The webmaster favors affirmative action based on income: a poor 
kid who has the same qualifications as a richer kid should receive a 
preference in university admissions.  
- There is no reason the children of wealthy minorities, e.g. Michael Jordan, 
Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, etc. should benefit from affirmative action based on race.  
- In California, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Texas, non-Hispanic whites are in the minority.  
Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, and New York will soon join them.

Statistics on reverse discrimination against Asian Americans at the University of 
California, UC medical schools, UC law schools, the University of Michigan, and other 
states, please click on: http://home.sandiego.edu/~e_cook/

The Center for Equal Opportunity has published many studies showing that Bigots for 
the Left perpetrate reverse discrimination against  Asian-Americans.  
http://www.ceousa.org/edprefs.html 



8/17/10 International Business Times: "Asian-Americans in the Ivy League: A Portrait of Privilege 
and Discrimination,"
By Palash R. Ghosh 
    Reflecting their growing social and economic prominence in the U.S., Asian-Americans are disproportionately represented at the most elite universities in the land, relative to their numbers in the total population.
    While "Asians" -- defined broadly as people who can trace their ancestry to East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Pacific Islands -- account for only about 5 percent of the U.S. populace, they are believed to represent up to 20 percent of the enrollment at the top Ivy League schools.
    However, the irony is that if the admission criteria and process in all U.S. universities were completely fair and equitable -- that is, based purely on academic qualifications -- the Asian weighting in the elite colleges would likely be significantly higher.
    In an article in the Boston Globe, Kara Miller, a history professor at Babson College, wrote that Asian-Americans score an average of 1623 -- out of a possible 2400 -- on SAT tests. By comparison, Hispanics and blacks average 1,364 and 1,276 on the SAT, respectively, while whites average 1,581.
    Quite a conundrum, indeed. Are Asians being celebrated and rewarded for their hard work, intelligence and success? Or are they being discriminated against?
    It depends on who you ask.
    Consider what happened in California -- a state with a very high Asian population of about 13 percent -- in late 1996. Voters passed Proposition 209, a referendum that essentially revoked Affirmative Action measures and deemed that entry into public colleges -- including the huge University of California (UC) system -- should be entirely race-blind.
    "A direct consequence of this was that the percentage of Asian-Americans at universities like Berkeley, UC-Irvine, and UCLA immediately skyrocketed," said Stephen D.H. Hsu, a professor of physics at the University of Oregon in Eugene. 
    "At those institutions, the Asian-American representation currently approaches 50 percent."
    Not surprisingly, the passage of "209" led to a political backlash and resentment against Asian-Americans -- from whites, but particularly from African-Americans and Hispanics, who saw their numbers plunge at these institutions."
    The administration at UC is now under significant pressure to remove the current system, Hsu noted.
    "They've responded to the criticism by tweaking the admission process," he said. 
    "Test scores are not weighted as heavily as high school GPA, and the top few percent of graduates at each high school are admitted to UC, even if, in absolute terms, they are not as strong as higher scoring students from top high schools."
    Of course, Hsu adds, Asian-Americans are generally happy with things as they are -- since they both find it fair and beneficial to them.
    Moreover, California's top two private schools, Stanford University and California Institute of Technology (Caltech) also boast disproportionately high Asian-American representation.
    "At my alma mater, Caltech, which has a heavy focus on science and engineering and a completely meritocratic admission process, Asian-Americans account for 30 percent-40 percent of the student body," Hsu added.
    Hsu concludes that Affirmative Action probably hurts both whites and Asians since it arbitrarily takes class slots away from them.
    This is quite ironic since Asian-Americans have long been discriminated in most other ways throughout their long history in this country.
    The word "quota" is controversial and politically-charged; one must be careful when using it.
However it's difficult not to conclude that some elite universities do indeed impose a quota -- officially or subconsciously -- upon Asian enrollment in order to control their numbers at some specified levels.
    Consider a recent study undertaken by Thomas Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist. He calculated that in 1997 African-Americans who achieved scores of 1150 scores on two original SAT tests had the same chances of getting accepted to top private colleges as whites who scored in the 1460s and Asians who scored perfect 1600s.
    Or put it another way, Asian applicants typically need to score an extra 140 or so points on their SATs to compete "equally" with white students.
    Miller of Babson College also wrote that "most elite universities appear determined to keep their Asian American totals in a narrow range. Yale's class of 2013 is 15.5 percent Asian American, compared with 16.1 percent at Dartmouth, 19.1 percent at Harvard and 17.6 percent at Princeton."
    However, white students are similarly victimized by admission policies at some elite schools.
Espenshade discovered that when comparing applicants with similar grades, scores, athletic qualifications, and family history for seven elite private colleges and universities: whites were three times as likely to get accepted as Asians; Hispanics were twice as likely to win admission as whites. and African-Americans were at least five times as likely to be accepted as whites.
    Moreover, if all elite private universities enacted race-blind admissions, the percentage of Asian students would jump from 24 percent to 39 percent (similar to what they already are now at Caltech and Berkeley, two elite institutions with race-blind admissions; the former due to a belief in meritocracy, the latter due to Proposition 209).
    What Asian-Americans are enduring now is reminiscent of the travails of American Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, when colleges like Harvard and Yale imposed quotas to limit their numbers at these elite institutions. And like many of those Jews from seven or eight decades ago, numerous Asian-American students today come from poor, humble immigrant households.
    Perhaps the bottom line in all this discussion is that entry into and success in top-flight schools -- regardless of the surrounding circumstances and controversies -- are pushing more and more Asian-Americans into prominent positions in corporate America, Wall Street and even the corridors of power in Washington D.C.


3/28/10 San Francisco Chronicle: "Ivy League schools' barrier to Asian Americans,"
by Jules Older
    Somewhere in hell, at this very moment, industrious devils are preparing a particularly hot fire. A busload of VIP sinners is on its way down.
    They're from America's leading universities. And even better ... their grandparents are already there.
    Both generations are from Ivy League college admissions offices. Both are guilty of sins against humanity and the American way.
    The grandparents are still searing for discrimination against Jews. The new crop will be charbroiled throughout eternity for the same crimes against Asians.
    Amazed by the lack of learning at prestigious institutions of learning, the denizens of hell can't get over their good fortune.
    The grandparents ran the admissions offices of American universities during the 1930s and '40s. One of their jobs was to keep their institutions from being "overwhelmed" by Jewish kids from New York.
    The New Yorkers had heroic stories. They were poor and hardworking, and their parents were new American immigrants, escaping oppression, even death. The kids got into college because their mothers made them do their homework.
    Only they didn't get in.
    They were kept out by the quota system, by a newfound interest in "geographic diversity" and by plain old bigotry. They weren't wanted, and those who did squeeze through the barriers (in that pushy way of theirs) were simply too smart to keep out.
    But surely, lessons have been learned since then. 
    No. 
    In her carefully researched article in the Boston Globe, "Do colleges redline Asian Americans?," adjunct Professor Kara Miller clearly demonstrates that, yes, they do. Here's the most damning piece of evidence: "Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade, who reviewed data from 10 elite colleges, writes ... that Asian applicants typically need an extra 140 points [on their SATs] to compete with white students."
140 extra points? Try carrying that weight in your high school backpack. Like the predominantly Eastern Jews of the past century, the mostly Western Asians of this one are being routinely, systematically and almost openly discriminated against by America's leading educational institutions. 
    "Indeed," Miller writes, "most elite universities appear determined to keep their Asian American totals in a narrow range. Yale's class of 2013 is 15.5 percent Asian American, compared with 16.1 percent at Dartmouth, 19.1 percent at Harvard and 17.6 percent at Princeton."
    And these practices aren't just at East Coast universities. Espenshade's research included institutions from all over the country.
    Two facts are particularly galling: Our best and brightest halls of higher education have apparently learned nothing from their past sins. Nothing.
    Even worse, the kids these schools reject are once again exemplars of the American dream. They come from poor, immigrant families. Many narrowly escaped from horrors at home. They're being rejected in favor of the wealthy offspring of already privileged white Americans who presumably look more like the alumni than they do. 
    In 1958, Pete Seeger recorded "The Ballad of Sherman Wu." To the tune of "Streets of Laredo," it recounted the tale of a student at Northwestern University who was "depledged" from a fraternity because he was Asian. Here's the key line, spoken by the fraternity president:
    If he were just Jewish,
    Or Spanish or German,
    But he's so damned Chinese,
    The whole campus would know.
    What's happened between the 1950s and the 2010s? Back then, Sherman Wu couldn't get into a fraternity. Now he might not get into college.
    That's why the furnaces of hell are going full blast.
    Jules Older, julesolder.com, lives and writes in San Francisco.


2/8/10 Boston Globe: "Do colleges redline Asian-Americans?"
by Kara Miller 
    SAT Scores aren’t everything. But they can tell some fascinating stories.
    Take 1,623, for instance. That’s the average score of Asian-Americans, a group that Daniel Golden - editor at large of Bloomberg News and author of “The Price of Admission’’ - has labeled “The New Jews.’’ After all, much like Jews a century ago, Asian-Americans tend to earn good grades and high scores. And now they too face serious discrimination in the college admissions process.
    Notably, 1,623 - out of a possible 2,400 - not only separates Asians from other minorities (Hispanics and blacks average 1,364 and 1,276 on the SAT, respectively). The score also puts them ahead of Caucasians, who average 1,581. And the consequences of this are stark.
    Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade, who reviewed data from 10 elite colleges, writes in “No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal’’ that Asian applicants typically need an extra 140 points to compete with white students. In fact, according to Princeton lecturer Russell Nieli, there may be an “Asian ceiling’’ at Princeton, a number above which the admissions office refuses to venture.
    Emily Aronson, a Princeton spokeswoman, insists “the university does not admit students in categories. In the admission process, no particular factor is assigned a fixed weight and there is no formula for weighing the various aspects of the application.’’
    A few years ago, however, when I worked as a reader for Yale’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions, it became immediately clear to me that Asians - who constitute 5 percent of the US population - faced an uphill slog. They tended to get excellent scores, take advantage of AP offerings, and shine in extracurricular activities. Frequently, they also had hard-knock stories: families that had immigrated to America under difficult circumstances, parents working as kitchen assistants and store clerks, and households in which no English was spoken.
    But would Yale be willing to make 50 percent of its freshman class Asian? Probably not.
    Indeed, as Princeton’s Nieli suggests, most elite universities appear determined to keep their Asian-American totals in a narrow range. Yale’s class of 2013 is 15.5 percent Asian-American, compared with 16.1 percent at Dartmouth, 19.1 percent at Harvard, and 17.6 percent at Princeton.
    “There are a lot of poor Asians, immigrant kids,’’ says University of Oregon physics professor Stephen Hsu, who has written about the admissions process. “But generally that story doesn’t do as much as it would for a non-Asian student. Statistically, it’s true that Asians generally have to get higher scores than others to get in.’’
    In a country built on individual liberty and promise, that feels deeply unfair. If a teenager spends much time studying, excels at an instrument or sport, and garners wonderful teacher recommendations, should he be punished for being part of a high-achieving group? Are his accomplishments diminished by the fact that people he has never met - but who look somewhat like him - also work hard?
    “When you look at the private Ivy Leagues, some of them are looking at Asian-American applicants with a different eye than they are white applicants,’’ says Oiyan Poon, the 2007 president of the University of California Students Association. “I do strongly believe in diversity, but I don’t agree with increasing white numbers over historically oppressed populations like Asian-Americans, a group that has been denied civil rights and property rights.’’ But Poon, now a research associate at the University of Massachusetts Boston, warns that there are downsides to having huge numbers of Asian-Americans on a campus.
    In California, where passage of a 1996 referendum banned government institutions from discriminating on the basis of race, Asians make up about 40 percent of public university students, though they account for only 13 percent of residents. “Some Asian-American students feel that they lost something by going to school at a place where almost half of their classmates look like themselves - a campus like UCLA. The students said they didn’t feel as well prepared in intercultural skills for the real world.’’
    But what do you do if you’re an elite college facing tremendous numbers of qualified Asian applicants? At the 2006 meeting of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, a panel entitled “Too Asian?’’ looked at the growing tendency of teachers, college counselors, and admissions officers to see Asians as a unit, rather than as individuals.
    Hsu argues it’s time to tackle this issue, rather than defer it, as Asians’ superior performance will likely persist. “This doesn’t seem to be changing. You can see the same thing with Jews. They’ve outperformed other ethnic groups for the past 100 years.’’
    Which leaves us with two vexing questions: Are we willing to trade personal empowerment for a more palatable group dynamic? And when - if ever - should we give credit where credit is due?
    Kara Miller teaches at Babson College.

11/30/09 National Review: "Racial Preferences by the Numbers: Two researchers lay out the data on affirmative action in college admissions,"
by Robert VerBruggen
    It’s hard to get a straight answer as to how pervasive racial preferences are. On the one hand, many academics say preferences hardly even exist — they’re just a tie-breaker that admissions officers use on rare occasions. On the other hand, the same academics often say preferences are crucial to diversity, and their elimination would wreak havoc on campuses nationwide. Perhaps nowhere has this bizarre contradiction been on starker display than in No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal — a book that manages, despite this contradiction, to shed light on various controversies in higher ed.
    THE EXTENT OF PREFERENCES
    Using the National Study of College Experience (NSCE) — a collection of information from eight anonymous elite colleges — authors Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford are able to calculate various applicants’ odds of getting into a school. They discover some mildly interesting trends regarding social class (more on that later), but their results for race are truly stunning. After academic performance and demographic factors have been taken into account, black applicants are more than five times as likely as whites to be accepted at NSCE private schools, and 220 times as likely to be accepted at NSCE public schools. Asian applicants, meanwhile, are only about a third as likely as whites to get big envelopes from private institutions, and one-fifth as likely to gain admission to public ones.
    Putting preferences in terms of test scores, at private schools, blacks get an advantage, compared to whites, worth 310 SAT points (out of 1600), Hispanics an advantage of 130, and Asians a disadvantage of 140. At public schools, the authors present the difference in ACT points: blacks 3.8 (out of 36), Hispanics 0.3, Asians –3.4.
    If we look at students who actually matriculate, blacks are far more likely than whites to come from the bottom 80 percent of their high-school classes (27 percent versus 12 percent), have high-school GPAs of B+ or below (32 versus 18 percent), and have SAT scores below 1000 (21 versus 2 percent).
    The logical conclusion from this mountain of evidence is obvious: Top-of-the-line schools use severe racial preferences. This shouldn’t be all that shocking; although colleges usually keep quiet about the degree to which they prefer blacks and Hispanics over Asians and whites, anecdotes and numbers have been trickling out for years. Even when California banned racial preferences, its state universities didn’t stop using them. Last year, a UCLA professor resigned from the school’s admissions committee in protest of its flouting the law and issued an 89-page report explaining his reasons. Few schools outright deny using preferences, and the Supreme Court allows the practice. The Center for Equal Opportunity has calculated the extent of countless schools’ preference policies, usually concluding that black and Hispanic candidates get a significant advantage.
    But the authors resist this conclusion. Espenshade told an interviewer for the Inside Higher Ed website that he doesn’t have “smoking gun” evidence that Asians are discriminated against, claiming that factors he wasn’t able to include in his analysis — letters of recommendation, etc. — might have been so much worse for Asians that they explained the gap. The book makes a similar argument about blacks and Hispanics, going so far as to bust out the old tie-breaker meme in this jawdroppingly absurd passage:
    It would be a mistake to interpret the data . . . as meaning that elite college admissions officers are necessarily giving extra weight to black and Hispanic candidates just because they belong to underrepresented minority groups. This may occur from time to time, especially in situations where two applicants are otherwise equally well qualified. But in our judgment, it is more likely that a proper assessment of these data is that the labels “black” and “Hispanic” are proxies for a constellation of other factors in a candidate’s application folder that we do not observe. These unobserved qualities — perhaps having overcome disadvantage and limited opportunities or experiencing challenging family or schooling circumstances — may be positively correlated with the chances of being admitted when a holistic review of an applicant’s total materials is conducted.
    In the very same chapter, however, the authors mention “the black advantage” and refer to the disparities as “weight” and “preference.” They also note that at NSCE private institutions, students who are minority and poor get a sizable boost, whereas students who are white and poor actually get penalized — that’s how much admissions officers care about helping those who have “overcome disadvantage,” as opposed to engineering their schools’ racial balance.
    OTHER WAYS TO ACHIEVE DIVERSITY
    Eventually, the mask comes off. The authors ask: What happens when you remove racial preferences, and what alternative policies are available to those who advocate diversity and/or the redressing of racial inequality?
    It turns out the authors don’t really believe their statements that race isn’t a factor in admissions; if officials stopped considering race, they predict, minority enrollment would decline precipitously. If NSCE private schools eliminated both the black/Hispanic advantage and the Asian disadvantage, blacks would go from 8 to 3 percent of these colleges’ admittances, Hispanics from 8 to 5 percent, whites from 60 to 53 percent, and Asians from 24 to 39 percent.
    Is there any way to have it both ways — to find a policy that uses legitimate, nonracial criteria, but that achieves results that liberal, race-obsessed admissions officers can live with? The authors consider an idea that has been around for a while and has gained some ground on the left recently: replacing race-based with class-based affirmative action.
    What many advocates present as a panacea turns out to be of little help. While class-based affirmative action brings in more minorities than a race-neutral policy would, the numbers aren’t impressive. If schools eliminated racial preferences, instead giving “lower-class” students the weight blacks currently get and “working-class” students the weight Hispanics currently get, black admittance would fall from 8 to 4 percent and Hispanic admittance from 8 to 6 percent. The only way to achieve current levels of diversity with this system is to completely eliminate test scores, GPA, and high-school class rank as considerations.
    There’s still a good case to be made for the class-based approach: If we’re going to use our college-admissions practices to try to combat economic inequality, we should base our preferences on actual economic disadvantage rather than on skin color. But those who advocate ethnic diversity, and those concerned with racial economic inequality as opposed to economic inequality in general, will not be happy with a class-based approach.
    The authors also consider “10 percent plans,” in which schools would automatically admit students who ranked in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes. However, that doesn’t work either: Under these plans Hispanic enrollment would stay constant, but black enrollment would fall from 8 to 4 percent.
    The only realistic way to keep diversity without preferences, the authors say, is to eliminate the achievement gap at lower levels of education. In an article for Inside Higher Ed, they suggest a “New Manhattan Project” toward this end. Good luck to them, but the notion that we can dramatically increase kids’ test scores by improving their schools warrants skepticism.
    One important thing to bear in mind is that the authors’ sample — the elite schools in the NSCE — is not representative. Without affirmative action, the minority students who failed to get into NSCE schools would likely go to lower-tier schools rather than skipping college entirely. It’s hard to tell what would happen at those lower-tier schools. After California banned preferences, black enrollment at its elite schools dropped significantly, but black enrollment at other schools didn’t change much. (Of course, the caveat here is that California administrators didn’t fully comply with the law.)
    Still, the conclusion is inescapable: We cannot reconcile high-end colleges’ desire to enroll substantial numbers of blacks and Hispanics with the public’s opinion that racial preferences should be illegal. One side must win, and the other must lose.
    MISMATCH
    The question of which side should win is, of course, a highly contentious one. Perhaps the most powerful argument against affirmative action was put forth by UCLA School of Law professor Richard Sander in his study of law schools. Sander found that affirmative action brings students into schools that are too demanding for them. As a result, they’re more likely to achieve poorly and eventually drop out. In the end, affirmative action actually decreases the number of black lawyers that law schools produce. If this is true,  and if a similar process unfolds at the undergraduate level, it essentially ends the debate. Even if admissions departments really believe what they say about the benefits of diversity, they’ll have trouble convincing anyone that achieving it is worth hurting minorities.
    Unfortunately, the NSCE data do not provide a good chance to test this theory, because the study includes only elite schools. To perform the same kind of analysis that Sander did with law schools, one would need to compare similar students who went to very different institutions.
    Nonetheless, the authors are able to divide their universities into three tiers: those whose students have an average total SAT score of above 1400, those with an average score between 1300 and 1400, and those with an average score below 1300. The nationwide average for a college-bound high-school senior is just above 1000, so these categories don’t reflect the full range of colleges, but they do allow the researchers to figure out whether comparable students fare worse at the more demanding schools. Looking at graduation rates, they find the opposite: Students who go to more selective NSCE schools are actually more likely to get diplomas.
    This is certainly notable, but the authors also find good evidence that affirmative-action students perform differently from their peers. Compared with whites, blacks and Hispanics are more likely to choose social-science majors and less likely to choose natural-science ones, while Asian students are overrepresented in natural sciences and engineering. As for time needed to graduate, 57 percent of blacks and 71 percent of Hispanics finished college in four years, compared to 80 percent of Asians and 75 percent of whites. Even after six years, 22 percent of blacks have not graduated, as compared to about 10 percent each of Hispanics, Asians, and whites. When they do graduate, half of blacks and a third of Hispanics rank in the bottom 20 percent of their classes; the authors estimate that they’d have ranked higher had they gone to less selective schools.
    So, while affirmative-action students may not be hurt by going to NSCE schools — their likelihood of graduating seems to get higher as they attend more demanding schools, at least within the NSCE, and their classy degrees presumably help them in the job market more than their lower GPAs hurt them — they don’t perform as well as non-affirmative-action students. This must be counted amongst the costs of affirmative action at elite schools: The students admitted out of preference will need more time to earn their degrees, and will achieve less in doing so, than students admitted on merit alone.
    This is a big book, exhaustively researched and packed full of facts, numbers, and prose. The authors weigh in on a number of additional topics, giving statistical snapshots of NSCE schools’ applicants, accepted students, and matriculants and discussing how students pay for school and how often they interact with peers of different races. Whatever its problems, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal is a must-have reference for everyone who pays attention to race and class controversies in higher education.
    — Robert VerBruggen, an NR associate editor, runs the Phi Beta Cons blog. He is a 2009 Phillips Foundation alumni-fund journalism fellow.

http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com:  Ivy League Diversity Contortions,"
by John Stossel 
    Ivy League college applicants are not created equal, according to a study of seven elite private colleges [1] by Princeton professor Thomas Espenshade. Asian students have the biggest hill to climb.
    Asian students were much more likely to be rejected than seemingly similar students of other races....
African-Americans who achieved 1150 scores on the two original SAT tests had the same chances of getting accepted to top private colleges in 1997 as whites who scored 1460s and Asians who scored perfect 1600s.
    Affirmative action policies are responsible. Espenshade found:
    Whites were three times as likely to get fat envelopes as Asians.
    Hispanics were twice as likely to win admission as whites.
    African-Americans were at least five times as likely to be accepted as whites.
    Shocking distortions like these haven't changed the fact that affirmative action still dominates the college admission process, and college administrators think that’s just fine.
    Not to discriminate by race could “severely limit the level of minority enrollment at top-tier colleges,” according to a study by Carnegie Mellon University.
    A universal ban on affirmative action in college admissions could reduce the number of minorities at the nation’s best colleges and universities by as much as 35 percent.
    Would that be worse than what’s going on now? Admitting students who run up big debts but fail to graduate and feel bad about themselves?
    If SATs are the best yardstick we have for college admissions, then let's apply it fairly and quit creating loopholes for favored groups. Every slot that an undeserving student occupies comes at the expense of a student who earned it.


