https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...news&WT.nav=top-news

Harvard consistently rated Asian-American applicants lower than others on traits like “positive personality,” likability, courage, kindness and being “widely respected,” according to an analysis of more than 160,000 student records filed Friday by a group representing Asian-American students in a lawsuit against the university.

Asian-Americans scored higher than applicants of any other racial or ethnic group on admissions measures like test scores, grades and extracurricular activities, according to the analysis commissioned by a group that opposes all race-based admissions criteria. But the students’ personal ratings significantly dragged down their chances of being admitted, the analysis found.

The court documents, filed in federal court in Boston, also showed that Harvard conducted an internal investigation into its admissions policies in 2013 and found a bias against Asian-American applicants. But Harvard never made the findings public or acted on them.

Harvard, one of the most sought-after and selective universities in the country, admitted only 4.6 percent of its applicants this year. That has led to intense interest in the university’s closely guarded admissions process. Harvard had fought furiously over the last few months to keep secret the documents that were unsealed Friday.

The documents came out as part of a lawsuit charging Harvard with systematically discriminating against Asian-Americans, in violation of civil rights law. The suit says that Harvard imposes what is in effect a soft quota of “racial balancing.” This keeps the numbers of Asian-Americans artificially low, while advancing less qualified white, black and Hispanic applicants, the plaintiffs contend.

“It turns out that the suspicions of Asian-American alumni, students and applicants were right all along,” the group, Students for Fair Admissions, said in a court document laying out the analysis. “Harvard today engages in the same kind of discrimination and stereotyping that it used to justify quotas on Jewish applicants in the 1920s and 1930s.”

Harvard vigorously disagreed on Friday, saying that its own expert analysis showed no discrimination and that seeking diversity is a valuable part of student selection

The plaintiffs’ analysis was based on data extracted from the records of more than 160,000 applicants who applied for admission over six cycles from 2000 to 2015.

They compare Harvard’s treatment of Asian-Americans with its well-documented campaign to reduce the growing number of Jews being admitted to Harvard in the 1920s. Until then, applicants had been admitted on academic merit. To avoid adopting a blatant quota system, Harvard introduced subjective criteria like character, personality and promise. The plaintiffs call this the “original sin of holistic admissions.”

They argue that the same character-based system is being used now to hold the proportion of Asian-Americans at Harvard to roughly 20 percent year after year, except for minor increases, they say, spurred by litigation.

White applicants would be most hurt if Asian-American admissions rose, the plaintiffs said.

In its admissions process, Harvard scores applicants in five categories — “academic,” “extracurricular,” “athletic,” “personal” and “overall.” They are ranked from 1 to 6, with 1 being the best.

University officials did concede that its 2013 internal review found that if Harvard considered only academic achievement, the Asian-American share of the class would rise to 43 percent from the actual 19 percent. After accounting for Harvard’s preference for recruited athletes and legacy applicants, the proportion of whites went up, while the share of Asian-Americans fell to 31 percent. Accounting for extracurricular and personal ratings, the share of whites rose again, and Asian-Americans fell to 26 percent.

What brought the Asian-American number down to roughly 18 percent, or about the actual share, was accounting for a category called “demographic,” the study found. This pushed up African-American and Hispanic numbers, while reducing whites and Asian-Americans.

At the end of the admissions process, the class of applicants is fine-tuned through a so-called “lop list,” which includes race. Almost the entire page in which the plaintiffs describe that fine-tuning has been blacked out. Mr. Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, said Friday that it was “disreputable” of Harvard to complain that information was being taken out of context while at the same time insisting on significant redactions of the evidence.

In a heavily redacted section, the plaintiffs describe how Harvard and 15 other elite schools share notes about the race of admitted students at a meeting of the Association of Black Admissions and Financial Aid Officers of the Ivy League and Sister Schools every year. The court papers portray them as a sort of secret society of admissions officers exchanging information about race, a sensitive aspect of admissions.

Harvard’s class of 2021 is 14.6 percent African-American, 22.2 percent Asian-American, 11.6 percent Hispanic and 2.5 percent Native-American or Pacific Islander

Why any Asian-American supports the Dems and affirmative action, I have no idea. They have been royally screwed. But then so have the Blacks and Hispanics.

Harvard will probably regret their decision to fight this. Discovery was bound to be very problematic. I'm surprised they weren't smart enough to figure this out. Their Law School must suck.

