international students came to the U.S. from China than any other country except India. Within a few years, China will send more students to the U.S. than any other country, and President Obama pledged on his recent trip to China to send 100,000 students from America to China over the next four years.
That's the good news. The bad news is that although top American universities claim to have fair admissions' policies based upon meritocratic standards that reward students who excel academically, the reality is that the top American universities often stack the deck against a certain group of applicants. Guess who?
Imagine for a moment that you have a really smart son, Lee, who has worked hard throughout high school and has achieved top grades and superlative SAT (college admission test) scores. He has a bundle of extra-curricular activities.. Down the street is another fellow, Wayne, who has done equally well and is similarly qualified. Sandwiched between your houses, is a third young man, Sam, who is very like Lee and Wayne. All of your sons apply to the same Ivy league school- which only accepts about 10% of applicants- and shortly before your sons are notified of that school's decision, Wayne and Sam get a letter from the school. Wayne is told that his odds of being accepted are three times greater than your son's and Sam is told that his chances of being accepted are more than fifteen times as great. What gives? Well, the simple answer is that the boys are different races.
There was an article in the October issue of US News &World Report about how much tougher it is for Asian-Americans with similar credentials to get into elite colleges than it is for other groups. click here
USN&WR relied on a study by Thomas Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist. Espenshade found in comparing applicants with similar grades, standardized test scores, athletic qualifications and family history who had applied to seven elite private U.S. colleges and universities that: Whites were three times as likely to get admitted as Asians and African-Americans were at least five times as likely to get admitted as Whites..
Translating advantages into college admission SAT scores, Espenshade calculated that African-Americans who achieved 1150 (old SAT based on 1600 points) had the same chance of getting accepted to the top colleges as Whites who scored 1460s and Asians who scored perfect 1600s.
The news was reported by the "Daily Princetonian", Princeton's college newspaper, and both that newspaper and the University of Pennsylvania newspaper wrote editorials about the research. That was it, however. Newspapers and blogs ignored the story and a Google search for other references to the story comes up empty.
It seems no one is all that interested in talking about discrimination when it comes to the difficulties faced by Asian-Americans in competitive college admissions.
That may change shortly, however. In 2006, Jian Li filed a civil rights complaint with the U..S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights against Princeton University, claiming that his race played a role in Princeton's decision to reject his application for admission that year.
Li is a US permanent resident who immigrated with his family to the United States at the age of four from China.... Li graduated from Livingston High School in Livingston, New Jersey in the top 1% of his class. He received a perfect score of 2400 on the new SAT, and a near-perfect score of 2390 on SAT Subject Tests in math level 2, physics, and chemistry. Despite an impressive list of extra-curricular activities, Li was rejected at Princeton and subsequently filed his civil rights complaint.
That action is pending.
Cass Cliatt, a Princeton University spokesperson, told The Daily Princetonian in September, that "Princeton does not discriminate on the basis of race, color or national origin." Cliatt's assertion notwithstanding, it's clear that Princeton and other elite universities do set a higher bar for Asian-Americans than other applicants.
In a meritocratic system of admissions, it's hard to understand how America's elite private colleges and universities can justify and perpetuate an overtly discriminatory system.
Patrick Mattimore
Beijing
tel. # 13439943249
2101 Changyuan Tiandi,
Building B1
18 Suzhou Street
Beijing, China