10/8/09 U.S. News and World Report: “Do Elite Private Colleges Discriminate Against Asian Students?  Students of different races have varying odds of admission to elite private colleges, a study finds,”
by Kim Clark
    A recent study of the applicants to seven elite colleges in 1997 found that Asian students were much more likely to be rejected than seemingly similar students of other races. Also, athletes and students from top high schools had admissions edges, as did low-income African-Americans and Hispanics.
    Translating the advantages into SAT scores, study author Thomas Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist, calculated that African-Americans who achieved 1150 scores on the two original SAT tests had the same chances of getting accepted to top private colleges in 1997 as whites who scored 1460s and Asians who scored perfect 1600s.
    He also found some indications that while rich students make up an increasingly large share of the entering freshman classes, the top private schools appeared to be giving admissions edges to low-income minorities, but not necessarily low-income white students. The very richest students also generally had lower acceptance rates than similarly qualified, but less wealthy, students.
    Espenshade warned against concluding that his study proved that colleges improperly discriminated. For one thing, Asians, who make up less than 5 percent of the U.S. population, often make up nearly a third of the applicant pools to elite colleges. And they generally account for at least 10 percent of the student body. Meanwhile, low-income students and minorities make up disproportionately smaller shares of the applicant pools and, often, student populations. Harvard reported last year, for example, that 15 percent of its undergraduates were Asian, but only 7 percent were black, and just 6 percent were Hispanic.
    In addition, Espenshade's study didn't account for "soft" qualifications such as essays, recommendations, extracurricular activities, musical or artistic talents, or community service, all of which play important roles in admissions decisions.
    Nevertheless, some experts said Espenshade's findings seem likely to add more fuel to long-running criticisms of admissions offices. Even though the study reflects 12-year-old practices, "I have no doubt that circumstances have not changed in the interval between then and now," said Ward Connerly, who has spearheaded anti-affirmative action drives in several states. Connerly and other observers noted that college admissions policies have been controversial for decades.
    During the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, African-Americans, American Indians, Jews, and other minorities were barred or severely restricted from many colleges. Civil rights laws and court rulings banned discrimination and encouraged colleges to reach out to long-disadvantaged students.
    Some of those efforts created resentment among white and Asian students who felt they were denied opportunities to make room for those whom they believed to be less qualified minorities. Sparked by a lawsuit filed by a white applicant who had been rejected from a medical school, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1978 ruled that racial quotas were illegal. Voters in California, Michigan, and Washington have since voted to ban many affirmative action practices. In recent years, Asian-Americans have fought admissions policies they believe artificially limited their numbers on campuses. In 2006, an Asian student who scored a perfect 2400 on the three SAT tests filed a federal complaint against Princeton alleging the university rejected him because of anti-Asian bias. The U.S. Department of Education is now examining Princeton's admissions policies.
    Although the schools Espenshade studied have not been identified, Princeton says it wasn't part of the set. And it says it doesn't discriminate on the basis of race or national origin. "The class of 2010 had a record 17,564 applicants for a class of 1,231. We admitted only about half of all the applicants with maximum 2400 SAT scores," says university spokeswoman Cass Cliatt. "Princeton considers factors such as interest in and demonstrated commitment to a particular field of study or extracurricular activity, exceptional skills and talents, experiences and background, status as an alumni child or Princeton faculty or staff child, athletic achievement, musical or artistic talent, geographic or socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, any unique circumstances, and a range of other factors," she added. Currently, Asians make up 15 percent of Princeton's undergraduate student body.
    Mitchell Chang, a professor of higher education at UCLA, said Asians have long complained about the "penalty" they face when applying to colleges. But Espenshade's documentation of a threefold difference for similarly qualified students at elite private universities "is stunning. Really worrisome." Chang said Asian students might be disproportionately less likely to participate in certain kinds of extracurricular activities and that many Asian parents push their children to apply to famous "brand name" elite schools. But he insisted that the Asian applicant pool is nevertheless diverse. He fears that college admissions officers might be stereotyping Asians and saying to themselves: "'We don't want another academic nerd.' "
    Deborah Santiago, vice president for policy and research at Excelencia in Education, noted, however, that other recent studies have shown that many well-qualified students who come from low-income, African-American, or Hispanic families don't apply to elite schools. So the few who do apply are likely to have better odds.
    Espenshade's research indicates that eliminating affirmative action policies would most likely reduce the number of Hispanic and African-American students and racial diversity on campuses. Some schools that have eliminated affirmative action policies have seen significant changes in their student demographics. At UC-Berkeley, for example, 42 percent of undergraduates are Asian. Fewer than one third are white. While African-Americans make up 14 percent of the general population in Michigan, they account for only 6 percent of the undergraduates at the University of Michigan.
    Espenshade found that when comparing applicants with similar grades, scores, athletic qualifications, and family history for seven elite private colleges and universities:
    •           Whites were three times as likely to get fat envelopes as Asians.
    •           Hispanics were twice as likely to win admission as whites.
    •           African-Americans were at least five times as likely to be accepted as whites.
    •           Athletes were more than twice as likely to get in as non-athletes with similar qualifications.
    •           Students from .private high schools were twice as likely to receive acceptance letters as similar students from regular public high schools.
    •           Students from highly regarded public and private high schools were three times as likely to win admission as others.
    •           Students in the top 10 percent of their high school classes were about twice as likely to get in as students in the next 10 percent.



1/30/08 The Chronicle of Higher Education: ""Bans on Affirmative Action Help 
Asian Americans, Not Whites, Report Says,"
Copyright 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education http://chronicle.com/subscribe/login?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchronicle.com%2Fdaily%2F2008%2F01%2F1424n.htm
by Peter Schmidt
    Although opposition to colleges' affirmative-action policies runs highest in the white 
population, a new study suggests that it is Asian Americans - not whites - whose chances 
of gaining admission to a selective university surges after an institution is precluded from 
considering applicants' ethnicity or race. 
    One of the study's authors, David R. Colburn, a professor of history and former provost
at the University of Florida , said in an interview on Tuesday that the study shows 
"Asian Americans were discriminated against under an affirmative-action system." 
Asian Americans' share of enrollment has shot upward at selective public universities 
that have been forced to abandon affirmative-action preferences, he said, and the 
Asian-American population has not increased nearly enough to explain the trend. 
    Meanwhile, a report on the study's findings says, white enrollments, as a share of the 
student body, actually declined slightly at the universities examined. That trend, it says,
though partly attributable to the growing diversity of the states served by the institutions, 
"can hardly be satisfying" to "those who campaigned for the elimination of affirmative
action in the belief that it would advantage the admission of white students." 
    Black students' share of enrollment at such institutions generally dropped "sometimes
substantially while the picture for Hispanic students was mixed, the researchers found. 
    The study, the results of which are to be published next week in InterActions: UCLA 
Journal of Education and Information Studies <http://repositories.cdlib.org/gseis/interactions>,
was based on an analysis of enrollment data from selective universities in three states:
California, where voters passed a 1996 referendum barring such institutions from 
considering applicants' race or ethnicity; Florida, where Gov. Jeb Bush persuaded the
state university system to abandon race-conscious admissions in 2000; and Texas,
where race-conscious admissions were prohibited under a 1996 federal court decision 
that remained in effect until the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of such policies
in 2003. 
    The specific institutions examined in the study, which tracked freshman enrollment 
patterns from 1990 through the fall of 2005, were the University of Florida , the University
of Texas at Austin , and the University of California 's campuses at Berkeley , Los Angeles ,
and San Diego . 
    One of the study's three co-authors, Charles E. Young Jr., was chancellor of UCLA 
when California's ban on affirmative-action preferences was passed and later served
as president of the University of Florida at the time when public universities there were
barred from considering applicants' ethnicity or race. The third co-author is Victor M.
Yellen, a former director of institutional research at Florida . 
    To help pinpoint which of the trends they observed were clearly due to changes in 
affirmative-action policy, the researchers also studied five universities that had never 
been affected by affirmative-action bans: Cornell University , the State University of 
New York at Buffalo , and the Universities of Arizona, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 
and Maryland at College Park . 
    Debating the Asian Impact 
    In looking at how Asian Americans were affected by affirmative-action policies, the 
researchers have waded into an area of considerable controversy. 
    A similar conclusion to the latest one was reached in a 2005 study by Thomas J. 
Espenshade, a professor of sociology at Princeton University , and Chang Y. Chung, 
a statistical programmer at Princeton 's Office of Population Research. Based on their
analysis of the profiles of 124,000 applicants to elite colleges, they concluded that the
elimination of affirmative action would result in a significant increase in Asian-American
enrollments at such institutions, as Asian Americans filled nearly four out of five of the
seats left vacant by declines in the share of black and Hispanic applicants admitted. 
    Those findings were challenged in a 2006 study by William C. Kidder, then a senior 
policy analyst at the University of California at Davis, who accused the Princeton 
researchers of falling prey to the "yellow peril causation fallacy" by confounding the 
effects of affirmative action and "negative action," or outright admissions bias against
Asian-American students. Mr. Espenshade, who characterizes himself as a supporter of
affirmative action, later said in an e-mail message that he and Mr. Chung had 
"inadvertently blurred the conceptual distinction between eliminating affirmative action 
and moving to a race-neutral admissions system," and that their paper had focused on
the latter. 
    Mr. Kidder's study was based on an analysis of enrollment data from five law schools
in California , Texas , and Washington . He argued that Asian-American students had 
made only minor gains at such institutions after the schools were barred from considering
applicants' race or ethnicity. But, although Mr. Kidder's study did not mention it, four of
the five law schools he examined - those at the University of California 's Berkeley , Davis ,
and Los Angeles campuses and the University of Washington - had had affirmative-action
policies that were somewhat exceptional in that they actually favored at least some 
Asian Americans. 
    The report being published in Interactions next week notes that prohibitions against 
race-conscious admissions had put the colleges examined under pressure to curtail 
other admissions preferences given to applicants with some sort of connection, and that 
those other preferences may also have played a role in limiting Asian-American enrollments.
"Clearly in an open admissions process where affirmative action does not enter into 
enrollment decisions and where legacy and donor issues are discouraged, Asian-American
students compete very well," it says. 
    In California , it says, Asian Americans "filled the gap as black and Hispanic enrollment 
fell following the elimination of affirmative action." The share of UC-Berkeley freshmen who
were Asian American rose from 37.30 percent in 1995 to 43.57 percent in 2000 and to 
46.59 percent  in 2005, and Asian-American enrollments experienced similarly large jumps
at the university's Los Angeles and San Diego campuses. 
    The share of University of Florida freshmen who were Asian American rose from 7.5 
percent in 1995 to 8.65 percent in 2005, while Asian Americans' share of freshman 
enrollment at the University of Texas at Austin rose from 14.26 percent to 17.33 percent
during that time frame. 
    Black Declines 
    The forthcoming report says the changes in black enrollments in the states examined 
varied greatly, depending on how aggressively state and university officials worked to 
mitigate the effects of affirmative-action bans. 
    In California , it says, black enrollment declines were "devastating," with the numbers for
black men falling especially far.  At the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses, black students'
share of enrollment dropped by more than half, about as much as the universities' leaders 
had feared it would. Berkeley 's entering freshman class of 1995 had 149 black students, 
accounting for 6.51 percent of first-year students; of those who entered in 2005, 109, or 
2.97 percent, were black.
    At UCLA, black enrollment dropped from 7.31 percent to 2.67 percent.  The decline was
not as steep at San Diego , but the campus's black enrollment had been fairly negligible 
to begin with, accounting for 1.31 percent of the entering class of 1995 and 1.16 percent 
of the entering class of 2005. 
    Few of the university's efforts to offset such declines had much effect, the report says.
The university adopted a policy guaranteeing admission to students in the top 4 percent
of their high-school class, but most black students who got in under the 4-percent rule 
also had been eligible under the old admissions criteria, the report notes. 
    The situation was different in Florida and Texas . 
    Black students' share of the University of Florida's entering class declined from 11.33 
in 2000 - just before the end of race-conscious admissions - to 9.41 percent in 2005, not 
nearly as sharp a decline as that experienced by the California institutions. 
    The report says it helped that Florida adopted a policy of guaranteeing students in the
top 20 percent of their high school a seat at one of the state's public universities. Florida ,
unlike the universities in California and Texas , was allowed to continue to consider race 
and ethnicity in recruiting and awarding financial aid. And even though black students' 
share of its entering classes declined, it was able to increase the raw numbers of black 
students on campus by substantially increasing its overall enrollment. 
    In Texas , Gov. George W. Bush helped reverse black enrollment declines by persuading
lawmakers to adopt the " Texas 10 Percent Plan," guaranteeing students who graduated 
in the top 10th of their class at one of the state's high schools admission to the public 
university of their choice.
    Black students' share of enrollment at the University of Texas at Austin initially dropped
from 4.89 percent in 1995 to 3.38 percent in 2002, but has since rebounded to 5.05 
percent, which is above 1995 levels. 
    Hispanic enrollments dropped substantially at Berkeley and UCLA, but rose substantially
at UC-San Diego and at Florida and Texas . 
    The increases were driven partly by population growth. The University of Florida , 
Mr. Colburn said, did not have to take big steps to maintain Hispanic enrollments 
because Hispanic students "were consistently competitive" with many coming from 
middle- or upper-middle-class backgrounds. 
    The report notes that all five of the universities studied mitigated actual and potential 
declines in their black and Hispanic enrollments by increasing their five and six-year 
graduation rates, so that higher percentages of their black and Hispanic students 
graduated in 2000 than had 10 years before. Mr. Colburn said the information analyzed 
for his study did not shed light on whether graduation rates were bolstered by the better 
academic preparation of students admitted without the benefit of affirmative-action 
preferences. "My observation would be the jury is out on it," he said. 
    The report predicts that white people might begin actively opposing race-neutral 
admissions policies if Asian Americans continue to make gains. "Whites are still too 
influential in politics and in the private sector to sit quietly while this trend continues," 
it says. 
    Mr. Young said he expects a continued decline in the amount of racial and ethnic 
diversity on such campuses as the competition for admission intensifies. Already, he 
says, limits on affirmative action have "clearly negatively affected their ability to 
provide diversity in education," hurting the education of their students. 

6/30/08 MindingtheCampus.com: "Is There An Asian Ceiling?"
By Russell Nieli
    Several years ago a Korean-American student in one of my politics classes at Princeton described the reaction of his Asian classmates in the California private school he attended when the college acceptance and rejection letters arrived in the mail the spring of their senior year. A female Black student, he explained, had applied to more than half a dozen of the most prestigious colleges and universities in the nation and got accepted to all of them, deciding eventually to enroll at Stanford. Many of his Asian friends, he said, along with many Whites, reacted bitterly to the Black student's success, some in open disbelief that this student could be so phenomenally successful in her college search. Why was there such bitterness among his classmates, I wanted to know. "Were there better qualified Asian and White students with higher SAT scores than the Black student?" I asked. "Better qualified?!" he said, "there were loads of Asian and White students who were much better qualified, with much higher SAT scores, much higher grade point averages, and who were much more active in student government and a host of other extra-curricular activities than this Black student." To add further fuel to his classmates' anger, he went on, this particular Black student had a cold, off-putting, self-centered personality which hardly endeared her to her classmates. "She didn't make it on charm" was the gist of his further remarks here. 
    This Korean student's story was in the back of my mind as I read the newspaper accounts about the racial discrimination complaint lodged not long ago with the Department of Education against Princeton University by Jian Li, the Chinese-American student at Yale who had a perfect 2400 (i.e. three 800s) on the newer version of the SAT. Li was a stellar student in high school, who in addition to his perfect SAT score achieved near-perfect scores on several of the College Board achievement tests (SAT IIs), took nine Advanced Placement courses, and had a near-perfect grade-point-average that placed him in the 99th percentile of his graduating class in a competitive suburban high school. In addition to his top-of-the line academic performance, Li was active in a number of extracurricular activities, and was a delegate to the prestigious Boys State. All of this would be an impressive achievement for anyone, but Li was the son of Chinese immigrants, his first language was Chinese, and English was not spoken in his home. Li's academic achievement was a truly remarkable and inspiring story of talent, persistence, and the immigrant work ethic in pursuit of the American Dream.
    Li was happy at Yale and lodged his complaint not because of any animus against Princeton -- Princeton was only one of five elite universities that rejected his application (Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Penn were the others) -- but because of a general sense that Asian applicants to elite colleges were being unjustly disfavored in comparison to the members of other minority groups, especially Blacks and Hispanics, and were not being evaluated fairly under the same set of academic standards as others. For anyone familiar with the admissions policies at the more selective colleges and universities over the past thirty years, Li's complaint not only rang true but has been well-documented again and again wherever the situation has been adequately studied. The simple fact is that a Black or Hispanic student with Li's credentials would almost certainly have gained admission to every elite institution he or she applied to. Indeed, an "underrepresented minority student" would have stood a decent chance of gaining admission to some of the schools Li was rejected at with test scores a hundred to two-hundred points below each of his scores on the three-part SAT exam. 
    While policies differ somewhat from college to college, generally speaking elite institutions strive to have a minimal representation of 5-7% Blacks and a similar percentage of Hispanics in their student body (i.e. roughly half the Black and Hispanic proportion of the general population), though they will almost always deny publicly that they have such numerical target goals in mind. What motivates them is a combination of "social justice" for previously disadvantaged groups, a fear of being charged with "institutional racism" by Black and Hispanic activists, a perceived social need for more Blacks and Hispanics in leadership positions in the U.S., and a peculiar form of post-60s white-guilt-expiation (the latter brilliantly analyzed by essayist Shelby Steele). All of these reasons and motivations, however, are concealed and fraudulently packaged under the beguiling rhetoric of "diversity" in order to make college admissions policies more palatable to the general public and more in tune with the requirements of the two major Supreme Court decisions in this area regarding the constitutionality and legality of racial preferences. (There is no other area of academic life, with the possible exception of the relaxation of standards for athletic recruits, where college administrators, admissions deans, and college presidents are more likely to lie -- and to engage routinely in deception and double-talk -- than on the question of racial preferences in their respective institutions.) 
    A rough rule-of-thumb is that in checking off "Black" as one's racial category on an application to a highly selective college or university one gains the equivalent of about 75-150 points (out of a possible 800) as a "plus-factor" on each of the parts of the SAT exam and a boost of approximately .4-.5 (on a 4.0 scale) in one's high school grade-point-average. Hispanics enjoy a racial enhancement roughly two-thirds to three-quarters as great as that given to Blacks. 
    A 2004 study of the admissions policies at three of the most selective private research universities in the country by sociologist Thomas Espenshade and his colleagues has documented some of these racial advantages. At these three elite institutions, "being African American instead of white" was found "[to be] worth an average of 230 additional SAT points on a 1600-point scale [math + verbal]," while "Hispanic applicants gain[ed] the equivalent of 185 points." But "coming from an Asian background is comparable to the loss of 50 SAT points." 
    The Espenshade team, however, goes on to explain that as sizeable as these preferences are "their magnitudes are biased down[ward] by relying on SAT scores as the sole indicator of academic merit. When such additional measures as high school GPA and class rank are included … the African-American and Hispanic advantage [in admissions] increases, as does the disadvantage if one has an Asian background." Again, one can well understand the consternation of people like Jian Li.
    Although private colleges and universities will usually not disclose data regarding the past or present academic performance of their students categorized by race (they are aware that such disclosure would document the huge racial preferences they grant and the resulting racial stratification of subsequent college grades), we can get a fairly good indication of what is going on by a look at some of the more prestigious public institutions which have been forced to disclose such data either by court order or action upon Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petitions. The University of Michigan is perhaps the best case to look at since it has operated recently under the watchful eye of the federal courts since the 2003 Grutter decision rejected as too mechanical and not sufficiently individualized its previous policies of racial preferences. Michigan now apparently scrutinizes each applicant's file more carefully but it is still up to its old tricks of counting "being Black" or "being Hispanic" as very huge "plus-factors" in making up its entering class. Indeed, the SAT gaps between recent Black and Hispanic admits, on the one hand, and Asian and Whites, on the other, has actually increased since Grutter. For those admitted to Michigan as undergraduates in 2004 the median SAT scores for the four major ethno-racial groups were as follows: Blacks 1160, Hispanics 1260, Whites 1350, Asians 1400. 
    These entering scores would closely parallel the cumulative GPAs earned by members of the four ethno-racial groups their first and second year in college (i.e. there was no tendency for the lower scoring groups to out-perform their entering SAT scores and do better in terms of classroom grades than their SAT numbers would predict). Broken down by race, the cumulative grade point averages (as of 2006) for the class entering in 2004 were as follows: Blacks 2.82, Hispanics 2.99, Whites 3.33, Asians 3.26. For those not familiar with the pattern of grade-inflation and grade-compaction at most elite colleges in America these differences may not seem large, but they are actually very large indeed, since many humanities and "soft" social science courses have effectively eliminated grades in the "C" range except for clearly substandard work that in pre-grade inflation days would have received a "D" or an "F". Blacks and Hispanics at Michigan were clearly not catching up to the better qualified White and Asian students, were receiving substantial numbers of mediocre-to-poor grades, and were no doubt viewed by many of their White and Asian classmates as intellectually inferior. 
    A similar pattern can be seen at the University of Virginia, which published, under FOIA prodding, odds-ratios of being accepted for admissions in various academic years. UVA's statistics show that in 2003 a Black student with an SAT score in the 950-1050 range had a substantially better chance of getting admitted to UVA than an Asian student with SAT scores in the 1250-1350 range. If a Black applicant had an SAT in the 1150-1250 range his chances of admission were about the same as an Asian student with a 1450-1550 SAT. The Black/White disparity in the odds-ratios of admission was even greater than the Black/Asian difference. 
    These are, by anyone's reckoning, very large differences and explain much of the ill-will that racial preference policies often create, especially in view of the fact that the typical Black or Hispanic student at an elite college or university comes most often from a middle class home and has almost always had the advantage of a decent, usually mixed-race public or private high school education. (Students from impoverished families attending a typical inner-city school system dominated by poor Blacks and Hispanics almost never achieve at the level considered the minimum for acceptance at the more highly competitive colleges). 
    In an ongoing longitudinal study of students at 28 highly competitive colleges and universities, sociologist Douglas Massey and his colleagues found that White and Asian students expressed a great deal of "social distance" between themselves and the "beneficiaries of affirmative action" and that this had clearly negative consequences for the quality of race relations on campus. "Whites and Asians tended to perceive a great deal of distance between themselves and blacks who benefited from affirmative action," the Massey team writes. Students in general tended to rank each group in terms of their academic promise, "with Asians on top, followed by whites, Latinos, and blacks." The Blacks and Latinos, they found, were clearly perceived by their Asian and White classmates as "underqualified," the Asians as the most qualified. 
    The Massey group, which surely started out with no bias against current racial preference policies (its study was funded by the pro-affirmative action Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), warned against the harmful effects on college campuses of this general disdain for current affirmative action policies and their beneficiaries. "Such perceptions of distance from 'affirmative action beneficiaries,'" they write, "carry important implications for the general tone of race relations on campus because one stereotype that emerges... is that without affirmative action most black and Latino students would not be admitted. To the extent that such beliefs are widespread among white students at elite institutions, they will not only increase tensions between whites and minorities on campus; they will also increase the risk of stereotype threat by raising anxiety among minority students about confirming these negative suspicions." And we might add here, such beliefs may sour not only Black/White and Black/Latino relations, but relations between Asians and the lower-achieving minority groups as well. 
    Underlying the huge admissions preferences that Black and Hispanic students receive at the most competitive colleges is the simple fact that college bound students in these groups do not exist in sufficient numbers to satisfy the 5-7% representation goal that most elite institutions strive for. Were college administrators to enroll students primarily on the basis of academic performance without regard to race or ethnicity, projections show that Asian students would increase substantially at the most competitive colleges, while Black enrollment would sink to the 1-3% level, and Hispanic enrollment would similarly plunge, though somewhat less steeply. Instituting class-based preferences rather than race-based preferences, as many have suggested, would not significantly raise the proportion of currently underrepresented minorities for the simple reason that there are a lot of poor Asians and poor Whites with much superior academic credentials to poor Blacks and poor Hispanics.
    The reason for these hugely disparate admissions outcomes is very simple: ethnic groups do not perform in the educational arena at anything like parity and over the last 15 years at least, their differential performance has remained remarkably constant. In 2004, for instance, when the average combined math and verbal score on the SAT test was 1026, the scores for the four major ethno-racial groupings distinguished by the College Board were as follows: Asians 1084, Whites 1059, Hispanics 916, Blacks 857. Two years earlier the College Board published data on SAT scores by religious groupings and revealed that Jews, the academically most successful group in the latter half of the 20th century, had an average SAT score of 1161, substantially higher than any other ethno-racial group. 
    There are very few Hispanic students, and even fewer Blacks scoring at the very high levels on the SAT from which the most selective colleges typically draw their students. In 2004, for instance, while constituting almost 10 percent of all SAT test takers, Blacks comprised only 1.4 percent of those who scored 700 or above on the verbal part of the SAT, and only 1.0 percent of those scoring 700 or above on the math. Since the nation's most selective colleges and universities choose most of their incoming student body from those who have scored at these levels, college administrators are faced with the choice of either forming an entering class that is well outside the 5-7% Black representation range they desire, or according to Blacks a huge racial preference. 
Virtually all elite institutions choose the latter option (Cal Tech may be the one exception).
    At the 750 SAT level, where schools like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford recruit many of their incoming students, the situation looks even more ethnically skewed. In 2004, for instance, 25,403 students nationwide scored 750 or higher on the verbal SAT, and 31,316 scored at this level on the SAT math. But more than ninety-five percent of these very high scoring students were either White or Asian. In the entire country that year only 303 Blacks scored 750 or higher on the verbal SAT (1.2 percent of the total), while only 203 Blacks scored that high on the SAT math (a mere 0.6 percent of the total). The situation with Hispanics was only moderately better. The message here is clear: if elite colleges seek to enroll the most academically talented and accomplished, they will be drawing from a pool that is overwhelmingly White and Asian (and among the Whites disproportionately Jewish). If they are unwilling to have an entering class that is only 1-3% Black or Hispanic, they will have to resort to huge racial preferences, even if they try to conceal this fact from the public -- or lie about it, as they almost invariably do. 
    Our current affirmative action regime is criticized for many things -- its tendency to foster a sense of racial grievance on the part of the disfavored groups, to reinforce negative stigmas and stereotypes about those racially favored, to generate a climate of lies and deceptions among academic administrators, to create a chilling effect on interracial relations on college campuses. But perhaps worst of all is its tendency to distort the incentive structure for members of the lower-achieving minority groups to improve their academic performance. "I can attest that in secondary school I quite deliberately refrained from working to my highest potential," writes the linguist and Manhattan Institute scholar John McWhorter, "because I knew that I would be accepted to even top universities without doing so." From an early age, McWhorter goes on to explain, "almost any black child knows … that there is something called affirmative action which means that black students are admitted to schools under lower standards than white; I was aware of this from at least the age of ten. And so I was quite satisfied to make B+'s and A-'s rather than the A's and A+'s I could have made with a little extra time and effort." 
    And it isn't only the students among the lower-achieving minority groups who know about "this something called affirmative action" but their parents and teachers as well, who have less to be concerned about in terms of college admissions when Blacks and Hispanics perform at very mediocre levels in school. Everyone knows that Black and Hispanic students can get into the same colleges and universities as their similarly talented -- or greater talented -- White and Asian classmates doing much less work in school, taking easier courses, and getting much lower grades. As McWhorter concludes, "in general one could think of few better ways to depress a race's propensity for pushing itself to do its best in school than a policy ensuring that less-than-best efforts will have a disproportionately high yield." 
    If the past is any guide, nothing of any consequence will come from Jian Li's complaint to the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights. Princeton and other top universities will continue their mantra, "We don't discriminate against Asians or any other racial or ethnic group!," while continuing to plus-factor in "underrepresented minorities" at the expense of those like Li unlucky enough to be categorized among the "overrepresented." This, they will say (when forced to confront policies they would prefer to keep secret) is legitimate "diversity enhancement," not discrimination. Which is really a shame, since in the long run the benefits of abandoning "race sensitive admissions" and returning to the older color-blind ideal that inspired the original Civil Rights Movement would be enormous, and would redound to all parties concerned. It would not only improve race relations on college campuses and eliminate the sense of racial grievance among Asians and Whites, but would help to refocus the energies of the Black and Hispanic communities into avenues where they might really do some good -- like improving the educational outcomes of Black and Hispanic youngsters in the nation's k-12 school system. 
    Russell Nieli is a lecturer in the Department of Politics at Princeton University


