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 



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. 

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 totall