No surprise, every parent of Asian & half-Asian kids I know of, has dealt with this kind of BS. Time for parents to get off the Ivy League or Bust mentality.

What a huge disappointment! One of the most if not the most prestigious academic institutions in the world can do this...really? So what to do...create Black colleges, Asian collages, Hispanic colleges, etc., that accept students based on ethnicity (color), and let them loose into society and see where they end up in the economic world, it may take a generation or so, but if Asians are pretty smart they'll do fine.

quote:

Originally posted by rpm2010:
What a huge disappointment! One of the most if not the most prestigious academic institutions in the world can do this...really? So what to do...create Black colleges, Asian collages, Hispanic colleges, etc., that accept students based on ethnicity (color), and let them loose into society and see where they end up in the economic world, it may take a generation or so, but if Asians are pretty smart they'll do fine.

There is some evidence to suggest that a significant part of the “education” one can get is not derived from knowing things that can’t be learned elsewhere but by meeting people who won’t be met elsewhere.

Uh...translate please Where I'm coming from ...I'm Asian and happy to have been born and raised in the US, to make a living here & to raise a family, son-freshman, straight A's, one could hope he continues on that path, and can apply at Harvard (hopefully on academic scholarship), so its deflating to think his application may fall into the abyss based on the discussion above. There's other colleges of course, so not the end of anything.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:

There is some evidence to suggest that a significant part of the “education” one can get is not derived from knowing things that can’t be learned elsewhere but by meeting people who won’t be met elsewhere.

Amen.



.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
There is some evidence to suggest that a significant part of the “education” one can get is not derived from knowing things that can’t be learned elsewhere but by meeting people who won’t be met elsewhere.

That is my understanding also.

When I was wobbling on whether to spend the money on sending my son to the "Harvard" of Animation Colleges, the message I was getting from folks in the industry was:

It isn't that going there will open doors, it is about him having access to doors that others don't even know exist

1) Asians wanting to get into Berkeley have known this all along. Asians were able to prove this mathematically because, you know... Asians are goo at math.

2) One of the greatest values you get from attending a school like Harvard besides the cachet of being a graduate of the school is the people you meet and the connections you make with them. There's a reason why industry captains and influential people come from Harvard and Yale and, it's not because they're that much smarter. It's the connections they gain.

I would posit that it’s less about the connections and more about the brand.

Yea, some connections to be had among the already elite. Those connections can be had regardless.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: konata88,

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
I would posit that it’s less about the connections answer more about the brand.

Yea, some connections to be had among the already elite. Those connections can be had regardless.

Agree 100%. Maybe 100 years ago going to Harvard provided the connections that your existing network wouldn't of, but today, those same connections can be had for much less than the cost of tuition at those types of schools.

A few years ago there was an article in the WSJ re a somewhat elite public high school in Silicon Valley where an unusually high portion of white students in that HS boundary went to private school rather than public school. The reason given was that the Asian parents pushed their teenagers to excel in school, which made it too much hard work for white (and rich) students.

Does this lawsuit stem from "old news" ? The bias against Asians, based purely on trying to balance racial quota numbers, has been known for a long time. My daughter (Asian) legally changed her name before applying to college, partially for that reason. And she has long since graduated into the working world.

Fortunately (or perhaps not) Asians don't sit around whining abour prejudice. They just work around it and find success anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by Crom:
Does this lawsuit stem from "old news" ? The bias against Asians, based purely on trying to balance racial quota numbers, has been known for a long time. My daughter (Asian) legally changed her name before applying to college, partially for that reason. And she has long since graduated into the working world.

Fortunately (or perhaps not) Asians don't sit around whining abour prejudice. They just work around it and find success anyway.

The point of it all is this university (and many others) finds it reasonable to diminish applicants from one racial group, because they're too successful academically, in order to bolster a separate racial group(s) who don't do as well academically. Academic affirmative action.

Now, Harvard being a private school can do as they please. The network connections are impressive and it does help when it comes to grad school acceptance however, if somebody is chasing the private school, elite academic dream, going to Stanfurd, USC, Vanderbilt, Duke, Notre Dame, Rice..will arguably yield a more rounded, more connected student. If it's just about academic achievement, there's always MIT, Cal Tech, Univ of Chicago

I told my son to check the black box. My two youngest know to check the white box.