7/12/10 Op-Ed: "UC proves Prop. 209's point: Admissions records show that minorities don't need affirmative action,"
by David A. Lehrer and Joe R. Hicks
    The next few weeks will see renewed interest in a 14-year-old initiative that was, in its day, among the most hotly contested California ballot measures ever, Proposition 209. It prohibits the state from discriminating against or giving preferences to anyone on the basis of "race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting." The measure was approved 54% to 45%. It was tested in the courts, and its constitutionality was affirmed by the California Supreme Court in 2000.
    But another legal challenge to 209 was mounted earlier this year, specifically to allow the University of California to use affirmative-action criteria for admissions, as it did before the proposition passed in 1996.
    The author of 209, Ward Connerly, is seeking to intervene in the case because of his fear that neither the university (whose officials have, on occasion, called for the repeal of 209) nor Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown (whose office filed a brief with the California Supreme Court opining that 209 violates the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment) will vigorously defend the measure. Connerly's motion is scheduled to be heard this month.
    As proponents of Proposition 209 in 1996, we could only have hoped that the "underrepresented" minorities at the center of the debate would ultimately be admitted to the UC — without preferences — in numbers approximating their rate of admission with the benefit of preferences. Our argument then, as now, was that granting preferences on the basis of race and ethnicity was wrong and that, ultimately, in a bias-free environment, students would figure out what had to be done and would qualify for admission on their merits. That argument was right.
    Here are the facts: The number of minority admissions to the University of California for this fall — without the benefit of preferences — exceeds that of 1996, in absolute numbers and, more important, as a percentage of all "admits." The numbers are, in almost every category, quite staggering.
    Latino students have gone from 15.4% (5,744 students) of freshman undergraduate admissions in 1996 to 23% (14,081) in 2010 (a 145% increase). Asian students have gone from 29.8% (11,085) of the freshman admits to 37.47% (22,877). Native American admits have declined slightly, from 0.9% to 0.8%, but their absolute number increased, from 360 to 531. African American admits have gone from 4% (1,628) to 4.2% (2,624), a modest gain in percentage but nearly a 61% increase in numbers of freshmen admitted.
    The only major category that declined in percentage terms was whites, who went from 44% (16,465) of the freshmen admits to 34% (20,807).
    But the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, which filed this year's lawsuit, finds little solace in these data: "The percentage of Latina/o, black and Native American students in the UC as a whole has not kept pace with the rising percentage of those groups among high school graduates of the state," the suit says.
    That argument alone reveals the agenda of the coalition. They seem to believe that the percentage of minority high school graduates in the state —- without regard to SATs, GPAs or overall academic achievement — is what should determine the makeup of the admissions to the university. But the truth is that qualifications, not demographics, should determine admissions.
    One subtext of the coalition's complaint is that as a result of Proposition 209, the "flagship" UC campuses, UC Berkeley and UCLA, have become elitist, segregated institutions, out of reach for minorities and the poor, who are relegated to the "newer, less-selective schools."
    It is true that UC Berkeley and UCLA have fewer African American freshman admits in 2010 than pre-Proposition 209. Compared with 1996, at Berkeley the difference is 572 to 392; and at UCLA, 606 to 435. — but it's not because those campuses aren't reaching out to the disadvantaged or are enclaves of elitism.
    In fact, at Berkeley and UCLA, more than 30% of undergraduates are Pell Grant recipients whose parents' incomes fall below $45,000 annually. Overall, the University of California enrolled a higher percentage of Pell Grant recipients than any of its public or private competitive institutions nationwide. This fall, 39.4% of incoming freshman at the university will come from low-income families, 38% from families where neither parent has a four-year degree.
    Moreover, according to the U.S. News & World Report rankings, four of the 25 most diverse among the so-called national universities are UC campuses, including UCLA (No. 11), Berkeley (No. 16) and San Diego (No. 22). In terms of economic diversity among "top-ranked" national universities, U.S. News ranks UCLA and Berkeley No. 1 and No. 2, respectively.
    In fact, the University of California is an unequaled example of a world-class institution of higher learning maintaining its preeminent status while also addressing the needs of disadvantaged students who have academic potential, a record of success and a desire to succeed — not an easy task, especially in economically tough times. This year's admits have an average GPA of 3.84.
    In reality, despite the coalition's lawsuit, the principles that underlay Proposition 209 have proved themselves correct. The belief that minorities could and would succeed in a system free of discrimination and preferential biases is true. The presence of minorities and disadvantaged students throughout UC is vindication of a traditional American concept: The state should not discriminate against anyone or give preferences to anyone on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, color or sex, a concept Californians understand, enacted into law and are now reaping the benefits of.
    David A. Lehrer is the president and Joe R. Hicks the vice president of Community Advocates Inc. , a human relations organization based in Los Angeles that is chaired by former Mayor Richard Riordan.



12/8/09 New America Media: "New UC Admissions Policy Would Hurt African Americans, Asians,"
by Henry Der
    The new freshman admission policy will take UC admissions in the wrong direction, and it will seriously affect minority applicants. 
    Earlier this year on the recommendation of President Mark Yudof and the Academic Senate, the University of California Board of Regents adopted a new freshman admission policy. It greatly expands the eligible applicant pool but also reduces the historic guarantee of admission from the top 12.5 percent to 10 percent of the California high school graduating class. The new policy retains the eligibility requirement for applicants to complete 15 college prep courses, maintain a GPA of 3.0 or better in these courses, and take the SAT Reasoning Test (previously known as the SAT I), but eliminates the requirement for applicants to take the SAT Subject Tests that assess the mastery of specific academic subjects. 
    Analysis by Yudof’s office indicated that if the new policy had been applied to the fall 2007 entering freshman class, the percentage of Asian-American admittees would have dropped significantly, and that of African Americans and Latinos would not have changed. In contrast, the percentage of white admittees would have increased. Faculty members had initially intended the new policy to increase student diversity at UC. 
    Unfortunately, when UC drops guaranteed admission for those ranked between the 10 percentile and 12.5 percentile, African Americans, Latinos and low-income Asian Americans who are clustered in this band lose out on admission. 
    As the former California Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction and a parent of three UC graduates, I was shocked by UC’s own analysis. I was not included in the discussion during the developmental phase of the policy, but I joined other Asian Americans in appealing to the Regents to delay their vote on the new policy so that its impact on racial minority applicants could be better understood. Long supportive of a diverse UC, we suspected that the analysis by UC did not fully explore the effect of using scores from only the SAT Reasoning test on racial minority admissions. The Regents denied our appeal for a delay and voted for the new policy to take effect for the fall 2012 entering freshman class.
    Yudof argued that the new policy is about “fairness.” He said that under the current policy many students who meet the high school coursework and GPA requirements and take the SAT Reasoning test, but fail to take the SAT Subject Tests, have been barred from having their application reviewed and considered for UC admission. Including these students, Yudof said, would create a more diverse pool of applicants entitled to have their application reviewed. 
    The new policy may expand and diversify the pool of applicants, but unlike the current policy, it does not guarantee admission to all applicants who meet UC eligibility requirements. UC will review more applications but will also reject many more applicants, including eligible racial minority students. 
    Retired UC Berkeley Professor Ling Chi Wang, Chinese for Affirmative Action Executive Director Vincent Pan and I met with UC officials this past summer and requested a simulation study of the impact of the new policy for each of the nine UC undergraduate campuses. UC officials agreed to do this simulation study, based on California Postsecondary Education Commission data, that would look at two scenarios at each campus: a small applicant pool increase and a large one.
    In November, UC officials released to us the results of its latest simulation study which showed dramatic and disturbing results: Had the new policy been in effect for the spring 2007 California public high school graduating class, the percentage of African-American and Asian-American admissions would have dropped at eight UC campuses under both scenarios, and declined under one of two scenarios at the ninth UC campus. The percentage of Latino admissions would have decreased at four campuses under both scenarios and dropped at three other campuses under one of two scenarios. The percentage of white admissions would have increased significantly at eight UC campuses under both scenarios. 
    In the stimulation study, African Americans, Latinos and Asians lose substantially in admissions on the Riverside campus, currently home to the largest group of African-American and Latino students, compared to all other campuses. 
    The results of this latest study uncovered how severe the impact would be on African-American admissions, much more than what was known at the time the policy was adopted. System-wide, the number of African-American admittees would have dropped 27 percent; Asian Americans, nearly 12 percent; and Latinos, nearly three percent. This is not a direction that UC admissions should be headed, especially when the number and percentage of UC-eligible African-American and Latino students has increased, due to their hard work in high school, during the past 10 years. 
    In the face of these latest findings, President Yudof and Academic Senate leaders continue to insist that UC “cannot know who will apply under the new policy, and among those who apply, who will be admitted.” They refuse to accept study findings coming out of the presidents’ own office, based on well-established, predictable UC freshman student applicant behavior for all high schools across the state. The new policy is neither fair nor wise.
    The impact of the new policy, coupled with higher tuition and stiffer competition stemming from freshmen student enrollment cutbacks, will cause UC-eligible racial minority and low-income high school graduates to experience much greater difficulty in achieving UC admission. 
    The Regents need to rescind the new freshman admission policy and direct the president and his staff to work with community members and high schools to improve the admission and enrollment of underrepresented racial minority students to UC. It has to be held accountable for implementing its commitment to diversity and equity. 
    Henry Der is a veteran civil rights activist.


4/25/09 Associated Press: “New UC admissions policy angers Asian-
Americans,”
by Terence Chea
    San Francisco (AP) — A new admissions policy set to take effect at the
University of California system in three years is raising fears among Asian-
Americans that it will reduce their numbers on campus, where they account
for 40 percent of all undergraduates.
    University officials say the new standards — the biggest change in UC 
admissions since 1960 — are intended to widen the pool of high school 
applicants and make the process more fair.
    But Asian-American advocates, parents and lawmakers are angrily 
calling on the university to rescind the policy, which will apply at all nine of 
the system's undergraduate campuses.
    They point to a UC projection that the new standards would sharply 
reduce Asian-American admissions while resulting in little change for 
blacks and Hispanics, and a big gain for white students.
    "I like to call it affirmative action for whites," said Ling-chi Wang, a 
retired professor at UC Berkeley. "I think it's extremely unfair to Asian-
Americans on the one hand and underrepresented minorities on the other."
    Asian-Americans are the single largest ethnic group among UC's 
173,000 undergraduates. In 2008, they accounted for 40 percent at UCLA
and 43 percent at UC Berkeley — the two most selective campuses in the
UC system — as well as 50 percent at UC San Diego and 54 percent at 
UC Irvine.
    Asian-Americans are about 12 percent of California 's population and
4 percent of the U.S. population overall.
   The new policy, approved unanimously by the UC Board of Regents in 
February, will greatly expand the applicant pool, eliminate the requirement 
that applicants take two SAT subject tests and reduce the number of 
students guaranteed admission based on grades and test scores alone. 
It takes effect for the freshman class of fall 2012.
    Some opponents have charged that the university is trying to reduce 
Asian-American enrollment. Others say that may not be the intent, but it will
be the result.
    UC officials adamantly deny the intent is to increase racial diversity, and
reject allegations the policy is an attempt to circumvent a 1996 voter-
approved ban on affirmative action.
    "The primary goal is fairness and eliminating barriers that seem 
unnecessary," UC President Mark Yudof said. "It means that if you're a 
parent out there, more of your sons' and daughters' files will be reviewed."
    Yudof and other officials disputed the internal study that projected a drop
of about 20 percent in Asian-American admissions, saying it is impossible
to accurately predict the effects. "This is not Armageddon for Asian-
American students," Yudof said.
    At San Francisco 's Lowell High School, one of the top public schools 
in the country, about 70 percent of the students are of Asian descent and 
more than 40 percent attend UC after graduation.
   "If there are Asian-Americans who are qualified and don't get into UC 
because they're trying to increase diversity, then I think that's unfair," said 
16-year-old junior Jessica Peng. "I think that UC is lowering its standards
by doing that."
    Doug Chan, who has a teenage son at Lowell, said: "Parents are very 
skeptical and suspicious that this is yet another attempt to move the goal 
posts or change the rules of the game for Asian college applicants."
    One of the biggest changes is scrapping the requirement that applicants
take two SAT subject tests. UC officials say the tests do little to predict 
who will succeed at UC, no other public university requires them, and many
high-achieving students are disqualified because they do not take them.
    The policy also widens the pool of candidates by allowing applications 
from all students who complete the required high school courses, take the
main SAT or ACT exams and maintain a 3.0 grade-point average. Under
the current policy, students have to rank in the top 12.5 percent of  
California high school graduates to be eligible.
    Students still have to apply to individual campuses, where admissions
officers are allowed to consider each applicants' grades, test scores,
personal background, extracurricular activities and other factors but not 
race.
    The policy is expected to increase competition for UC admission. This 
year the university turned away the largest number of students in years 
after it received a record number of applications and cut freshman 
enrollment because of the state's budget crisis.
    "I'm getting all sorts of e-mails from parents, alumni and donors who 
are quite upset by the action UC took," said state Assemblyman Ted Lieu,
chairman of the Legislature's 11-member Asian-American caucus.


3/14/09 The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Asian-American
Lawmakers Pressure U. of California Over New Admissions
Policy"     
by Peter Schmidt
   Two panels of the California Legislature that deal with Asian-
American issues plan to jointly hold a hearing next week to
scrutinize a new University of California undergraduate admissions
policy that could lower Asian-American enrollments.
    The State Senate's select committee on Asian and Pacific
Islander affairs and the state's 11-member Joint Asian Pacific
Islander Legislative Caucus plan to hear testimony from Asian-
American activists, a member of the university Academic Senate
who helped develop the policy, and a legislative analyst who
examined the policy's impact, Andrew T. Medina, a consultant on
the caucus's staff, said on Monday.
    The university system's own analysis of the likely impact of the
new admissions policy, adopted last month, had projected that it
would cause a decline in the share of admitted students who are
Asian American or Pacific Islander, with white students accounting
for most of those who take their place.
    University officials had argued, however, that such projections of
the policy's impact on various racial and ethnic groups should not
be given much weight because the system's estimates were based
on outdated student data, from 2007, and did not take into account
expected changes in student behavior or the uncertainty of the
admissions process.
    Speaking last month at the Education Writers Association
conference in San Francisco , Mark G. Yudof, the university's
president, called the new admissions policy "fair" and said, "I think
Asian Americans will do well. That is my prediction."
    Such statements have done little to reassure Asian American
members of the State Legislature, who had responded to the
concerns of many of their constituents by urging the system's Board
of Regents to postpone its February 4 vote on the policy change to
allow more time to study its likely impact on minority groups. In a
letter sent to the board the day before its vote, the leaders of the
Joint Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus accused the system
of doing nothing to solicit feedback on the policy from the caucus or
the ethnic groups that it represents, and said the policy "has not
received the proper vetting it deserves"
    In a recent interview, State Assemblyman Ted Lieu, a Democrat
who serves as co-chairman of the caucus, said the Asian-American
community "feels it was blindsided by this decision." He said he
objects to the policy change partly because the university's analysis
of its impact had lumped all Asian-American populations together
into what he called "one monolithic block," thus failing to tease out
how specific ethnic groups would be affected. He also complained
that the policy change will do little to diversify the university's
enrollments or to tackle the inequities in elementary and secondary
education that have left the university's campuses with enrollments
that do not reflect the racial and ethnic composition of the state.
    Mr. Lieu acknowledged that, under his state's Constitution, the
Legislature has little direct say over the University of California 's
policies, which are set by the Board of Regents. But, he said,
"Lawmakers do determine how much financial support the university
receives in the state budget, and now "you have 11 upset legislators
looking at this."


9/7/08 Los Angeles Times: "Opinion: How UC is rigging the admissions
process; Officials are perverting the law in a desperate attempt to
increase black enrollment,"
by Heather Mac Donald
    Ever since California voters banned the use of racial preferences in
government and education in 1996, the University of California has
tried to engineer admissions systems that would replicate the effect of
explicit racial quotas while appearing color-blind.
    To some observers, the legality of those efforts has long been suspect,
but proof of wrongdoing has been hard to come by. Now a professor
who sat on UCLA's committee on undergraduate admissions is
charging that the school is deliberately taking race into account when
deciding which students to admit. The university has refused to give him
access to the data to test his claim, prompting the professor -- political
science faculty member Tim Groseclose -- to resign from the school's
admissions oversight committee in protest.
    UCLA's stonewalling is misguided and futile. Though the University of
California has always jealously guarded information on its students'
qualifications and its admissions procedures, enough details have
come out over the last 10 years to suggest that race remains a factor in
many parts of the system. More important, hard evidence is accumulating
that enrolling students in a college for which they are academically
unprepared does them a disservice.
    The story begins with the passage of Proposition 209, the 1996
anti-quota ballot initiative, which reduced the number of African
Americans admitted to campuses across the state and sent UC officials
into crisis mode. They began implementing a series of admissions
changes intended to bring underqualified blacks and Latinos back to the
system's most demanding campuses.
    They tried a preference scheme for low-income students, but it
backfired when it boosted the number of Eastern European and
Vietnamese admissions -- not the sort of "diversity" the university had
in mind. Administrators cut the low-income preferences in half and went
back to the drawing board.
    The subsequent admissions gambits, which continue to be rolled out
to this day, are intended to increase "diversity" without running afoul of
the law. Whether they have succeeded in substituting other factors for
race in a permissible manner, or whether they are illegally seeking to
pervert the requirements of the law, will probably be decided, in the end,
in court.
    Berkeley's Boalt law school, for example, reduced the role of academic
qualifications in ranking students; the resulting disparities between
minorities and whites at the school were enormous. In 2002, Boalt
admitted only 5% of white students in a low academic rank, but it
admitted 75% of black applicants in the same range.
    At UCLA, from 1998 to 2001, black applicants were 3.6 times as
likely to be admitted to its undergraduate college as whites, and
Latinos 1.8 times as likely, even after controlling for economic status
and school ranking, according to an unpublished study by statistician
Richard Berk.
    The most powerful tool that the University of California has come
up with to engineer such outcomes is something it calls "comprehensive
review," which, as the president's office delicately put it in 2003,
"broadens the conception of merit." Under comprehensive review,
a student's academic qualifications are boosted or demoted according
to various factors, including his or her life situation -- whether he or she
lives in a high-crime neighborhood, has been a shooting victim, is a
single parent or comes from a single-parent home, for example.
    Even with such a relativist take on academic credentials, UCLA still
faced a dearth of qualified black students. In 2005, under enormous
political pressure to increase the low black enrollment at UCLA, acting
Chancellor Norman Abrams all but demanded that the faculty adopt a
more radical version of comprehensive review -- "holistic" review --
which deconstructs the idea of objective academic merit even further.
    UCLA's associate vice provost for student diversity also directed the
admissions committee to increase the number of blacks who read and
rate student applications, resulting in a 25% black representation
among readers, more than three times the ratio in California 's population.
    Abrams had assured the black community that UCLA would increase
its black admissions rate, and sure enough, holistic review did just that.
For 2006-07, the last year under the old system, UCLA admitted 250
black students; the next year, it admitted 407.
    The average combined SAT score for black admits dropped 45
points to a level about 300 points lower than the average among white
and Asian admissions, according to a report by Groseclose. Blacks'
chances of admission rose from 11.5% to 16.5%, while that of
Vietnamese students, who tend to come from poorer households,
dropped from 28.6% to 21.4%.
    Groseclose wanted to evaluate whether a student's mention of his
race on his application essay affected his chance of admission under
holistic review. The university refused to turn over the necessary data,
citing privacy concerns. But its reasoning is specious. The essence
of the university is transparency. Groseclose has promised to abide
by all applicable privacy restrictions. He has even offered not to
publish his findings anywhere but to use them only to advise UCLA
on its compliance with the law.
    Even if UCLA continues to keep Groseclose away from its data,
the flimsy justifications for racial double standards are crumbling just
as fast as the myth that they no longer exist at the University of California .
    Students admitted with drastically lower qualifications than their
school's norm frequently end up in the bottom of their class and take
much longer to graduate, if they graduate at all. UCLA law professor
Richard Sander has shown that black law students, almost all of whom
receive large racial preferences in law school admissions, are six
times as likely as whites to fail the bar after multiple efforts. The reason,
Sander has argued persuasively, is that students learn less in an
academic environment pitched over their heads than they would in a
school that matches their capabilities. Thus, racial double standards
can end up hurting black and Latino students rather than helping them.
    Yet UC administrators continue to devise new schemes to admit
poorly qualified minority students to their most competitive campuses
on the ground that objective tests of academic merit are not related
to subsequent performance. The fact is, nothing else comes close to
the predictive power of aptitude and other objective tests -- including
the "spark" and "leadership" qualities that UC administrators purport
to be seeking these days.
    The academic elitism behind the effort to shoehorn underqualified
black and Latino students into UC's flagship schools is an insult to the
rest of California 's college and university system. The proportion of
underrepresented minorities in the UC system as a whole has returned
to its pre-209 levels. "Irrelevant!" say preference supporters. Berkeley
Chancellor Robert Birgeneau has complained that there are not
enough black and Latino students at Berkeley to provide minority
communities with the "leadership" they need -- in other words, don't
expect UC Riverside or Cal State Long Beach to graduate "community
leaders." But if attending Cal State Northridge or Santa Monica
Community College would so impair the life chances of black and
Latino students, why should any student be subjected to such a fate?
Why not close down all second- and third-tier schools so that everyone
can get an elite degree?
    The energies that have been expended since 1996 to re-create a
full-blown preference regime have been wasted. While UC race
advocates have fiddled with their admissions criteria, the test score
gap in California has widened. Blacks' average math SATs in 2007
were 429, compared to 564 for Asians and 549 for whites, according
to the California Department of Education. On reading, blacks scored
438, compared to 510 for Asians and 541 for whites. The dropout
rate in 2007 was 41.6% for blacks, 15.2% for whites and 10.2% for
Asians.
    These figures reveal the true educational crisis in California: It is
in the state's elementary and high schools and in its homes, not in
the universities. If, over the last decade, pro-preference faculty
members and administrators had devoted their considerable talents
to tutoring minority students and convincing them and their families
that learning is important, Groseclose's whistle-blowing might not
have been needed.
    Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal.

9/4/08 National Review: "Ducking Colorblindness: A UCLA professor
blows the whistle on the persistence of racial preferences,"
by Robert VerBruggen
    University of Los Angeles political science professor Tim Groseclose
publishes studies that get <http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Media-Bias-Is-Real-Finds-UCLA-666.aspx?RelNum=6664>
noticed, and even participated on the school's faculty admissions
committee, which oversees the staff that chooses each year's new
undergrads.
    Still, he's lucky he has tenure. Last Thursday, Groseclose resigned
from the admissions committee, in protest of the school's behavior
when it comes to racial preferences.
    Such preferences ought not to be an issue at UCLA - according to
California 's Proposition 209, "The state shall not discriminate
against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group
on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the
operation of . . . public education." Prop 209 was passed in 1996,
but it's no secret that campuses in the left-leaning state - Berkeley
and UCLA in particular - have been defying the will of California 's
electorate.
    Heather Mac Donald detailed <http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_1_prop209.html>
as much in City Journal last year; and now, Groseclose has made
public an 89-page report blowing the whistle, complete with closed-
door conversations, private e-mails, and a chronicle of his school's
sketchy handling of data that could prove or disprove his suspicions.
Basically, Groseclose alleges that changes to the scoring system
improved the likelihood that a personal essay - in which applicants
often mention their race - would get a student admitted.
    Groseclose's documentation makes clear that the committee -
despite Prop 209's clear injunction against public institutions using
race-based preferences - soldiered on in its drive to engineer each
class's racial makeup. Without the individual-level data Groseclose
seeks, it's impossible to tell how much the racial bean-counters were
able to distort the school's admissions process, but the available
numbers strongly suggest that race played a significant role in
shaping the school's 2007 freshman class.
    Groseclose joined the admissions committee in September of 2005.
"At least 75 percent of what we discussed related to race and
improving diversity," he said in a phone interview. "There's pressure
on the admissions staff [to let in more minorities]. They're constrained
by Prop 209.  So it's a very tough situation for those staff, and I kind of
feel sorry for them."
    In June 2006, the Los Angeles Times ratcheted up the intensity with
"A Startling Statistic at UCLA," <http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jun/03/local/me-ucla3>
a front-page story revealing that of the 4,853 freshmen expected to
enroll at the school, only 96, or 2 percent, were black.  (Eventually, four
more blacks enrolled than were expected to, for a total of 100.)
    "At the end-of-summer meeting of my committee, the chancellor
[Norm Abrams] shows up, which never happens," Groseclose says.
"He said the number of African-Americans was too low. He said, 'I
don't want to pressure you, but here's what I want you to do.'"
    The chancellor suggested the committee adopt a "holistic" system,
which Berkeley was using at the time. The New York Times would later
describe the change thus:
    In the past, the admissions office divided every application between
two readers: one evaluated a student's academic record, the other looked
at extracurricular activities and "life challenges."  Berkeley , by contrast,
had taken a more holistic approach, with a single reader judging an entire
application, and Berkeley was attracting more black students than U.C.L.A.
    Why? Maybe the holistic approach takes better account of the subtle
obstacles that black students face - or maybe the readers, when looking
at a full application, ended up practicing a little under-the-table affirmative
action.
    The Times reporter interviewed two application readers - about a
quarter of readers were black, and Groseclose writes that some were
selected under explicit direction to "hire underrepresented minorities"-
who had been told not to consider race and claimed they hadn't. But one
reader noticed that more students mentioned race in their essays.
    Some weird things happened statistically the following year. The 100
black students who enrolled in 2006 came from an applicant pool of
2,173 and an acceptance pool of 249, meaning that 11.5 percent of
black students who applied got in - but only about 40 percent of those
chose to attend. But in 2007, 2,460 blacks applied, 407 were admitted,
and 204 enrolled - an outsize 16.5 percent of applicants got in, 50
percent of whom matriculated.
    One might argue that the school's recruiting efforts simply paid off -
it is not illegal to target minority areas in recruiting. Perhaps recruiters
not only got more blacks to apply, but got enough high-achieving blacks
to apply to significantly and legitimately boost blacks' admission rate.
But then, why would admitted blacks' average SAT score drop 45 points?
    Alternately, one could say the university just considered disadvantage
in general more than it had in the past - this would let in more poor,
lower-scoring students, raising the acceptance rates but lowering the
average scores of disproportionately poor groups. But acceptance rates
for American Indians, Hispanics, and other minorities actually fell.
    "If you take a random Vietnamese applicant, the probability of
acceptance went down significantly, from 28.6 to 21.4 percent,"
Groseclose says. "And when you look at these applications, the ones
who have faced documented, verifiable family hardships are very
often Vietnamese."
    A detailed statistical analysis is the only way to know for sure what
role race played in the admissions process. So in April of this year,
Groseclose made waves by requesting a random sample of 1,000
applications, 500 each from 2006 and 2007. This would let him
compare, within each year and between years, how similarly situated
individuals of different races fared in the admissions process.
    "The reaction was immediate - within 18 hours, the chair suggested
we have the whole committee do the study. I said I'd be happy to
participate, but I'd like to do my own as well," Groseclose recalls.
    He didn't get data for his own study, "and it turned out the committee
would not get the data, either. We'd hire an outside expert to do the
study - despite the fact that nearly all of us have the statistical
ability needed."
    Groseclose tried other methods. He made a motion to get all
committee members a sample of random applications, which failed
on a 3-3 vote (three other non-voting members wrote letters
supporting Groseclose). He appealed to higher authorities at the
university, who denied him access, purportedly for privacy reasons.
    Four member of the admissions committee - Groseclose, and
the three who voted against his motion to give all members the
data - formed a work group to choose an outside academic and
devise research questions. They chose sociologist Robert Mare,
but directed Mare not to look at the 2006 or 2007 data - just the
2008 applications. Thus, Mare will be unable to determine how
the "holistic" approach changed admissions, and to detect any illegal
behavior that occurred in 2007 but not 2008.
    Groseclose doubts the staff stopped using preferences in 2008;
all the admissions decisions were probably made before he came
forward with his objections. But 2007 might have been a
particularly egregious year: "We had [pro-affirmative action]
protests at the chancellor's office, and we had an acting chancellor
at the time - he was the one who showed up at our meeting.  He
was a lot more likely to put pressure on people."
    In the report, Groseclose provides a transcription of a meeting
where one committee member slipped up while discussing the 2007
applications: "The readers in the first year, given the change, were
not doing exactly what they were supposed to do. They were
motivated by other concerns. . . . maybe the training wasn't as
rigorous." Another replied, "All those T-shirts that said,
'Got black students?'"
    Mare's data collection won't begin until spring of 2009. In the
meantime, the conversations and statistics in Groseclose's report
should be more than enough to make California voters suspicious
about their public universities' commitment to adhering to colorblind
admissions. They deserve better than the evasion they're getting.
- Robert VerBruggen edits NRO's > Phi Beta Cons blog.
<http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/>

9/3/08 San Diego Union Tribune: "At UCLA, who must pay price for white 
racism? Vietnamese-Americans,"
    In 1996, California voters decisively approved Proposition 209, ending 
the use of racial preferences in college admissions and other state 
programs. This year, we've seen Democratic presidential candidate 
Barack Obama express concerns about the continuing use of racial 
preferences even in states where they are still legal. Obama suggests 
that giving preferences based on socioeconomic status -- helping poor 
kids attending substandard schools -- makes more sense than basing 
preferences on race.
    So the most admired and popular African-American politician of all 
thinks it's time to fix affirmative action. But at UCLA, racial spoils politics 
are back in business, thanks to administrators and professors who think 
they have figured out how to evade the plain meaning of 209 to help 
one group -- blacks -- at the expense of another group: Asian-
Americans.
    Specifically, Vietnamese-Americans.
    This disturbing fact is part of why political science professor Tim 
Groseclose resigned last week from UCLA's committee on 
undergraduate admissions. For four months, Groseclose has been 
stonewalled in his efforts to find out what if any standards were being 
used to determine which of the students with relatively weak grades 
and test scores were being admitted under UCLA's new "holistic" 
admissions approach.
    Here's what Groseclose already had confirmed: Black applicants'
admission rates soared by nearly half when UCLA went "holistic," 
while Latino and Native American admission rates went down slightly.
    When he further parsed what data he could get, the evidence that 
"holistic" was code for race favoritism became overwhelming.
    A "holistic" approach is supposed to be one that factored in the 
obstacles individual students faced -- in particular, family poverty 
and parents' education levels. At UCLA, the parents of Vietnamese-
American applicants are on average poorer and less educated than 
the parents of African-American applicants. But instead of seeing 
their admission rates go up under the holistic system, Vietnamese 
kids' rates plunged, from 28.6 percent to 21.4 percent.
    Remember, of course, that the original rationale for race 
preferences is to atone for white racism. At UCLA, who's being 
forced to pay the heaviest price for white racism? Vietnamese-
American applicants.
    This isn't enlightened social engineering. This is raw, ugly racial 
politics. And, oh yeah, it's against state law, too. Shame on UCLA.
    Read Groseclose's report at http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/groseclose/CUARS.Resignation.Report.pdf


8/30/08 Los Angeles Times: "UCLA accused of illegal admissions 
practices. A professor resigns as an admissions committee member, 
saying the university is factoring race into acceptance decisions, a violation 
of state law."
By Seema Mehta
    Arguing that UCLA admissions policies are being manipulated to 
circumvent the state's ban on consideration of applicants' race, a professor 
there has resigned from a faculty committee that he says refused to allow 
him to study the matter.
    Political science professor Tim Groseclose resigned Thursday from the 
Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools, 
saying high-ranking university administrators and fellow committee members 
are engaged in a "coverup" to block illegal activity from being discovered.
    "A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions," he wrote in an 89-page report posted on a UCLA website.
    University officials called the report unsubstantiated and argued that 
Groseclose took a rise in the university's enrollment of black students as 
evidence that admissions officials were tampering with the process, without considering other factors such as increased outreach activities.
    "He's taking an outcome and from that deducing a cause," said Tom 
Lifka, associate vice chancellor for student academic services.
    Proposition 209, a 1996 voter initiative, bars California's public 
universities from considering race and other factors such as religion in the 
admissions process. In ensuing years, the number of black students at 
UCLA and many other UC campuses dwindled. By 2006, only 103 
entering freshmen and 108 transfer students at UCLA were black, the 
lowest level in more than three decades. 
    Prompted by campus and community concerns about the lack of student 
diversity, UCLA decided in 2006 to move to a "holistic" application process,
in which applicants' grades, test scores, extracurricular activities and other 
factors were no longer reviewed separately. Rather, achievements could 
be considered in the context of their personal experiences, Lifka said.
    UCLA officials have said the new process is fairer to all applicants, and 
they have emphasized that admissions officials continue to abide by the 
restrictions imposed by Proposition 209.
    Yet, since the admissions change was implemented, starting with the 
class that entered UCLA in fall 2007, the number of black students on 
campus has edged up. This fall, for example, 230 of 4,889 freshmen are 
African American, along with 100 transfer students. University officials 
attribute this increase to the holistic approach, as well as community 
outreach.
    But Ward Connerly, a former UC regent who helped lead the drive for 
Proposition 209, said Groseclose's report buttressed his suspicions that 
university officials may be violating the law in their efforts to boost the 
number of black students on campus. His organization, American Civil 
Rights Institute, will probably file suit against the university in coming 
months, he said.
    "They caved under the pressure from the NAACP and others in Los 
Angeles who want to see an increase in the number of black students," 
Connerly said. "There are so many ways you can rig the system."
    Attempts to reach Groseclose on Friday were unsuccessful, but he 
wrote in his report that admissions officials often learned of students' 
race in personal application essays, and factored it into admissions 
decisions.
    "It is obvious that the admissions staff was under intense pressure 
to admit more African Americans," he wrote.
    He noted that black applicants' chances of admission increased 
with the holistic approach, while acceptance rates of other low-income
students declined, particularly among Vietnamese, a point Lifka did 
not dispute.
    Groseclose said in the report that he requested access to student 
applications to study the matter but was denied because of what he 
was told were privacy concerns. The university turned to another 
UCLA professor to conduct the research. 
    "Because I cannot properly conduct the duties with which I am 
charged as a member of CUARS, I am therefore resigning, in protest,
from the committee," Groseclose wrote. "To do otherwise would 
condone and make me complicit in what appears to be illegal activity."
    Lifka responded that the university uses 165 application readers 
and that they are told not to consider race. Each application is 
randomly distributed to two readers, so their ability to collude would 
be difficult, he said. 
    Lifka said it was vital for the university to pick a researcher who did 
not have a stated position on the admissions debate. "This is a highly 
charged political issue," he said.
    The subject of whether Groseclose ought to have access to the 
data divided the committee. Attempts to reach several committee 
members were unsuccessful, and one said she had been told to refer 
media calls to the university.
    Duncan Lindsey, a public affairs professor and a committee 
member, said he disagreed with Groseclose's beliefs that race was 
factored into admissions decisions, but strongly supported allowing 
him access to data. "We're a public university," Lindsey said. 
    In his report, Groseclose wrote that diversity could be increased 
without violating the law, perhaps by admitting students who finish in 
the top 1% of their high school class.
    Connerly said students ought to be told that any mention of race 
in applications would be grounds for denial.
    University officials called that idea untenable and noted that 
Proposition 209 also bars admissions based on other factors, such 
as gender. 
    "Where do we draw the line?" UCLA spokeswoman Claudia 
Luther asked.


7/13/08 New Jersey Star-Ledger: Princeton is accused of anti-Asian biases
by Ana M. Alaya
    For decades, critics of affirmative action have contended elite colleges, in their zeal to form racially diverse student bodies, have discriminated against top white applicants.
    In a twist on that long-running feud, federal authorities are investigating an allegation that Princeton University discriminates against Asian-American applicants by accepting black and Hispanic stu dents with lower entrance scores.
    At the heart of both arguments lies the question of whether and how colleges should consider race when choosing a class. The Supreme Court has ruled race can be a factor in the process, though racial quotas have long been declared unconstitutional.
    Critics say admission quotas remain a dirty little secret in academia.
    "There is almost no other area that colleges consistently lie about," said Russell Nieli, a professor in Princeton 's department of politics, who recently published an essay titled "Is there an Asian Ceiling?"
    Princeton , for its part, denies using quotas. The university declined, however, to release admissions data broken down by race and test scores, spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said, "because we don't want anyone to make the mistake that we make admissions decisions by category."
    The federal review at Princeton -- which adamantly denies it discriminates against Asians -- was sparked by a complaint filed in 2006 by Livingston High School graduate and Asian immigrant Jian Li. He claims he was rejected by Princeton and other elite universities despite graduating in the top 1 percent of his high school class, earning various honors outside the classroom and nailing perfect SAT scores.
    Nieli said Li's complaint, be cause it was made by an Asian- American, may carry more weight with proponents of racial preferences.
    "The people making these decisions are post-'60s guilty white limousine liberals," Nieli said. "They don't take a protest by a white person as seriously as one by a Chinese or Japanese or Korean student."
    Others argue Asian students are wrongfully being used as racial mascots in the battle against affirmative action. Advocates claim affirmative action policies can help Asian students, because diverse classes help dispel lingering biases against minority groups.
    "I have a hard time buying the argument that this particular student suffered serious harm," said Vincent Pan, a Millburn native who now heads Chinese for Affirmative Action in San Francisco . "There is a need to balance the private interest and the public interest, and in this case I think affirmative action does that well."
    Li, who could not be reached for comment, went to Yale and transferred to Harvard, according to other published reports.
    In January, the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights expanded its review be yond Li's case to include all admissions policies for Asian-American students for the Class of 2010 at Princeton .
    In his complaint, Li accused the Ivy League institutions of a "historical and ongoing" use of racial preferences for admissions, including bias against Jews at Princeton in the early 1900s.
    He also cited a 2005 study by two Princeton researchers who found eliminating racial considerations at three unnamed elite universities would increase the admission rate for Asian Americans, while that of African-Americans and Hispanics would plum met.
    At Princeton , race is one factor, including socioeconomic background, extracurricular talents and academic record, considered during the admissions process, Cliatt said. Building a diverse class is like forming an "orchestra," that may need different talents from year to year, she added. About half the applicants with perfect SAT scores were ad mitted to the class Li applied to; 14 percent of that class is Asian. Almost half of Princeton 's incoming class this year are students of color.
    A commitment to "acting affirmatively to ensure diversity," Cliatt said, is not the same as discriminating.
    Li's complaint has been closely watched by the Ivy League schools, in part, because he asked for a suspension of federal funding to the university until it eliminates not only racial preferences, but also athletic preferences and legacy preferences, which universities historically give to children of alumni.
    Ward Connerly, a former member of the University of California Board of Regents, and the architect of anti-affirmative action initiatives in California , Washington and Michigan , said the federal investigation is going to force "a very exacting examination of what Princeton is doing." He said it will get the attention of universities nationwide, contending discrimination against Asian-Americans is widespread.
    Still, proving discrimination at Princeton or any college may be difficult, because colleges don't use a specific formula for admissions, according to David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
    Roughly 30 to 40 percent of colleges consider race in admissions, according to the association, and some 70 percent of institutions have a stated commitment to diversity.


7/7/08 USA Today: “Opposing view: Race is deciding factor; University admissions unfairly pit Asian Americans against one another,”
by Owen Leong
    On a summer night in June 2000, four friends and I waited eagerly outside a local high school for 8 a.m. to arrive. It was 1 a.m., yet we were not alone. At least 200 other students had already formed a line behind us. While waiting, I glanced back and noticed the demographics; they were mostly Asian Americans. Not surprisingly, considering that the majority of students attending this high school, located 24 miles east of Los Angeles , are Asian Americans, which also included me and my friends.
    What was the purpose? Well, we were all competing for one of the few spots to take chemistry and other accelerated courses during the summer. But most important, we wanted to stand out against other college applicants, especially Asian American students, who had similarly high grade point averages and near-perfect SAT scores. If taking chemistry one semester earlier was going to give us an edge for admission to an elite college, then it was worth the seven-hour wait.
    Every year, colleges consider far more applicants than they can accept. Yet in many cases, a disproportionate number of qualified applicants are Asian American, thus making it difficult for colleges to keep an ethnically diverse campus while still trying to admit all qualified students. Hence, many Asian American students, including me, believe that we are unfairly pitted against one another in admissions, not just judged blindly against all.
    The competition was not limited to just applying for summer school spots. In my honors and Advance Placement classes, 75% of my classmates were Asian American. With the school continually limiting the number of students in honors and AP courses each year, we had to compete for these coveted spots, often with other Asian American students.
    We all believed that taking regular classes would be grounds to deny us admission because another applicant was taking the honors equivalent. So while colleges continue to deny that race is used as a deciding factor, as Asian American students, we know that our ethnic background makes our chances of getting in even harder.
    Owen Leong graduated from the University of California-Berkeley in 2007 with a bachelor's degree in art.

4/19/08 Austin American Statesman: Bigots for the Left Discriminate Against Asian American with Perfect College Entrance Exam Scores,
by Laura Heinauer
    Things were going, well, perfectly for Navonil Ghosh up until several weeks ago.
    The college-bound LBJ High School Liberal Arts and Science Academy senior racked up more than 400 hours volunteering in local hospitals and libraries. He plays the piano, is a first-degree black belt in Kung Fu and got a perfect score on both the SAT and ACT college entrance exams. Ghosh had mailed out all of his college applications and was just waiting for the acceptance letters to come pouring in.
    But the letters that began filling his mailbox were of a different kind.
    The first rejection came from Stanford University in California , but the hits kept coming. From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From Ivy League institutions: University of Pennsylvania , Princeton and Yale, where he was wait-listed. But the biggest disappointment came from Harvard University , which Ghosh had chosen as his "dream school" based on the course offerings. Even the Plan II honors program at the University of Texas turned him down.
    "I know this news must be quite difficult," the letter from UT's Plan II director said. "This year, however, with our number of applicants higher than any year of the last decade, we have been compelled to make an extremely difficult decision." Ghosh did get accepted to the California Institute of Technology, UT, Duke and Rice.
    Rejection letters are arriving in record numbers across the country this year, due to the large number of high school graduates and an increase of those applying to college.
    Overall, the acceptance rate for applicants at all colleges in the United States is still about 70 percent about the same as it was in the 1980s but acceptance rates at the top 200 schools in the country have dropped, said David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
    He said three factors have contributed to this year's historically low acceptance rates at the more selective schools. First, there are about 3.3 million students graduating from high school this spring, according to the Department of Education, which is the largest number of graduates seen in recent years.
    Second, though there have been graduating classes nearly this big in the 1970s, for example, the number of students applying to college now estimated to be 60 percent to 65 percent is higher than ever.
    Finally, he said, students are sending more applications than they ever have, particularly to the most highly selective schools, due largely to the ease of submitting applications over the Internet.
    The surge likely won't get any better, he said.
    "Actually, we're projected to have even more students graduating," he said. "Because we don't see the tendency to submit more applications tapering off any, it's probably going to be even more chaotic. However, it is important to keep in mind that the overall acceptance rate isn't dropping, and there is space out there."
    Caitlin Cash, an 18-year-old Bowie High School senior, said she thought of UT as a backup school and didn't apply to any honors programs there. UT ended up being the only school of six she applied to that accepted her.
    "I'm in the top 1 (percent) to 2 percent of my class.  I'm a varsity soccer player. I mentor eighth-grade girls. I'm the Student Council vice president and French Club president," Cash said. "I was extremely surprised. I was like, somehow, somewhere, they've messed up."
    Cory Liu, a 17-year-old senior at the LBJ academy, said he also had a tough time getting into some of the elite colleges this year, despite scoring 2240 on the SAT and getting a 4.2 grade point average on a 4.8 scale.
    Of the 11 colleges he applied to, only two accepted him: the University of Chicago and UT, which admitted him into a summer program for students who didn't make it into the fall class.
    Liu, who was president of his high school's Youth and Government Club, said he'll likely go to Chicago , which also reported a drop in its acceptance rate this year, from 35 percent to 27 percent.
    "I knew it was increasingly competitive, so I tried not to get my hopes unreasonably high. But it was still disappointing," Liu said. "I am very happy that I got into the University of Chicago ."
    Harvard officials said they rejected a record 93 out of every 100 students who applied. Officials at Yale, Dartmouth and Brown universities said they also turned away a record number of applicants.
    "We had an increase that was close to 20 percent in the number of applicants this year," said Marilyn McGrath, Harvard's director of admissions. She said it was because Harvard, which expects a fall freshman class of 1,660, increased scholarship opportunities and cut its early admissions process for the first time this year. "It was a very difficult year, because we had not only a large number of applicants, but they were also exceptional."
    It is not clear how many students were able to score both a perfect 2400 on the SAT and 36 on the ACT, because the tests are scored by different companies.
    But McGrath said fewer than 1 percent of Harvard applicants, 254 of 27,462, got a perfect 2,400 on the SAT. She said 3,368 applicants were ranked first in their class.
    Shannon Duffy, a college counselor at Bowie , said she has noticed more college aspirants this year and had quite a few surprises over who did not get into their top picks. She said the trend has affected schools such as St. Edward's and Texas State universities.
    "They've been bombarded with late applications," Duffy said, after recently speaking with a college admissions counselors at both schools. "Next, I would say students need to broaden their safety schools and really make sure they do a good job applying to them."
    "It was disappointing to know I did my best on those two tests, got the best possible score and it still wasn't good enough," said Ghosh, who is fourth in his graduating class. Ghosh, who is interested in biomedical engineering and medical school, said he is seriously considering CalTech and Rice.
    Ghosh's father, Nirmalendu Ghosh, said he is also upset about the slew of rejections. He quit his job three years ago so he could help shuttle his son to extracurricular activities, including to work at a UT research lab that he knew would impress college admissions officers.
    "My son was devastated, and I was really sad," he said, recalling the day they got the letter from Harvard. "My son told me he could not study any more and went to bed. I could not sleep that whole night."
    Ghosh's high school teachers were surprised as well.  They said it has been a tough year for all of the students at the school. Most students in the academy, one of the Austin district's most highly regarded magnet programs, apply to college.
    This year, however, the white board where students traditionally hang their rejection letters is more full than usual. The words, "April is the cruelest month," scrawled in red between all the letters, sum up many students' feelings.
    "Navonil is a really great, hardworking, serious student," said Jason Flowers, who was Ghosh's history teacher last year. "He does kind of stand out. I think we were all surprised he didn't get into any of the Ivys ... But one thing we've learned is that the admissions game can be very unpredictable."

1/9/08 Wall Street Journal Editorial: Defining Diversity Down
    The world gets more competitive every day, so why would California 's education elites want to dumb down their public university admissions standards? The answer is to serve the modern liberal piety known as "diversity" while potentially thwarting the will of the voters.
   The University of California Board of Admissions is proposing to lower to 2.8 from 3.0 the minimum grade point average for admission to a UC school. That 3.0 GPA standard has been in place for 40 years. Students would also no longer be required to take the SAT exams that test for knowledge of specific subjects, such as history and science.
   UC Board of Admissions Chairman Mark Rashid says that, under this new system of "comprehensive review," the schools "can make a better and more fair determination of academic merit by looking at all the students' achievements." And it is true that test scores and grades do not take full account of the special talents of certain students. But the current system already leaves slots for students with specific skills, so if you think this change is about admitting more linebackers or piccolo players, you don't understand modern academic politics.
   The plan would grant admissions officers more discretion to evade the ban on race and gender preferences imposed by California voters. Those limits became law when voters approved Proposition 209 in 1996, and state officials have been looking for ways around them ever since. "This appears to be a blatant attempt to subvert the law," says Ward Connerly, a former member of the University of California Board of Regents, who led the drive for 209. "Subjective admissions standards allow schools to substitute race and diversity for academic achievement."
   One loser here would be the principle of merit-based college admissions. That principle has served the state well over the decades, helping to make some of its universities among the world's finest. Since 209, Asian-American students have done especially well, with students of Asian ethnicity at UCLA nearly doubling to 42% from 22%. Immigrants and the children of immigrants now outnumber native-born whites in most UC schools, so being a member of an ethnic minority is clearly not an inherent admissions handicap. Ironically, objective testing criteria were first introduced in many university systems, including California 's, precisely to weed out discrimination favoring children of affluent alumni ahead of higher performing students.
   The other big losers would be the overall level of achievement demanded in California public elementary and high schools. A recent study by the left-leaning Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at UCLA, the "California Educational Opportunity Report 2007," finds that " California lags behind most other states in providing fundamental learning conditions as well as in student outcomes." In 2005 California ranked 48th among states in the percentage of high-school kids who attend college. Only Mississippi and Arizona rated worse.
   The UCLA study documents that the educational achievement gap between black and Latino children and whites and Asians is increasing in California at a troubling pace. Graduation rates are falling fastest for blacks and Latinos, as many of them are stuck in the state's worst public schools. The way to close that gap is by introducing more accountability and choice to raise achievement standards -- admittedly hard work, especially because it means taking on the teachers unions.
   Instead, the UC Board of Admissions proposal sounds like a declaration of academic surrender. It's one more depressing signal that liberal elites have all but given up on poor black and Hispanic kids. Because they don't think closing the achievement gap is possible, their alternative is to reduce standards for everyone. Diversity so trumps merit in the hierarchy of modern liberal values that they're willing to dumb down the entire university system to guarantee what they consider a proper mix of skin tones on campus.
   A decade ago, California voters spoke clearly that they prefer admissions standards rooted in the American tradition of achievement. In the months ahead, the UC Board of Regents will have to decide which principle to endorse, and their choice will tell us a great deal about the future path of American society.

9/30/07 New York Times Magazine: The New Affirmative Action, 
by David Leonhardt
    In 2004, William Bowen (the former president of Princeton ) and two other 
researchers persuaded 19 elite colleges including Harvard, Middlebury
and Virginia to let them analyze their admissions records. They found, 
holding SAT scores equal, a recruited athlete was 30 percentage points 
more likely to be admitted than a non-athlete. A black, Latino or Native 
American student was 28 percentage points more likely to be admitted 
than a white or Asian student. A legacy received a 20-percentage-point 
boost over someone whose parents hadnt attended that college.  Low-
income students received no advantage whatsoever.

6/1/07 The Chronicle of Higher Education: What Color Is an A?: Colleges take on 
a persistent but rarely discussed issue: the poor grades earned by many minority students,
by Peter Schmidt
Saratoga Springs , N.Y.
    In seeking to increase their numbers of high-achieving black, Hispanic, and Native 
American students, colleges face two formidable problems: Such students are substantially 
underrepresented among applicants with high grades and SAT scores. And even those who 
perform well in high school tend to do worse in college than white and Asian-American 
students with comparable SAT scores and grades a problem known as 
"the overprediction phenomenon."
    The underrepresentation of black, Hispanic, and Native American students among highly 
qualified college applicants is often blamed on disparities in family education and income, 
as well as on inequities in elementary and secondary education. But the children of many 
affluent professionals in those same groups are struggling, too tending, on average, to 
score lower on the SAT and academic-achievement tests than white and Asian-American 
students who attend inferior schools and have parents with less education and money.
    Whatever the reasons, the fact is that white and Asian-American students continue to 
outperform black, Hispanic, and Native American students by a significant degree. 
According to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, the percentage of the nation's 
white undergraduates earning mostly A's is about twice the proportion of black 
undergraduates doing so.
    Researchers with access to the transcripts of students at selective colleges say the 
performance gaps are even more pronounced there, especially at the highest achievement
levels and among students majoring in mathematics, engineering, the sciences, and 
technology-related fields.
    Such gaps exist in advanced-degree programs as well. Studies of law schools conducted
since the early 1990s have found that about half of black students rank in the bottom fourth, 
or even the bottom tenth, of their classes (the variation mainly reflects differences in the 
law schools and student populations being studied).
    Officials of colleges and universities generally refuse to disclose the median grade-point 
averages of their minority students. Many are hesitant to even discuss the performance gap, 
for fear that doing so would stigmatize minority students or provide ammunition to those 
seeking an end to race-conscious admissions.
    Critics of affirmative action say the academic performance gap is simply a result of 
colleges' willingness to lower their standards for the sake of diversity. "If you systematically 
admit students with lower academic qualifications, then those students are going perform 
below the level" of regularly admitted students, says Roger B. Clegg, president of the Center 
for Equal Opportunity, an advocacy group. The center has produced several reports citing 
the lower achievement of minority students as evidence that admissions offices give 
substantial preferences to certain minority candidates.
    The discussion is further complicated by the effectiveness of many historically black and 
predominantly Hispanic colleges. Many of them produce large numbers of minority graduates 
with academic records strong enough to easily gain admission to most graduate programs 
and law and medical schools. Their relative success suggests that predominantly white 
colleges may place a distinct set of obstacles in the paths of minority students, an idea that 
can put campus administrators on the defensive.
    Many college officials who are working to close the performance gap say the initial impetus
for their efforts was the 1998 publication of William G. Bowen and Derek Bok's The Shape 
of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University 
Admissions (Princeton University Press). Based on their analyses of data from 28 selective
colleges, Mr. Bowen, a former president of Princeton University , and Mr. Bok, a former 
president of Harvard University , extensively documented race- and ethnicity-linked 
differences in achievement, including those attributable to the overprediction phenomenon.

FITNESS FOR MEDICAL SCHOOL
Mean grade-point averages of applicants to U.S. medical schools in 2004, by race and ethnicity: 
White  3.53
Asian  3.47
Cuban-American  3.44
Puerto Rican  3.36
Native American  3.3
Mexican-American  3.27
Black  3.17
SOURCE: Association of American Medical Colleges, "Facts and Figures," 2005

RACE, ETHNICITY, AND UNDERGRADUATE GRADES
Proportion of each racial and ethnic group earning high or low grades as undergraduates, 
based on 2003-4 data for all U.S. colleges: 
Percentage earning ...  mostly A's, mostly C's or lower
Black  9.6%, 40.7%
Hispanic  12.7%, 34.6%
American Indian  13.2%, 32.5%
Pacific Islander  14.4%, 32%
Asian  16.9%, 25.6%
White  19.3%, 24%
Source: U.S. Department of Education, Profile of Undergraduates in U.S. Postsecondary 
Education Institutions, 2003-4

5/2/07 UCLA Daily Bruin: Score gaps stir dispute over holistic approach,
by Julia Erlandson
    When UCLA announced its decision last year to adopt a holistic admissions 
process, some expressed hope that the new system would help increase the number 
of underrepresented minorities admitted to the university.
    In fall 2006, before UCLA switched to holistic admissions, black and Latino 
applicants average SAT scores were 255 and 246 points lower than the average for 
their white and Asian counterparts.
    That gap seemed largely unaffected by holistic review in fall 2007, black applicants 
SAT scores were on average 293 points lower than those of white and Asian students,
and Latino applicants scores came up 249 points short.
    Applicants GPAs told a similar story. In both fall 2006 and fall 2007, black students
GPAs were about two-10ths of a point lower than white and Asian students, and 
Latino students were about one-10th lower.
    Ward Connerly, a former UC regent who sponsored anti-affirmative action legislation
in several states, said he believes these disparities reflect a lack of fairness in UCLAs
admissions process.
    UCLA said it would revise (its admissions standards) to take non-academic factors
into account, ... but the data that I looked at suggested that they were looking at non-
academic factors primarily for black students, Connerly said.
    It seems to me that there is something going on ... that is allowing admissions people
to weight non-academic factors to such an extent in favor of black students.
    Admit rates for minority students from lower-performing high schools did increase after
the implementation of holistic admissions.
    High schools in California are rated according to the Academic Performance Index, a
10-point scale with higher scores awarded to higher-performing schools.
    From fall 2006 to fall 2007, the admit rate for black students coming from high schools
with API scores of 1 or 2 jumped from 12 percent to 27 percent.
    The rate for Latino applicants from these schools rose from 25 to 27 percent in the 
same time frame.
    But at the same time, the admit rates for white and Asian students from low-performing
high schools fell.
    In fall 2006, 35 percent of Asian students and 41 percent of white students from 
California high schools with API scores of 1 or 2 were admitted to UCLA.
    In fall 2007, those numbers dropped to 31 percent and 33 percent, respectively.
    Connerly said he was not surprised by the latest admissions figures.
    Ive had my suspicions that UCLA was going to try and find a proxy for race to get the 
pressure off their backs, he said. As you look at the underperforming schools in 
California , ... Asian kids are going to those schools to almost the same extent as black 
kids are.

4/9/07 Wall Street Journal: Commentary: Getting Beyond Race,
by John Fund
    The work of UCLA law professor Richard Sander shows that minority law students 
in California who attend law schools at which their academic credentials do not match 
the credentials of other students are less likely to pass the bar exam than they would 
have been if they had attended less prestigious law schools where their academic 
credentials would have been closer to the norm. As a result, according to Mr. Sander, 
there are fewer minority lawyers than there would have been under colorblind admissions.
    In 1996 California passed Proposition 209, which banned racial preferences in public 
universities and contracting.  While it's true that black and Hispanic enrollment at UCLA 
and Berkeley went down after Prop 209, these students simply didn't just vanish. The vast 
majority were admitted on the basis of their academic record to somewhat less highly 
ranked campuses of the prestigious 10-campus UC system, which caters only to the top 
one-eighth of California 's high school graduates. In the immediate wake of Proposition 
209, the number of minority students at some of the nonflagship campuses went up, not 
down.
    This "cascading" effect has had real benefits in matching students with the campus 
where they are most likely to do well. Despite what affirmative action supporters often 
imply, academic ability matters. Although some students will outperform their entering 
credentials and some students will underperform theirs, most students will succeed in 
the range that their high school grades and SAT scores predict. Leapfrogging minority 
candidates into elite colleges where they often become frustrated and fail hurts them 
even more than the institutions. It creates the illusion that we are closing racial 
disparities in education when in fact we are not. While blacks and Hispanics now 
attend college at nearly the same rate as whites, only about 1 in 6 graduates.
    Affirmative action often creates the illusion that black or other minority students 
cannot excel. At the University of California at San Diego , in the year before race-based 
preferences were abolished in 1997, only one black student had a freshman-year GPA 
of 3.5 or better. In other words, there was a single black honor student in a freshman 
class of 3,268. In contrast, 20% of the white students on campus had a 3.5 or better GPA.
    There were lots of black students capable of doing honors work at UCSD. But such 
students were probably admitted to Harvard, Yale or Berkeley, where often they were 
not receiving an honor GPA. The end to racial preferences changed that. In 1999, 20% 
of black freshmen at UCSD boasted a GPA of 3.5 or better after their first year, almost 
equaling the 22% rate for whites after their first year. Similarly, failure rates for black 
students declined dramatically at UCSD immediately after the implementation of 
Proposition 209. Isn't that better for everyone in the long run?
    University admissions officers don't think so. Ever since race-based admissions 
ended in California , they have tried to do end-runs around the ban and reinstate de 
facto preferences. For example, UCLA's new "holistic" approach to admissions, which 
purports to take into account an applicants' "whole person," including nonacademic 
achievements and obstacles they have overcome, was adopted in response to 
Proposition 209. The results have been dramatic. The number of black students 
admitted for the 2007-08 academic year has surged by 57%, to 3.4% of the overall 
student body.
    But the increased numbers come at a cost. As Peter Schmidt reported in the 
Chronicle of Higher Education, the number of students from Asian backgrounds fell to 
43.1% from 45.6%. Almost all of the drop came from two groups whose numbers on 
campus had been rapidly growing: Chinese-Americans and Vietnamese-Americans. 
"The overall number of minorities seems to have fallen using criteria that downplay 
academics and substitute factors designed to boost minority numbers," notes one 
UCLA professor.
    Also, in a classic example of the law of unintended consequences, the efforts to factor 
in the disadvantages students have faced appear to have backfired. Mr. Schmidt notes 
"there was actually a decline in the number and share of admitted students who are the 
first in their families to attend college and coming from households that make less than 
$30,000 annually." Last year, UCLA admitted 24% of such students. This year, under 
its more "holistic" approach, the share of those with disadvantaged backgrounds who 
were accepted fell to 17%.
    Racial preferences were intended to help disadvantaged minorities, but in reality 
they have been turned into a spoils system for the privileged. "Most go to children of 
powerful politicians, civil-rights activists, and other relatively well-off blacks and 
Hispanics," says Stuart Taylor of National Journal. "This does nothing for the people 
most in need of help, who lack the minimal qualifications to get into the game."
    School choice and other dramatic efforts to improve the quality of K-12 education 
would do far more to improve the chances of minorities entering and finishing college 
than any racial set-asides. Indeed, school choice would represent genuine "affirmative 
action" in favor of millions of disadvantaged kids trapped in failing schools.

4/6/07 http://www.discriminations.us/: Surprise! Holistic Review Helps Blacks & 
Hispanics, Hurts Whites & Asians
by John Rosenberg
     UCLA has just announced, with great pride and relief, that its new, holistic admissions 
procedures have resulted in an increase in the percentage of formerly preferred minorities 
admitted to the next freshman class.
    Prior to the universitys adoption of the new admissions policy last year, two application 
readers reviewed each prospective students academic records while a third took into 
account the applicants outside achievements and any challenges he or she might have 
overcome. Under the holistic approach, every application is read and considered in its 
entirety by two readers, and the readers give more consideration to the opportunities that 
had or had not been available to applicants.
    Whether or not increasing the number of blacks and Hispanics was the purpose 
underlying the new policy, it was the effect.
    The new admissions policy appears to have increased black and Hispanic students' 
chances of being accepted, while making it more likely that white and Asian-American 
applicants would be turned away.
    The percentage of whites (33% of those admitted) who were admitted fell from 26.2% 
last year to 24.6%, but, as usually happens when factors others than academic qualifications 
are given more emphasis, the biggest losers were Asians. Last year Asians made up 
45.6% of the admitted students; this year they are 43.1%, with almost all of the decline 
taking place among two subsets whose numbers had been growing most rapidly on the 
campus: Chinese-Americans and Vietnamese-Americans.
    Although the applicant pools from both populations grew only slightly, the share of 
Chinese-American applicants who were admitted declined from 35.8 percent to 31.6 
percent, while the share of Vietnamese-American applicants who were admitted declined 
from 28.6 percent to 21.2 percent.
    As the above numbers indicate, the percentage of Chinese-Americans who were 
admitted fell by over 11% from last year, and the percentage of Vietnamese who were 
admitted fell by over 25%.
    It seems to me that the UCLA admissions reviewers have made a dramatic, even 
breathtaking, discovery that they should publish and share with the world: the nature of 
the heretofore unknown opportunities enjoyed by Vietnamese-Americans, opportunities 
that have obviously expanded exponentially in the space of one generation and that equally 
obviously served as a burden and handicap on their applications to UCLA.

4/6/07 San Diego Union Tribune: Record number of freshmen are admitted to UC system,
by Eleanor Yang Su
The number of black and Latino students admitted to the University of California rose by 10 percent, while white and Asian-American student figures rose by 2 to 3 percent across the nine undergraduate-campus system.
    At the University of California San Diego , the change in admit numbers was more pronounced because the campus admitted 10 percent fewer freshmen than last year, when an unexpectedly large number of students decided to attend UCSD.
    The number of white students admitted to UCSD dropped by 14 percent this year, while figures for Asian-Americans dropped 8 percent and Latino admit numbers fell 5 percent. Black student admit numbers did not change.
    The figures represent a significant shift for the 209,000-student system. Since the late 1990s, white and Asian-American freshmen admit numbers have grown dramatically, while African-American student figures have crept up more slowly.
    UC officials said this year's change reflects an increase in the numbers of African-American and Latino students applying to UC, and the high qualifications of those students.
    The numbers were most notable at UCLA, which implemented a new admissions process this year, after considerable community outcry over its low black freshman enrollment figures. The number of UCLA black freshmen admitted rose by 143 students this year, or 57 percent.
    UC's diversity figures have been closely watched since 1996, when California became the first of several states to ban race-based admissions in public colleges.
    Some were suspicious of the changes, including Ward Connerly, a former UC regent who led the campaign to dismantle affirmative action in college admissions.
    I'm convinced that the university is, if not breaking the law, then somehow orchestrating proxies to enable them to increase the number of black students, Connerly said.
    UCSD officials discounted that, noting that application readers are given clear instructions to ignore race in the admission decision.
   UCSD admitted about 42 percent of its 45,000 freshman applicants. Admitted freshmen had a mean grade-point average of 4.06, and an SAT score of 1,941 out of a maximum of 2,400.
    UCSD admissions by the numbers
Number of freshmen admitted at UCSD by ethnicity:
386: African-Americans, no change from last year.
2,429: Latinos, 5 percent fewer than last year.
7,411: Asian-Americans, 8 percent fewer than last year.
6,029: Whites, 14 percent fewer than last year
Source: University of California San Diego



1/28/07 The Times of Trenton (NJ): Asian bias fight grows: Complaint fuels
new movement,
by Robert Stern
    Last summer, when he filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. 
Department of Education accusing Princeton University of anti-Asian bias in its 
admissions practices, Jian Li was a voice in the wilderness.
    Now, after gaining national media attention last fall, Li's complaint has helped 
fuel a fledgling but growing movement across the country that seeks to expose and 
end admissions discrimination against student applicants with Asian roots -- 
discrimination that critics contend Princeton and some other highly selective 
colleges and universities perpetuate in the name of diversity.
    Although Li's suit served as fodder for a recent joke issue of the Daily 
Princetonian student newspaper -- a parody that stirred up a tempest on campus 
-- his point is being taken seriously.
    Li is finding others who share his views. He has teamed up with two Brown
University sophomores, including Neil Vangala, a 20-year-old Indian-American 
from Montgomery who graduated from The Lawrenceville School, to start a 
student group devoted to pressing the cause of those of Asian descent.
    Earlier this month, Florida-based attorney Don W. Joe, a longtime activist for 
Asian-American equal rights, started an online petition that aims to pressure 
Princeton to publicly release average test scores and admission rates on its 
applicants by ethnic group, including African-American, Asian-American, 
Hispanic and white. A one-time high-ranking Reagan administration figure is 
among those who has signed the petition.
    "Only a more transparent process can shed light on allegations of 
discrimination," the online petition states. "If Princeton refuses to do so, what 
is it trying to hide?"
    Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said that while the university does provide 
an ethnic breakdown of each year's freshman class, it doesn't divulge applicants' 
SAT scores or admission rates by ethnic group because that information would 
be misinterpreted.
    "We don't break down application and acceptance data because we don't want 
anyone to mistakenly believe that we make admissions decisions in categories, 
because we don't," Cliatt said. "When those data are presented publicly, they are 
misconstrued."
    She declined to speculate on how Princeton may respond to the petition.
    Among the key points Li made to justify his civil rights complaint against 
Princeton is that he was wait-listed and in the end rejected by the university despite 
acing all three sections of the SAT college entrance exam, having a grade point 
average in the top 1 percent of his high school's graduating class and participating 
in various community-service and extracurricular activities.
    Li said he doesn't expect Princeton or any other college to rely exclusively on test 
scores in making admissions decisions.
    "Obviously, you have to look at many factors beyond SATs," said Li, who is 18 and 
in his freshman year at Yale University, where the Chinese immigrant who graduated 
from Livingston High School in northern New Jersey is pursuing dual bachelor's 
degrees in psychology and physics.
    "But one of the factors I believe you cannot look at is race. ... It's racial 
discrimination," said Li, who is in the midst of seeking U.S. citizenship.
    "It certainly is a fact that schools like Princeton factor race into consideration," 
he said.
    "If one race is given preference, it's inevitable that the other race ... must be 
discriminated against," Li said.
    Princeton 's Cliatt doesn't share that view.
    "Looking at the merits of race is not the same as the opposite" -- discrimination, 
Cliatt told The New York Times for a Jan. 7 article on Asian admissions.
    Princeton President Shirley M. Tilghman said in an interview that the university's 
admissions decisions arise from a very nuanced combination of judgments that go 
beyond SAT scores and take into account a broad spectrum of factors, from ethnicity 
and religion to academic interests, artistic and athletic talents and socioeconomic 
background.
    "We're looking for religious diversity, ethnic diversity, socioeconomic diversity. 
Diversity of the cello player versus the quarterback," Tilghman said.
    As a result, Princeton turns away about half of the students who apply with perfect 
SAT scores on all sections, Tilghman said. "And as hard as that is to understand, 
and as hard as that is for families to accept, it is a result of this very nuanced 
admission process."
    The online petition trying to put the squeeze on Princeton -- available at
www.petitiononline.com/prince07/ -- had received more than 420 signatures through 
Friday, including one from Linda Chavez, who was director of the U.S. Commission 
on Civil Rights under President Reagan.
    "I feel very strongly that the school should be willing to be explicit about what role 
race or national origin plays in admissions decisions," Chavez said in an interview.
    "If schools are so committed to this idea that because of skin color one student 
should be given preference and another student should be held to a higher standard, 
why are they not willing to admit this to the world?" asked Chavez, who founded and 
is chairwoman of the Virginia-based Center for Equal Opportunity, a nonprofit, 
nonpartisan think tank that promotes colorblind and race-neutral public policies.
    There is no question that Princeton has become a more ethnically and racially 
diverse university in terms of student enrollment at least over the past 10 years.
    Minorities make up 37 percent of Princeton 's current freshman class and 
international students 10.4 percent. The freshman class 10 years ago was 26.6 
percent minorities and 6.1 percent international students.
    Over that span, Asian-Americans were the largest minority group and their share 
of the freshman class has increased slightly from 12.7 percent in 1996-97 to almost 
14 percent this year, according to figures Princeton provided.
    Li's complaint against Princeton , which the university has said is unfounded, 
remains under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil 
Rights, department spokesman Jim Bradshaw said in an e-mail Friday.
    Li said he is pursuing the point as a matter of principle, noting that it is not a 
lawsuit, he is not seeking personal compensation nor is he looking to leave Yale 
for Princeton .
    He has said previously, and still does, that a 2005 study by Princeton researchers 
Thomas J. Espenshade and Chang Y. Chung was one reason he decided to 
challenge Princeton 's admissions practices regarding Asian applicants.
    That study focused on 1997 data from three unidentified selective schools, but 
Cliatt said Princeton was not one of those schools. The study concluded in part that 
if elite universities disregarded race, Asians would get almost 80 percent of the 
spots that now go to black or Hispanic applicants.
    "Asian candidates are at a disadvantage in admission compared to their white, 
African-American and Hispanic counterparts," the researchers wrote in the study, 
published in the journal Social Science Quarterly. "Removing this disadvantage at 
the same time preferences for African-Americans and Hispanics are eliminated 
results in a significant gain in the acceptance rate for Asian students -- from 17.6 
percent to 23.4 percent."
    Whatever the outcome of Li's civil rights complaint, he plans to stay involved in 
the issue of ending alleged discrimination by colleges like Princeton against 
applicants of Asian heritage.
    To that end, he is teaming up with Brown sophomores Vangala and Jason Carr 
from Denver -- who are launching a student group that they hope will become a 
national movement: Asian Equality in Admissions.
    One of its goals will be to get as many college applicants of Asian descent as 
possible to not identify their ethnicity or race on their college applications for the 
class of 2012.
    And despite Li's desire, even before he finished high school, to take on the 
issue of Asian-American discrimination in college admissions, Li said last week 
that he by no means intentionally sabotaged his Princeton application. Rather, he 
hoped it would be rejected only after Yale accepted him and Princeton placed 
him on its waiting list.  



1/15/07 Los Angeles Times: For many minorities, UC Riverside is the campus 
of choice,
by Richard C. Paddock
    This year, the UC Riverside undergraduate student body is 7.1% African American, 
43% Asian American, 25.1% Latino and Chicano, and 18.7% white.
    In 2005 the last year for which system-wide figures are available UC student 
bodies overall were 3.1% African American, 39.9% Asian American, 14.3% Latino 
and Chicano, and 35.8% white.
    By law, UC guarantees a spot for every California high school student who 
graduates in the top 12.5% statewide.
    But there has long been a pecking order among the campuses, with Berkeley and 
UCLA at the top and Riverside near the bottom.
    Berkeley and UCLA typically draw students from the top 3% of the state's high 
school graduates, a pool that is more white and Asian American than California 's 
population as a whole. Riverside draws a more diversified student body, but accepts 
nearly every eligible student who applies.
    Susan Wilbur is director of undergraduate admissions for the UC system.  Among 
California high school graduates, Wilbur notes, 31% of Asian Americans are eligible 
for UC, while African American and Latino students have an eligibility rate of 6%. 
White students fall in the middle, with an eligibility rate of 16.2%.

11/11/06 Wall Street Journal: "Is Admissions Bar Higher for Asians At Elite 
Schools?  School Standards Are Probed Even as Enrollment Increases; 
A Bias Claim at Princeton,"
by Daniel Golden
    Though Asian-Americans constitute only about 4.5% of the U.S. population, they 
typically account for anywhere from 10% to 30% of students at many of the nation's 
elite colleges.
    Even so, based on their outstanding grades and test scores, Asian-Americans 
increasingly say their enrollment should be much higher -- a contention backed by a 
growing body of evidence.
    Whether elite colleges give Asian-American students a fair shake is becoming a big 
concern in college-admissions offices. Federal civil-rights officials are investigating 
charges by a top Chinese-American student that he was rejected by Princeton University 
last spring because of his race and national origin.
    Meanwhile, voter attacks on admissions preferences for other minority groups -- as 
well as research indicating colleges give less weight to high test scores of Asian-American 
applicants -- may push schools to boost Asian enrollment. Tuesday, Michigan voters 
approved a ballot measure striking down admissions preferences for African-Americans 
and Hispanics. The move is expected to benefit Asian applicants to state universities 
there -- as similar initiatives have done in California and Washington.
    If the same measure is passed in coming years in Illinois, Missouri and Oregon -- where 
opponents of such preferences say they plan to introduce it -- Asian-American enrollment 
likely would climb at selective public universities in those states as well.
    During the Michigan campaign, a group that opposes affirmative action released a study 
bolstering claims that Asian students are held to a higher standard. The study, by the Center 
for Equal Opportunity, in Virginia, found that Asian applicants admitted to the University of 
Michigan in 2005 had a median SAT score of 1400 on the 400-1600 scale then in use. That 
was 50 points higher than the median score of white students who were accepted, 140 points 
higher than that of Hispanics and 240 points higher than that of blacks.
    Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, said 
universities are "legally vulnerable" to challenges from rejected Asian-American applicants.
    Princeton, where Asian-Americans constitute about 13% of the student body, faces such a 
challenge. A spokesman for the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights said it is 
investigating a complaint filed by Jian Li, now a 17-year-old freshman at Yale University. 
Despite racking up the maximum 2400 score on the SAT and 2390 -- 10 points below the 
ceiling -- on SAT2 subject tests in physics, chemistry and calculus, Mr. Li was spurned by three 
Ivy League universities, Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
    The Office for Civil Rights initially rejected Mr. Li's complaint due to "insufficient" evidence. 
Mr. Li appealed, citing a white high-school classmate admitted to Princeton despite lower 
test scores and grades. The office notified him late last month that it would look into the case.
    His complaint seeks to suspend federal financial assistance to Princeton until the university 
"discontinues discrimination against Asian-Americans in all forms by eliminating race 
preferences, legacy preferences, and athlete preferences." Legacy preference is the edge 
most elite colleges, including Princeton, give to alumni children. The Office for Civil Rights has 
the power to terminate such financial aid but usually works with colleges to resolve cases 
rather than taking enforcement action.
    Mr. Li, who emigrated to the U.S. from China as a 4-year-old and graduated from a public 
high school in Livingston, N.J., said he hopes his action will set a precedent for other Asian-
American students. He wants to "send a message to the admissions committee to be more 
cognizant of possible bias, and that the way they're conducting admissions is not really 
equitable," he said.
    Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said the university is aware of the complaint and will 
provide the Office for Civil Rights with information it has requested.
    Princeton has said in the past that it considers applicants as individuals and doesn't 
discriminate against Asian-Americans.
    When elite colleges began practicing affirmative action in the late 1960s and 1970s, they 
gave an admissions boost to Asian-American applicants as well as blacks and Hispanics. As 
the percentage of Asian-Americans in elite schools quickly overtook their slice of the U.S. 
population, many colleges stopped giving them preference -- and in some cases may have 
leaned the other way.
    In 1990, a federal investigation concluded that Harvard University admitted Asian-American 
applicants at a lower rate than white students despite the Asians' slightly stronger test scores 
and grades.
    Federal investigators also found that Harvard admissions staff had stereotyped Asian-American 
candidates as quiet, shy and oriented toward math and science. The government didn't bring 
charges because it concluded it was Harvard's preferences for athletes and alumni children -- 
few of whom were Asian -- that accounted for the admissions gap.
    The University of California came under similar scrutiny at about the same time. In 1989, as the 
federal government was investigating alleged Asian-American quotas at UC's Berkeley campus, 
Berkeley's chancellor apologized for a drop in Asian enrollment. The next year, federal investigators 
found that the mathematics department at UCLA had discriminated against Asian-American 
graduate school applicants. In 1992, Berkeley's law school agreed under federal pressure to 
drop a policy that limited Asian enrollment by comparing Asian applicants against each other 
rather than the entire applicant pool.
    Asian-American enrollment at Berkeley has increased since California voters banned affirmative 
action in college admissions. Berkeley accepted 4,122 Asian-American applicants for this fall's 
freshman class -- nearly 42% of the total admitted. That is up from 2,925 in 1997, or 34.6%, the 
last year before the ban took effect. Similarly, Asian-American undergraduate enrollment at the 
University of Washington rose to 25.4% in 2004 from 22.1% in 1998, when voters in that state 
prohibited affirmative action in college admissions.
    The University of Michigan may be poised for a similar leap in Asian-American enrollment, now 
that voters in that state have banned affirmative action. The Center for Equal Opportunity study 
found that, among applicants with a 1240 SAT score and 3.2 grade point average in 2005, the 
university admitted 10% of Asian-Americans, 14% of whites, 88% of Hispanics and 92% of blacks. 
Asian applicants to the university's medical school also faced a higher admissions bar than any 
other group.
    Julie Peterson, spokeswoman for the University of Michigan, said the study was flawed because 
many applicants take the ACT test instead of the SAT, and standardized test scores are only one 
of various tools used to evaluate candidates. "I utterly reject the conclusion" that the university 
discriminates against Asian-Americans, she said. Asian-Americans constitute 12.6% of the 
university's undergraduates.
    Jonathan Reider, director of college counseling at San Francisco University High School, said 
most elite colleges' handling of Asian applicants has become fairer in recent years. Mr. Reider, 
a former Stanford admissions official, said Stanford staffers were dismayed 20 years ago when 
an internal study showed they were less likely to admit Asian applicants than comparable whites. 
As a result, he said, Stanford strived to eliminate unconscious bias and repeated the study every 
year until Asians no longer faced a disadvantage.
    Last month, Mr. Reider participated in a panel discussion at a college-admissions conference. 
It was titled, "Too Asian?" and explored whether colleges treat Asian applicants differently.
    Precise figures of Asian-American representation at the nation's top schools are hard to come 
by.  Don Joe, an attorney and activist who runs Asian-American Politics, an Internet site that tracks 
enrollment, puts the average proportion of Asian-Americans at 25 top colleges at 15.9% in 2005, 
up from 10% in 1992.
    Still, he said, he is hearing more complaints "from Asian-American parents about how their 
children have excellent grades and scores but are being rejected by the most selective colleges. 
It appears to be an open secret."
    Mr. Li, who said he was in the top 1% of his high-school class and took five advanced placement 
courses in his senior year, left blank the questions on college applications about his ethnicity and 
place of birth. "It seemed very irrelevant to me, if not offensive," he said. Mr. Li, who has permanent 
resident status in the U.S., did note that his citizenship, first language and language spoken at home 
were Chinese.
    Along with Yale, he won admission to the California Institute of Technology, Rutgers University and 
the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.
    He said four schools -- Princeton, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania -- placed 
him on their waiting lists before rejecting him. "I was very close to being accepted at these schools," 
he said. "I was thinking, had my ethnicity been different, it would have put me over the top. Even if 
race had just a marginal effect, it may have disadvantaged me."
    He ultimately focused his complaint against Princeton after reading a 2004 study by three Princeton 
researchers concluding that an Asian-American applicant needed to score 50 points higher on the 
SAT than other applicants to have the same change of admission to an elite university.
    "As an Asian-American and a native of China, my chances of admission were drastically reduced," 
Mr. Li claims in his complaint.

11/26/06 Dallas Morning News: Racism in disguise: It's not whites suffering from 'academic 
diversity.' It's Asians and blacks.
    It's time to admit that "diversity" is code for racism. If it makes you feel better, we can call it 
"nice" racism or "well-intentioned" racism or "racism that's good for you." Except that's the rub: 
It's racism that may be good for you if "you" are a diversity guru, a rich white liberal, a college 
administrator or one of sundry other types. But the question of whether diversity is good for 
"them" is a different question altogether, and much more difficult to answer.
   If by "them" you mean minorities such as Jews, Chinese-Americans, Indian-Americans and 
other people of Asian descent, then the ongoing national obsession with diversity probably 
isn't good. Indeed, that's why Jian Li, a freshman at Yale, filed a civil rights complaint against  
Princeton University for rejecting him. Mr. Li had nigh-upon perfect test scores and grades, 
yet Princeton turned him down. He'll probably get nowhere with his complaint he did get 
into Yale, after all but it shines a light on an uncomfortable reality.
    "Theoretically, affirmative action is supposed to take spots away from white applicants and 
redistribute them to underrepresented minorities," Mr. Li told the Daily Princetonian. "What's 
happening is one segment of the minority population is losing places to another segment of 
minorities, namely Asians to underrepresented minorities."
    Mr. Li points to a study conducted by two Princeton academics last year that concluded 
that if you got rid of racial preferences in higher education, the number of whites admitted to 
schools would remain fairly constant. However, without racial preferences, Asians would 
take roughly 80 percent of the positions now allotted to Hispanic and black students.
    In other words, there is a quota though none dare call it that keeping Asians out of 
elite schools in numbers disproportionate to their merit. This is the same sort of quota once 
used to keep Jews out of the Ivy League not because of their lack of qualifications, but 
because having too many Jews would change the "feel" of, say, Harvard or Yale. Today, 
it's the same thing, only we've given that feeling a name: diversity.
    The greater irony is that it is far from clear that diversity is good for black students either. 
Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, notes that there is now 
ample empirical data showing that the supposed benefits of diversity in education are 
fleeting when real and often are simply nonexistent. Black students admitted to universities 
above their skill level often do poorly and fail to graduate in high numbers. UCLA law 
professor Richard Sander found that nearly half of black law students reside in the bottom 
10 percent of their law-school classes. If they went to schools one notch down, they might 
do far better.
    Today's diversity doctrine was contrived as a means of making racial preferences 
permanent. Affirmative action was intended as a temporary remedy for the tragic 
mistreatment of African-Americans. But as affirmative action drifted into racial 
preferences, it became constitutionally suspect because racial preferences are by 
definition discriminatory.
    The brilliance of the diversity doctrine is that it does an end-run around all of this by 
saying that diversity isn't so much about helping the underprivileged, it's about providing 
a rich educational experience for everyone.
    When the University of Michigan's admissions policies were being reviewed by the 
Supreme Court, former school President Lee Bollinger explained that diversity was as 
"as essential as the study of the Middle Ages, of international politics and of Shakespeare"
because exposure to people of different hues lies at the core of the educational experience. 
That's another way of saying that racial preferences are forever. That business about 
redressing past discrimination against blacks is no longer the name of the game.
    It's difficult to put into words how condescending this is in that it renders black students 
into props, show-and-tell objects for the other kids' educational benefit.
    There was a time when condescension, discrimination, arrogant social engineering 
along racial lines and the like were dubbed racism. And, to paraphrase Shakespeare, 
racism by any other name still stinks.
    Jonah Goldberg is a syndicated columnist.

The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges - 
and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, by Dan Golden, Education Editor of the Wall Street 
Journal, accuses colleges of making Asian applicants the new Jews and holding them to 
much higher standards than other students. 

From Daniel Golden's The Price of Admission, chapter 7, "The New Jews, Asian 
Americans Need Not Apply":
    In 1990, federal investigators concluded that UCLA's graduate department in mathematics 
had discriminated against Asian applicants.
    ......... most elite universities have maintained a triple standard in college admissions, 
setting the bar highest for Asians, next for whites, and lowest for blacks and Hispanics. 
According to a 2004 study by three Princeton researchers, an Asian American applicant 
needs to score 50 points higher on the SAT than other applicants just to have the same chance 
of admission to an elite university. (Being an alumni child, by contrast, confers a 160-point 
advantage.) Yale records show that entering Asian American freshmen averaged a 1493 
SAT score in 1999-2000, 1496 in 2000-2001, and 1482 in 2001-2. For the same three years, 
the average for white freshmen was about 40 points lower. Black and Hispanic freshmen 
lagged another 100-125 points below whites. A Yale spokesman attributed the Asian-white 
gap to more whites being recruited athletes, and said Asians and whites are held to the same 
academic standards."
. . . . . . . . . .
    "Federal investigators also turned up stereotyping by Harvard admissions evaluators. Possibly 
reflecting a lack of cultural understanding, Harvard evaluators ranked Asian American candidates 
on average below whites in "personal qualities." In comments written in applicants' files, Harvard 
admissions staff repeatedly described Asian Americans as "being quiet/shy, science/math oriented, 
and hard workers," the report found. One reader summed up an Asian applicant this way: "He's 
quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor."
. . . . . . . . . .
    "He [ Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt] added that the stereotype of the quiet Asian student 
is "really a strange notion. My Asian American students are very lively. They take leadership 
positions. They're not at all shy or reticent."
. . . . . . . . . .
    "Now as then, a lack of preferences can be a convenient guise for racism. Much as college 
administrators justified anti-Jewish policies with ethnic stereotypes -- one Yale dean in 1918 termed 
the typical Jewish student a "greasy grind" -- so Asians are typecast in college admissions offices 
as quasi-robots programmed by their parents to ace math and science tests. Asked why Vanderbilt 
poured resources into recruiting Jews instead of Asians, a former administator told me, "Asians 
are very good students, but they don't provide the kind of intellectual environment that Jewish 
students provide."
. . . . . . . . . .
    "

From chapter 10, "Ending the Preferences of Privilege":
    "Provide equal access for Asian American students and for international students who need 
financial aid. If elite colleges were truly committed to socioeconomic diversity, they would regard 
the proliferation of outstanding Asian American applicants as an opportunity, not a problem. They 
would rush to propel into the higher ranks of American society a group of students who not only 
boast outstanding test scores and grades but also are immigrants or immigrants' children from low- 
or middle-income families that sacrificed in hope of a better life for the next generation. Asian 
American students also bring a variety of cultures, languages, and religions to stir the campus 
melting pot. Colleges should counter anti-Asian bias through sensitivity training sessions and 
hiring more Asian American admissions deans, directors, and staff."
. . . . . . . . . .

11/26/06 Boston Globe: Are Asian-American students discriminated against in college admissions?
by Christopher Shea
    In most contexts on college campuses, Asian-Americans are "people of color," a stripe in the multicultural rainbow. But when it comes to elite-college admissions, Asian-Americans put a strain on the usual "minority" alliances.
    Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Jian Li, a freshman at Yale, had filed a complaint against Princeton with the Office of Civil Rights at the US Department of Education, charging that the university had rejected him because he was Asian-American. Despite perfect SAT scores, near-perfect achievement test scores, nine AP classes, and a class rank in the top 1 percent at Livingston High School in New Jersey, Li says he was rejected by Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT, while getting into Yale, Cooper Union, Rutgers, and Cal Tech.
    Li, whose family moved to the United States from China when he was 4, told The Daily Princetonian that he was "fine" with being at Yale, but that discrimination against Asian-Americans in admissions had long bothered him. His decision to sue Princeton alone was "kind of arbitrary," he said. "If something comes of it, it will send a message for all the universities."
    To judge from the responses in Ivy League newspapers, most students wish he'd spared the effort. In The Daily Princetonian, Zachary Goldstein, a 2005 graduate, said the Yale frosh was "like a bad ex-boyfriend," harassing Old Nassau after she'd spurned him. A Yale Daily News columnist, Jonathan Pitts-Wiley, in a guest piece for the Princeton paper, called it "reprehensible" that "Li had the gall to unnecessarily racialize a personal defeat."
    The Yale writer went on to note that, in fact, "Asian-Americans are over represented" at Princeton : They make up 13 percent of undergraduates, compared with 4.5 percent of the population.
   Princeton 's admissions office, for its part, maintains that it makes no effort to align student demographics with that of the national population. Describing Li's complaint as "without merit," Princeton spokespeople have said that every student is evaluated using both academic and nonacademic criteria (such as leadership and artistic ability). And like other colleges, Princeton defends giving black and Hispanic students, children of alumni, and athletes a boost on the nonacademic side of the ledger.
    Yet Li isn't alone in his concerns, the derision heaped on him by his contemporaries notwithstanding. Daniel Golden, author of the Journal story this month, helped bring the issue of discrimination against Asian-Americans back to life this year in his book "The Price of Admission," in which he dubs Asian-Americans "the new Jews." From the 1920s through the 1950s, Jewish applicants with straight A's vexed elite-college admissions officers, who wanted to maintain a strong WASP tone on their campuses. The result was quotas.
    Golden basically concludes that some Asian-American students who would be admitted if they were of any other ethnicity get rejected -- often for reasons based on stereotype -- to make room for "more desirable" students. But he can't make an airtight case. The question now is: Will the Office of Civil Rights, with its investigative powers, prove Li and Golden right?
    In the late 1980s, in response to complaints, the Office of Civil Rights investigated whether Harvard had been discriminating against Asian-Americans. It found that while Asian-Americans faced longer odds than whites at admissions time (a 13.2 percent acceptance rate, compared with 17.4 percent for white students, from 1979 to 1988), the difference could largely be explained by the fact that few were legacy kids or recruited cornerbacks. The investigation did, however, turn up some embarrassingly stereotypical descriptions of rejected Asian students in Harvard records ("he's quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor").
    To bolster his case, Li has cited work by two Princeton researchers, Thomas Espenshade and Chang Chung, that was originally framed as strengthening the case for affirmative action. In articles published in 2004 and 2005 in Social Science Quarterly, Espenshade and Chung analyzed the admissions fates and qualifications of 45,500 students who applied to three very elite, unnamed universities in 1997.
    The chief finding, according to the authors, was that ending all admissions preferences -- for athletes, legacy kids, and minorities -- would cut the number of black students at elite colleges by two-thirds, and Hispanic enrollment by one-half. Ending just legacy and athletic preferences, meanwhile -- something often proposed by egalitarians -- would, on its own, not help black and Hispanic students much.
    But Li's complaint draws attention to other aspects of the study: Asian-American students faced by far the lowest admissions rates of any ethnic group (17.6 percent, compared with 23.8 percent for whites, 33.7 percent for blacks, and 26.8 percent for Hispanics). What's more, contrary to the Office of Civil Rights report from 1990, legacy and athletic preferences trimmed Asian-American enrollment by only a few percentage points. But if preferences based on race, legacy status, and athletic talent were all done away with, Asian-American enrollment would jump 40 percent (while white enrollment would drop by 1 percent). To Li, it seems Asian-Americans alone bear the burden of affirmative action.
    Espenshade declined to answer questions about the study, saying via e-mail that he only wished to state "the obvious: academic merit is not the only kind of merit that elite college admission officers consider in making admission decisions."
    Li no doubt faces a difficult road in proving discrimination, given that elite colleges turn down many stellar applicants, but his complaint has touched a nerve. "[T]here can be good reasons for the disproportionately low acceptance rates for many Asians," one self-identified Yale student wrote on the online news site Inside Higher Ed, discussing Li's case. "Top-tier schools...look not only for good grades but for an interesting student who will bring something of value to the community."
    That sounds a lot like what admissions officers say, but there's a whiff of something else, too. The less-pleasant subtext is what Li's complaint is all about.

11/14/06 Inside Higher Ed: New Challenge to Affirmative Action
by Scott Jaschik
    Nine out of every 10 students who apply to Princeton University are rejected, and many of 
them are students with the kinds of records that just about assure they will end up getting a 
great education somewhere. Jian Li, who despite his top grades and perfect SAT scores 
was one of this years rejects, ended up at Yale University . But he has set off a federal 
investigation of whether Princeton s affirmative action policies discriminate against Asian 
American applicants.
    Since he was rejected after first being put on the waiting list Li filed two complaints with 
the U.S. Education Departments Office for Civil Rights. OCR initially found insufficient evidence 
to proceed, but agreed to an inquiry after Li refiled his complaint with additional information. 
His complaints were first reported this weekend by The Wall Street Journal.
    By most measures, the odds are against Li winning his claim and Princeton denies that 
any bias took place. Demonstrating discrimination is particularly difficult at elite private 
universities, where thousands of exceptionally qualified students of all races and ethnicities 
are rejected every year and there is no explicit formula to determine admission. But Lis 
complaint comes at a time that many Asian applicants and the high school counselors who 
work with them report a view that they are held to a higher standard than are white, black or 
Latino students. And he is citing research by the universitys own professors to document 
the impact of affirmative action on Asian applications.
    Li did not respond to messages seeking comment, but his complaint states that he 
received 800s on the mathematics, critical reading and writing parts of the SAT, that he 
graduated in the top 1 percent of his high school class, that he completed nine Advanced 
Placement classes by the time he graduated, and that he had been active in extracurricular 
activities as well serving as a delegate at Boys State, working in Costa Rica, etc.
    The problem, Li said, was his Chinese background. Li said that he left ethnicity blank on 
his application. But while Princeton s application indicates that question is optional, it doesnt 
list as optional other questions that Li answered: his name, his mothers and fathers names, 
his first language (Chinese), and the language spoken in his home (Chinese). Li said that 
this information made his ethnicity unequivocally clear to Princeton .
    Even if Li was a strong applicant and Princeton knew he was Chinese, that doesnt 
demonstrate discrimination. To try to do so, Li is pointing to research done by two Princeton  
scholars and published in Social Science Quarterly. The research looked at admissions 
decisions at elite colleges and found that without affirmative action, the acceptance rate 
for African American candidates would be likely to fall by nearly two-thirds, from 33.7 percent 
to 12.2 percent, while the acceptance rate for Hispanic applicants probably would be cut in 
half, from 26.8 percent to 12.9 percent.
    While white admit rates would stay steady, Asian students would be big winners under such 
a system. Their admission rate in a race-neutral system would go to 23.4 percent, from 17.6 
percent. And their share of a class of admitted students would rise to 31.5 percent, from 23.7 
percent.
    Cass Cliatt, a spokeswoman for Princeton, said that while the study was done by scholars 
at the university, the study examined elite colleges as a whole, not Princeton .
    Last year, she said, Princeton rejected about half of all the applicants who had perfect SAT 
scores and in doing so rejected people of a range of ethnicities. Princeton doesnt 
discriminate against Asian Americans, she said.
    Princeton does use affirmative action to recruit a diverse class, Cliatt said, but it does so 
through individual reviews of applications, not with separate policies for students from different 
racial and ethnic groups. You cant say someone was or wasnt admitted because of some 
formula, she said.
    In Princeton s freshman class, there are 172 Asian Americans more than any other 
minority group out of 1,231 students.
    What Princeton does not release is the sort of information used by its own scholars on admit 
rates by specific ethnic and racial groups. Princeton does publish data periodically on the admit 
rates of all minority applicants (showing an admit rate only marginally higher than for all 
applicants), but does not break out rates for different groups. Cliatt said that to date, there has 
not been much interest in those figures, but that Princeton might reconsider if there is more 
interest and it appears that releasing those numbers would be in the public interest. So far, 
she said, the public hasnt told us they want the breakdown.
    Critics of affirmative action eager to build on their successful effort in Michigan , where 
voters barred affirmative action at public colleges last week are anxious to get such data. 
Private colleges do not need to release such data, but if the Education Department obtains 
statistics during its investigation and cites them in its analysis of the case, the information 
could become public.
    When such statistics have been released in the past, they have tended to come from public 
institutions, which must respond to open records requests, and the data at highly competitive 
publics have indicated large disparities in the test scores and grades, on average, of black 
and Latino applicants on one hand and white and Asian applicants on the other.
    In the weeks before the Michigan vote, the Center for Equal Opportunity a group 
opposed to affirmative action released data on the University of Michigan showing that 
the SAT median for black students admitted to Michigans main undergraduate college was 
1160 in 2005, compared to 1260 for Hispanics, 1350 for whites and 1400 for Asians. High 
school grade point averages were 3.4 for black applicants, 3.6 for Hispanics, 3.8 for Asians, 
and 3.9 for whites. Michigan officials argued that the figures distorted the reality of admissions 
procedures, which look beyond numbers. But the figures were much discussed in Michigan  
and similar figures when released on other state universities have been part of 
campaigns against affirmative action.
    At Princeton , Asian students who went to his high school arent impressed with Lis complaint. 
Several noted that many Asian students from the high school have been admitted or are 
enrolled. One of them told The Daily Princetonian that his complaint was completely 
unwarranted.

10/3/89 The Heritage Foundation: College Admission Quotas Against Asian-Americans: 
Why Is the Civil Rights Community Silent?
by Representative Dana Rohrabacker
Heritage Lecture #216
http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/HL216.cfm 
(Archived document, may contain errors)
    Over the past few years, charges have been made that some of our nation's foremost colleges
and universities are using quota systems to limit admissions of Asian-Americans. When I was 
first alerted to the problem by leaders of the Asian-American community, I had my staff look into 
the allegations. The more they investigated the problem, the more information they uncovered 
that seems to suggest that there is a conscious effort by some of our finest institutions of higher
learning to limit the number of their Asian students. At the University of California at Los Angeles ,
an internal memo from the Director of Admissions said the campus "will endeavor to curb the 
decline of Caucasian students  The memo went on to predict that Asian-Americans would 
begin to express concern as their numbers declined. 
    At Harvard University, 12 percent of Asian-American applicants are admitted contrasted with 
an overall admissions rate of 15.2 percent, despite the fact that Asian-Americans average 
higher grades and SAT scores than other students - 112 points higher in 1982. 
    Admitting Discrimination. Amid complaints from Asian-Americans, the University of 
California at Berkeley initiated an internal study to determine whether bias against Asian 
applicants existed. Chancellor Heyman later admitted the school's policies caused a decline 
in Asian-American undergraduate enrollment stating, "It is clear that decisions made in the 
admissions process indisputably had a disproportionate impact on Asians." That is academic 
gobbledygook for: "We discriminated." Brown and Stanford Universities have conducted 
internal studies showing the percentages of Asian-American students accepted have 
remained roughly the same, even though the number of highly qualified from Asian-American 
applicants has risen dramatically. 
    Soon after gathering this information, I introduced with several colleagues H.Con.Res. 147, 
a bill that puts Congress on record as opposing discriminatory quotas. My resolution says: 
1) institutions of higher education should review their admission policies and, if necessary, 
revise them to ensure that applicants are not being illegally excluded; 2) the Attorney General
should investigate allegations of illegal racial discrimination and pursue legal action when 
justified; and 3) the Secretary of Education should conclude, as soon as possible, the 
compliance reviews on admissions policies that were started over a year ago.
    Victimized by Quotas. Earlier in this century, the Jews in this country were victimized by 
restrictive quotas in university admissions. It was a tragic situation. Hard working students 
were being judged not by their work and abilities, but by their religion.
    Considering the similarities, I have been dumbfounded by the reaction of some members
of the civil rights community, the Department of Justice, and some members of Congress.
The initial response to the introduction of my resolution was positive. The B'nai B'rith, a 
leader in the fight against discrimination since 1913 sent a letter of endorsement. The 
Organization for Chinese Americans did as well.
    However, since that time their endorsements seem to have turned lukewarm. In fact, 
Senator Simon's chief staff member on the Judiciary Committee attacked my resolution at 
the OCA annual convention. Of course, he did not bother to propose any legislative 
alternative, let alone a better resolution. The Jewish American Committee also told a 
member of my staff that they would be sending a letter of endorsement. A few days later 
they called back and explained that some of their membership was concerned about the 
effects my resolution would have on affirmative action - despite the fact the H.Con.Res. 
147 does not mention the topic. The Japanese-American Citizens League also refused 
to endorse for apparently similar reasons. It makes me wonder: if affirmative action had 
been in place in the 1930s, would we still have quotas for Jewish students today?
    I intend to keep pushing the bureaucracy and speaking out on this insidious form of 
discrimination even if the civil rights establishment will not.
    Halo Effect. The publicity on this issue seems to have created a halo effect. When they 
know they are being watched, organizations polish their halos and make sure they are on 
straight. For example, since the beginning of major publicity on this issue in November 
1988, Harvard has announced that its next freshman class, the one entering this month, 
will be 15 percent Asian - the highest rate in Harvard's history. Stanford announced that
their September 1989 entering class was over 18 percent Asian - their highest ever. 
UCLA announced that an Asian-American professor who had published data critical of 
universities' Asian admission policies, and who had to fight for three years, has finally 
received tenure. And UC Berkeley has apologized to the Asian community for their past 
admissions practices and has proposed a change in admission policies under which 
50 percent of their student body - not 40 percent - will be admitted on academic merit. 
However, this policy has not been officially adopted by the university. Many in the Asian 
community do not believe the proposed plan at Berkeley solves the problem. Others say 
that on a first reading the new plan may not meet Bakke standards for non-discrimination 
and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 
    I plan to pursue this issue. I have been discovering that unless you are willing to make
some noise, nobody will listen to you. This issue deserves some of our attention- there is 
a legitimate reason for concern.
    Discrimination's Two Forms. Discrimination against Asian-American college applicants
seems to take two forms: one is an upper limit quota - even though as a group they score 
higher than average, Asian Americans are not admitted at the same rate as all other 
applicants. The second form of discrimination appears to be a series of race-specific 
tracks for admission. It looks as though all applicants at some schools are screened. If 
they are black, Hispanic, Native American and possibly other racial categories, they are 
put on a special admit track. Some football players and cello players might have a 
separate track as well. Everybody else is put on a different track. Therefore, Asian 
American students who have higher than average scores and grades are restricted to 
competing for less than 100 percent of the admission places - due solely to a race 
conscious track system. Some schools may be using both forms of discrimination.
    Outrageous Document. At some schools this racial tracking system is blatantly racist 
and no secret. One outrageous racist document was published on February 26, 1989, in 
the Los Angeles Times. It was a rejection waiting list letter to an applicant to Boalt Hall, 
the University of California at Berkeley 's Law School . Yes, a law school. The letter said 
to an Asian American applicant: "However, we can tell you that you are in the bottom half 
of the [blank] waiting list." In the blank was typed the word "Asian." If this is not a race-only
policy decision, something totally in violation of the constitutional rights of Asian Americans,
I do not know what is. Apparently Boalt Hall keeps waiting lists by racial categories not only
specific to Asians but for other races as well. Otherwise, why would they have a "fill in the 
blank" fill in the race form letter? In the name of justice and equality, how can a law school 
even conceive of something so openly racist?
    The reaction of some members of Congress also leaves me wondering about the level 
of commitment in Washington to civil rights for all Americans. I have written three times to 
Chairman Don Edwards of the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights 
requesting a hearing on my resolution concerning Asian quotas and the lack of action on 
specific complaints. Thus far, I have had little satisfaction from this champion of civil rights. 
The fact that my resolution has almost 60 co-sponsors from both political parties does not 
seem to impress him.
    The executive branch enforcement agencies have not taken reports on specific 
complaints of this type seriously either. Close to two years ago, an Asian student from 
San Jose , California , filed a complaint with the Department of Justice because he was 
denied admission to UC Berkeley. He graduated first in his class of 432. He took home 
prizes from nationwide science fairs. He lettered in cross country and track and was a 
justice on his school's supreme court. Thus far, his complaint has not been acted on by 
the Justice Department or formally referred to the Department of Education.
    Unwilling to Complain. What sort of message does this send to other students who may
be the victims of discrimination? I am convinced that this type of discrimination is occurring 
more often than anyone knows, because many of the Asian students, by heritage and culture, 
are unwilling to make formal or public complaints. Can you imagine the outcry from civil rights 
groups if nothing had been done on a similar complaint of a student of another minority? 
As I said before, the University of California at Berkeley law School has waiting lists for 
students based solely on their race. I have spoken to officials in the Justice Department and 
it appears that preliminary investigations into this report have yet to begin, even though it 
has been in the newspapers. The Justice Department, however, is pursuing a sex 
discrimination civil rights complaint against the all-male Virginia Military Institute - reportedly
on the basis of one complaint. Furthermore, the Education Department compliance reviews 
at UCLA and Harvard have dragged on for twenty months and fifteen months with no results. 
Other reviews have not even been started. Why has the Justice Department not filed suit 
against these universities?
    Why is the Subcommittee on Constitutional and Civil Rights not up in arms at the lack of 
attention given to a legitimate civil rights complaint?  Why has the civil rights community not 
been heard from in this matter?  Some members of Congress have been sympathetic. 
The Labor-HHS Subcommittees of both the House and the Senate, at my request, wrote 
language into the 1990 appropriation bill report that calls upon the Department of Education 
to quickly finish the ongoing compliance reviews on the subject of Asian-American 
admissions quotas.
    Congressional Hearings Needed. However, we will not put an end to this situation unless 
the proper committees hold hearings. I am renewing my call for congressional hearings on 
this subject. However, if Chairman Edwards still refuses, I will hold my own hearings to 
investigate. At my request, the Republican Research Committee will hold hearings to 
investigate Asian quotas and discrimination before the year is out. Perhaps I could ask you 
for help getting to the bottom of this perplexing situation. Your aid in gathering witnesses, 
experts, and publicity would be appreciated.
    Finally, I am concerned about what will happen if the Department of Education compliance
reviews result in a "violation" letter of findings. If a violation letter of findings is issued, it will 
be interesting to see whether the Justice Department takes any action and whether civil 
rights groups renew their support for H.Con.Res. 147, and whether the Congress holds 
hearings on the topic of Asian student quotas.
    As a matter of fact, based upon the less-than-swift action the Justice Department has 
taken in pursuing the San Jose student's complaint, I am concerned that any finding of 
violation by the Department of Education in the area of Asian American discrimination will 
not be pursued with vigor in the courts by the Justice Department.
    Using Education Department Authority. Therefore, I call for Education Secretary Cavazos
and Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights William Smith not to refer to the Justice 
Department any finding of violation found in this area. Rather they should take immediate 
administrative enforcement action to cut off eligibility for all Education Department funds 
from any university found in violation of Title VI. This is fully within the Department's authority 
under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
    In the Bakke decision, the Supreme Court struck down a racial classification admissions
policy where, in the absence of a finding of previous discrimination, race was the sole 
determinant for admission. Speaking for the Court, Justice Powell said if the "purpose is 
to assure within its student body some specific percentage of a particular group merely 
because of its race or ethnic origin, such a preferential purpose must be rejected not as 
insubstantial but as facially invalid. Preferring members of any one group for no reason 
other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake. This the Constitution 
forbids." On the subject of setting up racially exclusive pools of applicants, Justice Powell 
wrote: "To the extent that there existed a pool of at least minimally qualified minority 
applicants to fill the 16 special admissions seats, white applicants could compete for 84 
seats in the entering class, rather than the 100 open to minority applicants. Whether the 
limitation is described as quotas or a goal, it is a line drawn on the basis of race and 
ethnic status."
    After stating that equal protection guarantees were personal rights, he concluded, 
"The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual 
and something else when applied to a person of another color. If both are not accorded 
the same protection, then it is not equal."
    Quotas and other racial discrimination have no place in our nation's schools, or for 
that matter, anywhere else. Please join me in fighting this discrimination. It is unfair for 
Asian-Americans and unfair for America .
    Enforcing the Law. My resolution says that universities should follow the law of the land 
and that federal civil rights enforcement agencies should vigorously enforce the law. Why 
are civil rights and other ethnic culture groups scared of that?  What has this country come 
to when enthusiastic support for this basic principle is not forthcoming? If America is to 
succeed and become competitive once again, we must allow all Americans to maximize 
their potential for their benefit and America 's.
    Representative Rohrabacher, a Republican, represents the 42nd Congressional District 
of California. He spoke at The Heritage Foundation on September 19, 1989, as part of a 
lecture series featuring freshman members of Congress. ISSN 0272-1155. 
Copyright 1989 by The Heritage Foundation.

6/7/05 Inside Higher Ed: Demographic Dislocation: What if the Supreme Court had banned 
affirmative action? What if colleges moved away from the use of affirmative action on their own?
by Scott Jaschik
    A new study by two Princeton University researchers uses admissions data from elite 
colleges to portray what would happen in such a world without affirmative action. In short, black 
and Latino enrollment would tank, while white enrollments would hardly be affected. The big 
winners would be Asian applicants, who appear to face disaffirmative action right now. They 
would pick up about four out of five spots lost by black and Latino applicants.
    The study was conducted by Thomas Espenshade, a professor of sociology at Princeton , 
and Chang Chung, a senior staff member in the universitys Office of Population Research. 
The study will appear in the June issue of Social Science Quarterly.
    Were trying to put these admission preferences in context so people understand that lots 
of students, including those with SAT scores above 1500, are getting a boost, said 
Espenshade. The most important conclusion is the negative impact on African American 
and Hispanic students if affirmative action practices were eliminated.
    The study found that, without affirmative action, the acceptance rate for African American 
candidates at elite colleges would be likely to fall by nearly two-thirds, from 33.7 percent to 
12.2 percent, while the acceptance rate for Hispanic applicants probably would be cut in half, 
from 26.8 percent to 12.9 percent.
    Those drops, in turn, could prompt additional losses, the authors warn. If admitting such 
small numbers of qualified African-American and Hispanic students reduced applications 
and the yield from minority candidates in subsequent years, the effect of eliminating 
affirmative action at elite universities on the racial and ethnic composition of enrolled 
students would be magnified beyond the results presented here, the report says.
    Drops of that magnitude in admission rates would have serious impacts on those who 
actually enroll. The percentage of admitted students who are black would fall to 3.3 percent, 
from 9 percent. For Hispanics, the drop would be to 3.8 percent, from 7.9 percent.
    Such dramatic changes in policy would have little impact, however, on white applicants. 
Their admission rate would rise slightly, to 24.3 percent, from 23.8 percent.
    The big gains would be for Asian applicants. Their admission rate in a race-neutral system 
would go to 23.4 percent, from 17.6 percent. And their share of a class of admitted students 
would rise to 31.5 percent, from 23.7 percent.
    The Princeton scholars also studied the impact of admission preferences for athletes and 
for alumni children and found that both groups are overwhelmingly white. However, despite 
the advantages such applicants receive, the study found little impact on overall demographics. 
Thats because the total proportion of applicants in such categories is relatively small  
3.1 percent for alumni children and 4.5 percent for athletes.
    The study backs up the statements of many educators that the elimination of affirmative 
action right now would displace many minority students and decrease diversity at top 
institutions.
    But Roger Clegg, general counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity, a group that 
opposes affirmative action, said that the study was irrelevant to the arguments he makes 
against current admissions policies. He said that there is an assumption behind the study 
that people dont want Asian enrollments to go up, and that affirmative action is somehow 
stronger if white students arent hurt by it.
    The problem with affirmative action, he said, is that it is discrimination, regardless of who 
benefits. Its always useful to put the shoe on the other foot, he said. Suppose Ole Miss 
had argued that the fact that it discriminated against blacks wasnt such a big deal 
because most of them would be turned down anyway. No one would find that argument 
very persuasive.
    He also questioned whether the displaced minority students would really be hurt. Students 
who are less qualified are less likely to succeed, he said, and may be more likely to 
succeed a notch down the college prestige rankings. It is not the end of the world if a black 
student ends up going to the University of Virginia instead of Princeton , or to Virginia Tech 
instead of U.Va., he said.

11/15/06 Yale Daily News: "Anti-Asian bias alleged; Princeton faces suit from Univ. freshman,"
By Kimberly Chow and Judy Wang
    Jian Li 10, who applied to Princeton University last year and was not accepted, is filing suit 
against the college for race-based discrimination in its admissions process. 
    A Yale freshman has filed a civil rights complaint against Princeton University , alleging that 
the college did not accept his application for enrollment last spring because he is Asian-American.
    Jian Li '10, who was born in China and now lives in New Jersey, said that while he is not 
seeking any compensation from Princeton, he hopes to draw attention to discrimination against 
Asian-American students in the admissions process, which he called an "under-addressed issue."
    Li lodged his complaint with the Office for Civil Rights on Aug. 2 under the Civil Rights Act of 
1964, which protects against discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national 
origin. After initially rejecting his claim for lack of evidence, the office reopened the case on 
Oct. 31 and began its investigation into Princeton 's admissions process.
    Li said he wants to broaden the discussion about affirmative action in admissions policy and 
is not interested in transferring to Princeton .
    "There is much dialogue about race issues along black and white lines, but it often seems 
that Asians are ignored," Li said.
    Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said Princeton is working with the Office for Civil Rights 
to examine the case.
    "We consider applicants as individuals and the University does not discriminate against 
Asian Americans," she said. "It's difficult to admit a class from among thousands of excellent 
applicants."
    Cliatt said Princeton admitted approximately half of all applicants with perfect SAT scores 
last year.
    Yale College Dean of Admissions Jeff Brenzel said Yale's admission policies are oriented 
to holistic evaluation of candidates, taking into account all aspects of their applications as well 
the need to assemble a freshman class that is diverse in many different respects.
    Li said he scored a perfect 2,400 on the SAT and a combined 2,390 on SAT II subject tests 
in calculus, chemistry and physics. While the civil rights agency is only using Li's test scores 
and GPA as evidence in the case, Li said he does not believe these two pieces of information 
fully represent his admissions profile. In high school, Li said, he was president of the 
intercultural organization American Field Service, participated in American Legion Boys' 
State and volunteered for a community service project in Costa Rica .
    Bruce Bailey, director of college counseling at the Lakeside School in Seattle , Wash. , said 
the use of perfect SAT scores as evidence of discrimination is not likely to help his case.
    "Anyone who knows anything about college admissions knows that scores are only one part 
of an application," he said. "I'm sure Princeton and Yale can fill their classes up with people with 
those kinds of scores."
    Bailey said the vast majority of students who apply to highly competitive schools like Yale and
Princeton are qualified candidates, and thus admissions committees must consider a much 
wider range of indicators than just grades and test scores.
    Li said his case is based on a study of admissions processes published by three Princeton 
researchers in 2004, which found that while elite universities gave African-American applicants 
an advantage equivalent to 230 extra SAT points and Hispanic applicants 185 points while 
making admissions decisions, the schools placed Asian-Americans at a disadvantage equal 
to a loss of 50 SAT points.
    Li said he was aware of the discrimination revealed by the report before he applied to 
Princeton .
    "Before I'd even applied, I had known about this discrimination," Li said. "When I found out 
I was wait-listed, I had been hoping to get rejected so I would have legal standing to file the 
complaint."
    Two of the three researchers conducted another study on "disaffirmative action" in 2005, 
which found that Asian applicants to elite institutions would be the "biggest winners" if race 
were not a factor in admissions. In that scenario, the acceptance rate for Asian students 
would go up from 17.6 percent to 23.4 percent, the study found.
    The San Francisco-based group "Chinese for Affirmative Action" supports the practice 
of affirmative action in education for all ethnic groups, but Asian-Americans in particular. 
CAA Executive Director Vincent Pan said Asians are often held up as the "model minority" 
- as a stereotypically high-achieving ethnic group - to supposedly prove that minorities do not 
need extra support, but this view is largely a myth.
    Pan said his group does not accept the claim of some Asian-Americans, such as Li, that 
affirmative action hurts their chances of getting into college. On the contrary, Pan said, 
affirmative action is able to help some Asian groups, like Cambodians and Vietnamese, 
who often come to the U.S. as immigrants with little education.
    The Executive Board of the Asian American Students Association at Princeton said in a 
statement Monday that the majority of the board thinks Princeton 's policy regarding 
admissions is basically "fair" in its evaluation of students' applications. They said the 
organization is organizing a forum so that students may discuss the issues of race in college 
admissions raised by Li's lawsuit.
    "This topic may be a delicate issue for some, but we are glad that it has allowed students 
at Princeton - and perhaps at Yale as well - to think about the merits and flaws of the college 
admission process," members of the Executive Board wrote in an e-mail.
    Megan Chiao, a sophomore and member of the Asian American Students Association at 
Princeton, said she thinks the majority of students at Princeton are critical of Li's allegations.
    "I agree that the issues Jian Li raises about how Asians could be hurt by affirmative action 
are valid," Chiao said. "But his specific case might not be credible because I don't think 
Princeton just accepts people based on academic merit."
    Some Yale students said that although they do not think Li's suit will be successful, the 
issues it raises about the admissions process need to be addressed.
    Aaron Meng '08, president of the Chinese-American Students' Association, said that 
although he does not think the case has much merit, he believes it is important to draw 
attention to the question of whether or not Asian-American applicants are being discriminated 
against in the admissions process.
    Meng said he thinks Asian culture has taught students to place more emphasis on studying 
than on partaking in creative activities, which may put Asian-American students at a 
disadvantage in the admissions process. Asian-American students may also be 
disadvantaged by their approach to college admissions preparation, rather than any 
discrimination in the process itself, Meng said.
    But Lily Dorman-Colby '09 said she thinks discrimination may have occurred in Li's case 
because college admissions officers strive to create ethnic diversity in spite of the fact that 
Asian-American students perform better on standardized tests and have higher grades.
    "It's getting to be a tricky situation for schools because, in order to represent the country 
as a whole, they are actually being discriminatory toward Asian Americans," she said.
    Since the complaint was made public, Li's case has received national attention from 
The Wall St. Journal, ABC's "20/20" and the online journal Inside Higher Ed.

2/15/06 Princeton Alumni Weekly: Princeton: Wealth, Image, and the Battle for Institutional
Mobility from The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, 
Yale, and Princeton by Jerome Karabel
    Amid widespread faculty concern about Princeton s inability or unwillingness to 
attract more brilliant students, the University also faced a wave of negative publicity about 
alleged discrimination against Asian Americans. In 1981, Dean Wickenden had privately 
reported that he was concerned about Asian Americans being admitted at the lowest rate 
of all minorities in spite of the fact that the academic credentials of this group are much 
stronger than those of the other sub-groups. By 1985, 17 percent of all applicants to 
Princeton were admitted, but only 14 percent of Asian Americans. But a Princeton study 
that was never made public concluded that, though Asian Americans had higher academic 
ratings than whites in four of the five years examined, there was no bias. One of the things
working against Asian-American applicants, said Cummings, was that they were 
underrepresented among groups given preference for admission, such as alumni children,
athletes, and blacks. This was essentially the same argument that Harvard made a few 
years later, though it was careful to leave the higher admission rate for blacks (29 percent
in 1987 compared to 15 percent for all Harvard applicants) out of the discussion.  
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Overall, the admissions policy under [Dean of Admission Fred] Hargadon placed slightly 
less emphasis on purely academic qualifications and a bit more on nonacademic factors
a formula that harmed groups whose primary strengths were intellectual. Jews were 
not the only group affected. Asian Americans also presented profiles whose strongest 
component was a high level of scholastic accomplishment.  Hargadon recognized this; 
in a Princeton Alumni Weekly interview, he acknowledged that many Asian-American 
families encouraged their children to concentrate on academics and that Princeton s 
emphasis on energy level outside the class, or taking part in activities ... has turned out
for many Asian-American students to be a handicap. Not surprisingly, the gap in the 
admission rates for Asian Americans and whites grew during Hargadons tenure; 
86 percent of the admission rate of whites in the half-decade before his arrival, the 
Asian-American rate dropped to 70 percent during his first five years in office.

Bigot for the Left Jay Mathews says it is OK to relegate Asian Americans to less selective schools because we receive a fine education anyway.  If he had written that about African Americans, Jews, Hispanics, etc., he would have been denounced as a racist.
10/12/04 Washington Post 
    One of the most interesting and persistent of my online interlocutors is Ed Chin, a physician who lives in northern New Jersey. Chin and I are about the same age, but have different backgrounds. He is the child of non-English-speaking Chinese immigrant parents and grew up in a low-income neighborhood of New York City. I was raised in a relatively prosperous suburb of San Francisco by parents who spoke only English, as have most of our ancestors going back several generations to Ireland and Scotland. Chin attended a very competitive New York City magnet school, while I went to an average suburban high school. We both went to Ivy League colleges, but he enrolled in medical school while I escaped to the newspaper business.
    Our Internet conversations have all been on one topic, how affirmation action in college admissions has hurt students of Asian descent. Chin has studied this subject with an energy and passion that is rare even among the many energetic and passionate people who write me. He has been asking me for years to address this topic. When my occasional swipes at it have not satisfied him, he has asked for more. He has suggested more than once that The Post and I are too politically correct and afraid of the heat that this issue generates.
    Hoping to get him off my back, I told Chin I would broach the topic again only if he let me write about him and his views. I did not know of anyone else who argued the case as well as he did, I said, so he had to help me. He values his privacy, and resisted my offer for more than a year, but has now given me permission to publish the Chin doctrine. Here it is, as taken from his e-mails with his preferences on capitalization and punctuation preserved:
    One of Chin's favorite examples of the Asian success at overcoming poverty is Princeton physicist Daniel C. Tsui, who won a Nobel Prize in 1998. He was born to a peasant family in a remote village in Henan province in central China, attended school in Hong Kong and then got a college scholarship to Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., leading to his research at the University of Chicago, Bell Laboratories and Princeton.
    There was no affirmative action admission for Tsui, Chin said. "He credits his accomplishments to his Chinese parents' value placed on education, despite the fact that they were illiterate Chinese peasants themselves. These values are stressed by the philosopher, Confucius, in his Analects. That's the main ingredient for his success and his endless striving for academic excellence and his love of knowledge."
    Chin quotes with approval a book, "Beyond the Classroom," by Laurence Steinberg, B. Bradford Brown and Sanford M. Dornbusch, which says "of all the demographic factors we studied in relation to school performance, ethnicity was the most important. . . . In terms of school achievement, it is more advantageous to be Asian than to be wealthy, to have non-divorced parents, or to have a mother who is able to stay at home full time."
    And yet the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action preserved the system at most selective private schools in which Asian American students with very high tests scores are passed over in favor of African American and Hispanic students with lower scores because the schools want significant numbers of all ethnicities on campus. Supporters of such policies say a diverse student body helps everyone learn to live in the real world, and there are plenty of other fine colleges that take students, Asian American or otherwise, whom they reject.
    Whenever I raised this point, Chin would accuse me, rightly, of shrugging off the American commitment to fair play for individuals. He cited comments made by Abigail Thernstrom, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Massachusetts state school board member. "I think these racial preferences are very pernicious," she said in an interview on a PBS Web site after voters banned the use of affirmative action based on race in University of California admissions. "I don't think they do black students much good. I think they're poisonous in terms of race relations. And I do not think they are fair to the Asian student, for instance, who has worked very, very hard and is kept out of a Berkeley because a student with a slightly different skin color has gotten in as a consequence of racial identity."
    Chin said "Chinese and ALL Asian Americans are PENALIZED for their values on academic excellence by being required to have a HIGHER level of achievement, academic and non-academic, than any other demographic group, especially Whites, in order to be admitted to Harvard, the Ivies and the other Elites in this zero-sum game called admissions based on racial preferences."
    This may not be intended as a quota system, but Chin says it sure looks like one. He notes that in the 1980s some colleges, particularly Stanford and Brown, looked hard at their admissions decisions and discovered they were turning down many Asian American applicants while accepting white applicants with virtually the same characteristics. The Brown report admitted to "cultural bias and stereotypes," like the oft-heard canard that Asian American students have 1600 SAT scores and play the violin, but don't do sports.
    Chin said if he had the power to change the admission policies of schools that discriminate in this way, he would let them continue to give preference to athletes, musicians, alumni children and any other groups the college wished to favor. And he would admit lower-scoring students whose parents, like his, did not have much money. But he would abolish all preferences based on race and ethnicity.
    He noted the recent estimate by Harvard humanities professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. that two thirds of blacks at Harvard were not descendants of American slaves, but the middle class children of relatively recent immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa. "Why should they deserve admission with lowered standards (relatively speaking) based solely on the color of their skin over a high achieving Asian American living in a Chinatown ghetto or a Black ghetto (many Asians live in Black and Latino ghettos) or a poor white from the slums of NYC?" Chin said.
    The solution to the problem of lower average achievement among African Americans and Hispanics is not "the Band-Aid approach of race-based affirmative action," Chin said. "It is solved by improving the K-12 schools for the lower economic classes which are disproportionately Black and Latino."
    Chin always ends his e-mails to me with the words "comments please" or "any comments?" So I am obliged to respond.
    I had the good fortune to live and work in China for four years, and have spent half of my life studying Chinese culture. I think it is one of the greatest accomplishments of the human race, with its emphasis on learning, family, creativity and hard work. It is a thrill for me to see what people raised in that culture have achieved in this country, free of the fear and oppression that China is still struggling to rid itself of.
    I am convinced that one reason why Chin's well-reasoned complaints have not led to massive demonstrations and legislative reform is that the students of Asian descent who are rejected by the Ivies get educations just as good in other colleges. College admissions cannot be fair for anyone when, as happens at some schools, there are ten applicants for every place in the freshman class. The test score differences that Chin emphasizes are only one measure of quality, and although they predict college grades fairly well, they don't have that much to do with success in life.
    But there is one part of his argument, a reference to a sad era in American history, that is hard to ignore. Many selective colleges before World War II had quotas on Jews. They turned down many brilliant applicants in favor of non-Jewish prep school students with lesser records. They didn't call this striving for diversity, but it was a perverse form of affirmative action, and it left a bitter taste for decades.
    Chin calculates that with those quotas gone, about a third of Harvard undergraduates are Jews, who make up about 3 percent of the U.S. population. About 17 percent of Harvard undergraduates are Asians, who make up about 4 percent of the population. Since the percentage of Asian Americans at schools of comparable quality that do not practice affirmative action are much higher -- 40 percent at Berkeley, 50 percent at selective New York high schools such as Stuyvesant -- Chin says the Asian American percentage at Harvard and other Ivies would go up significantly if the rules were changed.
    I am not so sure. All of us, including admissions committee members, are human. We have plenty of other ill-considered biases that have not been rooted out and could affect these numbers.
    But however that works out, Chin feels it is only right and fair and better serves the cause of vibrant and interesting campuses if admissions officers stopped giving preferences based on race, and instead tried to admit more young people whose parents are not affluent and did not go to college, people less like me and more like Daniel C. Tsui.


8/30/02 American City Business Journals Inc
Guest Opinion
" University of California shuts out Asian achievers,"
By Lance T. Izumi
    Prior to Proposition 209, the University of California used race preferences to admit less academically qualified black and Hispanic students over more qualified Asians. Now, evidently uneasy that Asians make up nearly 40 percent of its undergraduates despite being only 11 percent of the state population, UC is again skirting 209 against high-achieving Asians.
    Numbers racket 
    Under the new criteria, last year UCLA admitted fewer Asians and whites, but 19 percent more blacks and 9 percent more Hispanics. Total systemwide black and Hispanic admissions are up significantly, exactly what UC wanted. The Wall Street Journal quoted former UCLA admissions director Rae Lee Siporin who says that the new system was crafted to make the student body reflective of the state's population. Further, Siporin baldly says that simply using poverty as the key criterion wouldn't work because it would "pull in" too many low-income Asians. 
    Also, according to the Journal, admissions to UCLA from heavily Hispanic schools, like South Gate High near Los Angeles , are way up while admissions from heavily Asian/white schools, like University High in Irvine , are down. One South Gate High Hispanic female student was accepted by UCLA with a 940 SAT score, 380 points below the average score for students admitted. An Asian student at University High with a 1410 SAT score was rejected by UCLA and says that she hurt her chances by not dwelling on her family's hardships because "I didn't want too much of a pity party." This Asian student's comment points to a culturally discriminatory aspect of UC's new admissions system. 
    Promoting cultural bias 
    Many Asian cultures value stoicism in the face of difficulties. The Japanese, for example, speak of "gaman," which roughly means to suck it up when things are tough. Whining is disfavored. Hard work and quiet determination are preferred. Liberals claim, with little evidence, that standardized tests are biased against blacks and Hispanics, yet cheer when UC adopts an admissions system that is culturally biased against Asians. 
    Even when high-achieving Asian applicants describe their hardships, many are rejected while lower-achieving black and Hispanic applicants with similar or lesser hardships are admitted. David Benjamin, who owns an SAT-preparation business, says ruefully, "It is simply shameful that it is worth less to be poor and Asian than to be poor and Hispanic." 
    The gross subjectivity of the new UC policy, the open comments by UC officials and lawmakers, the telling statistics, and the cultural bias of the process combine to equal discrimination. Granting preferences on the basis of race is illegal in California . Lawsuit, anyone? 
    Lance Izumi is a senior fellow at the San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute.

Summer 1999 ColorLines: On the Wrong Side: Chinese Americans Win Anti-Diversity Settlement-- and Lose in the End,
by Jeff Chang
    By all accounts, San Francisco s Lowell High School is one of the nations top public high schools. To many, especially Asian Americans, attending the highly competitive magnet school is a symbol of achievement and a source of pride. I thought my daughter could get a quality education and be challenged, says Jean Ishibashi, the parent of a Japanese-Chicana Lowell student.
    More important, Lowell - the states top feeder school into the University of California system - is seen as a door to that increasingly scarce resource: access to elite universities. The school has long been the site of bitterly contested battles over educational access.
    In February, a small group of Chinese Americans, supported by anti-affirmative action right-wingers, won a settlement in a lawsuit over Lowell s admissions policies, overturning three decades of integration efforts in San Francisco s schools.  As a result, 50 percent fewer blacks and Latinos will enter Lowell next year - including only a handful of black males in an entering freshman class of over 600.
    Asian American and other critics call the groups efforts narrow, selfish, and hypocritical and bound to inflame racial tensions. Chinese Americans are being used as a proxy of anti-affirmative action and anti-integration viewpoints, which ultimately increase discrimination against our community, says Diane Chin of Chinese for Affirmative Action. This case is a tremendous setback for coalition politics, says Henry Der, the California State Deputy Superintendent of Education Equity, Access, and Support.
    Chinese Americans Swing Right
    Lowell admits most of its students based on grades and test scores, but since a 1983 federal consent decree, Lowell has also had to ensure integration of its student body. The consent decree - the result of a lawsuit filed by the NAACP -allowed no single ethnic group to constitute more than 45 percent of the student body at neighborhood schools, and 40 percent at magnet schools, and required each San Francisco school to enroll students from at least four of nine defined ethnic/racial groups.
    The plan represented our best thinking at the time, says Albert Cheng, who oversaw integration efforts for the San Francisco Unified School District through the early 80s. We knew that if we did not desegregate Lowell High School , the school would have been dominantly Asian and white.
    But in 1992, some Chinese American parents began to argue that the consent decree discriminated against them because it capped Chinese enrollments, thereby forcing them to have higher grades and test scores than whites in order to be admitted to Lowell . Some began to discuss suing the school district. But Asian American civil rights organizations - who could see that Lowell was already over 50 percent ethnic Chinese and 70 percent Asian American - worried that it could be fodder for affirmative action opponents.
    Instead, the parents found a sympathetic hearing from Asian conservatives, especially the Chinese American Democratic Club, a group which, interestingly, also works to increase minority affirmative action in government contracts. The Asian American Legal Foundation was formed in part to support the parents lawsuit, which was filed in 1994. Ward Connerly trumpeted the plight of the Lowell plaintiffs as he stumped for anti-affirmative action Proposition 209 in 1996.
    In February, lawyers for the parents and the NAACP unveiled an eleventh-hour settlement which overturned the sixteen-year-old consent decree and ended San Francisco s use of racial considerations in student assignment. When the settlement was announced, Amy Chang of the Legal Foundation crowed, The era of racial bean-counting is over, Roland Quan of the Chinese American Democratic Club was even more triumphal. This is a solution, he said, with little apparent irony, for the 21st Century.
    From Anti-Asian Quotas to Anti-Affirmative Action Sentiments
    The settlement was also characterized as an end to racial quotas and a victory for Asian Americans. But the origin of the fight against anti-Asian quotas goes back to battles during the 1980s between liberal elite university leaders and Asian American progressives.
    By 1984, Asian American progressives noticed anti-Asian quotas at many elite universities, including those with strong pro-affirmative action leadership - such as Ira Michael Heymans Berkeley , Derek Boks Harvard, and Bill Bowens Princeton . After white alumni began to complain about increasingly diverse campuses, university leaders seemed to cap Asian admissions at no more than 20 percent of the student body.
    Led by Berkeley professor Ling-chi Wang, Asian American progressives pressured these universities to review their policies. Audits at Brown, Stanford, Harvard, and U.C. Berkeley later confirmed that campus officials made secretive decisions that negatively impacted Asians chances of being admitted. Asian admits were required to have higher test and grade scores than whites, giving whites a distinct advantage in a supposedly open competition for admission. (Not surprisingly, after the audits were made public, Asian admissions usually leaped.)
    But liberal pro-affirmative action officials would not acknowledge that they were trying to prop up white admissions. Instead, they characterized the admissions process as a battle between Asian Americans and other students of color. As then-Chancellor Ira Michael Heyman insisted, if Berkeley were to accommodate more Asian Americans, it would have to admit fewer African Americans and Latinos.
    Wang was chilled by this line. Berkeley officials, he realized, would sacrifice affirmative action before allowing white enrollments to drop further. Worse, these liberals were forcing Asian American parents to view affirmative action for blacks and Latinos as counter to their own interests.
    The most important thing we learned is that when we push Asian American issues we have to be conscious about the issues of other minorities as well. We tried hard to make sure that we were not in any way undermining the Universitys commitment to affirmative action, he says. But with the Lowell situation, the people who pushed for the lawsuit really did not have that kind of consciousness. They only see themselves as discriminated against.
    At the time of the 1983 consent decree, African American students were the largest ethnic group in the San Francisco school district, and the most racially isolated. Now Chinese Americans are the largest ethnic group, making up a quarter of the district - and over half of Lowell High. When you have a situation like that, you are bound to antagonize racially the whites and the blacks alike. They will say, Well, when is it enough for you guys? says Wang. What about the thousands of kids in the other fifteen high schools who are getting nothing?
    Funding Problems and Race Proxies
    Carol Kocivar, president of the San Francisco PTA, laments her citys education funding: We dont have the basic resources for kids in schools. You name it, we dont have it.  But because of the settlement, $37 million in federal desegregation funds -12 percent of the school districts budget - could disappear by 2003. Diane Chin, director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, argues: The end of the consent decree may make it easier for middle-class Chinese children to attend Lowell , but the rest of the school district will have far fewer resources to address the educational needs of low-income, disadvantaged children.
    The Lowell settlement comes at a time when racial resegregation in public schools is returning to pre-integration era levels. At 27 of San Francisco s 107 public schools, one ethnic group predominates, exceeding the consent decrees limit of 45 percent of the schools population. Most of these racially segregated schools are not desirable magnet schools, but underfunded schools in segregated neighborhoods. But because of the settlement, the district can no longer collect mandatory information about students racial backgrounds - data that is necessary to determine the extent of segregation.
    Many privately predict that Lowell may soon become almost all Chinese. Even Kocivar, who sits on the Lowell admissions board, is pessimistic. While Latinos make up 20 percent and African Americans make up 18 percent of the citys public school population, Kocivar notes that Lowells applicant pool last year was only 7 percent Latino, and less than 4 percent African American. She says, Unless we use indicia thats going to pick up more minority students, we will continue to grapple with lower numbers of underrepresented minorities at the school.
    San Francisco Unified School District is now proposing to substitute geographic and economic class considerations as proxies for race. The District is free to give any kind of preference it wants to poor students, or students who live in public housing or use Section 8. Under the new plan that the District is now developing, I believe these types of things will be much more important, says Michael Harris of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, one of the lawyers who helped negotiate the settlement.
    But when the University of California did the same thing, African American and Latino enrollments at the highly competitive Berkeley campus dropped by half. School officials confirm that a similar drop will occur at Lowell next year. You cant resolve racial discrimination without racial considerations, says Francis Calpotura, co-director of the Center for Third World Organizing.
    Settlement Doesnt Solve The Problem
    While the Lowell lawsuit has been settled, the underlying problems remain. None of the three plaintiffs ever proved that they were discriminated against. In fact, I dont believe that they had a case, says Henry Der. Only one of the student plaintiffs, Patrick Wong, was actually turned down by Lowell . Wong was admitted to Abraham Lincoln High School , and went on to excel at the University of California at Irvine . What is the harm that was done to Patrick Wong? asks Der.
    The greatest irony, Der believes, is that a Lowell education may actually reduce the chances of stellar students to move on to elite colleges. Although Lowell s student body is among the best in the state, research done by Rowena Robles, Kyung-Hwan Mo , and Mariam Araujo shows that at least 43 percent of Lowell s class of 2000 has a GPA of 3.0 or less. These students may not even attain minimum University of California standards of eligibility. The result is a school whose culture is defined by intense competition and high stress.
    Tram Vo-Kumamotos parents pushed her to attend Lowell . I was one of those students who excelled in middle school and did not excel at Lowell . I had college counselors that told me I couldnt go anywhere, she says. Vo-Kumamoto went to City College of San Francisco and then transferred to U.C. Berkeley. Parents say cheating, truancy, and depression are endemic problems at Lowell .
    Asian parents should not be concentrating their target at Lowell . The target is other schools, where the vast majority of Asians are, says Ling-chi Wang.  Der feels the Chinese American obsession with Lowell and the lawsuit and settlement that have been the result of it reflect badly on the entire Asian American community. To him, these sentiments are short-sighted and selfish.
    Some Chinese American parents have often behaved as if students of other racial backgrounds cannot or do not deserve to benefit from a Lowell education, says Der. He worries the plaintiffs success will fuel growing Chinese American intolerance against other minorities, especially blacks.
    What is really sad about just cramming a few more Chinese [into Lowell] - who may, in fact, not end up at Berkeley or Harvard or Stanford - is that all the low-income Asians will not have the benefit of consent decree support, says Der. The Chinese American Democratic Club does not care about those students. They only care about their own students and thats what this is all about.  

Archives:
Reverse Discrimination vol. 1
General Statistics on Reverse Discrimination

When Culture Affects How We Learn

Yale's Quotas Against Jews

Affirmative action has become a naked spoils system