Harvard Asian Admissions Controversy
Timeline
https://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-415-1-Arcidiacono-Expert-Report.pdf
Whites 44% higher than Asian, Blacks 3X White admit rates
• Race plays a significant role in admissions decisions. Consider the example of
an Asian-American applicant who is male, is not disadvantaged,3 and has
other characteristics that result in a 25% chance of admission. Simply
changing the race of this applicant to white—and leaving all his other
characteristics the same—would increase his chance of admission to 36%.
Changing his race to Hispanic (and leaving all other characteristics the same)
would increase his chance of admission to 77%. Changing his race to AfricanAmerican (again, leaving all other characteristics the same) would increase
his chance of admission to 95%
Black admissions rates consistent with a floor quota
For the three most recent admissions cycles, a period during which Harvard’s
Admissions Office has tracked admission rates by race using the federal
IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) methodology,
Harvard has maintained African-American admission rates at nearly exactly
the same level as the admission rates for all other domestic applicants
(within 0.00064). The probability that the difference in admission rates would
be smaller than 0.00064 in each of the three years is less
than 0.2% absent
direct manipulation, and is consistent with Harvard having a floor on the
African-American admit rate.
Asians are qualified enough to be 50% not 20% of students
Despite being more academically qualified than the other three major racial/ethnic
groups (whites, African Americans, and Hispanics), Asian-American applicants
have the lowest admissions rates. In fact, data produced by Harvard show that this
has been true for every admissions cycle for the classes of 2000 to 2019.
A closer examination of the six years for which Harvard produced applicant-level
admissions data shows that even removing those who receive some other form of
preferences (such as legacy, athletic, or early action) still results in Asian
Americans having the lowest admit rates over this period. For the Class of 2014
through the Class of 2019, Asian Americans made up roughly 22% of domestic
students admitted to the Harvard freshman class. If Harvard relied exclusively on
the academic index it assigns to each applicant in making domestic admissions
decisions, the Asian-American share of its domestic admitted freshman class over
those same six years would be over 50%.
In particular, the most competitive applicants receive a 1 or 2 (the best
scores) on the Academic Rating. In the baseline dataset, 58.6% of Asian-American
applicants receive a 1 or 2, compared to 44.7% of whites, 14.7% of Hispanics, and
7.3% of African Americans. Asian-American applicants likewise have very strong
Extracurricular Ratings, again ranking higher on average than any of the other
three groups. Asian-American applicants, however, do not score as well on the Personal Rating
and the Overall Rating
Race Blind Admissions Would Increase Asians by 50%
More stark are the effects of removing all racial preferences for under-represented minorities, penalties against Asian Americans, and legacy and athlete preferences. The number of Asian-American admits would increase by 1,241 over the six-year period, a 50% increase.6
April 2019
Quora
Yes. In just a few years Harvard has increased its admission of Asian Americans by nearly 50%. No similar pattern has been seen at other Ivy League schools. It is highly probable that this happened BECAUSE of the lawsuit.
Keep in mind that Harvard has no written policy in favor of excluding Asians (just as decades ago, they had no written policy of excluding Jews). Admissions decisions are broken up into many small parts:
How do I rate this candidate’s extracurriculars?
How do I rate this candidate’s personal reference letters?
How do I rate this candidate’s personal attributes?
How do I rate this candidate overall? (Etc.)
Bias in any one of those dimensions is too small to be easily detectable. (Holistic admissions was actually invented by Harvard in the 1920s with the intent of implementing A. Lawrence Lowell’s desired 15% quota on Jews without
admitting that Harvard had a quota on Jews.
Writing the Wrong: A. Lawrence Lowell | Arts | The Harvard Crimson)
Fortunately, it turns out that with a little math and a lot of data, you can still see bias fairly clearly:
https://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i...
So what happened?
It is possible that Harvard admissions officers realized that they were unfairly stereotyping Asian applicants, and started to do a better job of treating them fairly.
It is certain that Harvard admissions officers are concerned that any court order requiring them to admit people without regard to race will result in a cratering of admissions offered to underrepresented minorities. It is possible that they are increasing the admission of Asian applicants in the hope of forestalling such an outcome.
Harvard issued a series of written clarifying statements to their admissions officers explicitly telling them not to use race in their evaluation of candidates' personalities. Perhaps this is all it took.
But whatever the mechanism, it is not plausible that the sudden increase in Asian admissions after the lawsuit was filed was due to a sudden increase in the quality of Asian candidates applying to Harvard. Were this the case, we should expect to see 50% increases in the student populations of many other elite colleges over this period of time, and we do not.
Harvard had a 23% distribution of Asian-Americans in the class of 2022 that were admitted in March of 2018. Before that it was 20% and then 18% and 16 to 18% for a long time. When the percentage of Asian-Americans in the USA is less than 7%.
People are admitted on Their level of academic prowess, proven being a great Person, and demonstrating a great fit with the college’s undergraduate community.
All that means is that Asian-American students realized that Harvard wanted a Lot more than mere academic prowess and they adapted.
Read this article, the links and the report:
Stu Schmill endorses r...
(more)
Hmmm let’s see, as noted by others Harvard Asian-American admissions was pretty flat for a long time.
Then suddenly they shot up according to information reported in this thread:
March 2019 25%
March 2018 23%
March 2017 20%
March 2016 18%
¨On May 15, 2015, a coalition of more than 60 Asian-American organizations filed federal complaints with the
United States Department of Education and
Department of Justice against
Harvard University . . . (Wikipedia)¨
¨
Harvard University was sued in 2018 for allegedly downgrading
Asian Americans application scores to reduce amount of admission . . . (Wikipedia)¨
...
(more)
I'm curious what's considered an Asian American student at colleges?
There are lots of students who are half Asian with one white parent. Are they considered Asian American, white or all three?
There's a small but growing group with one Asian grandparent. How are they classified? Or is it based on last name of it's Asian along the patriarchy?
I guess the same applies to African American classifications.
Nope, it’s because one quarter of the admitted students at Harvard are Asian Americans. Which is the same thing as saying that three quarters of the admitted students are not Asian Americans.
Asian-American Harvard Admits Earned Highest Average SAT Score of Any Racial Group From 1995 to 2013
Over an 18-year period stretching from 1995 to 2013, Asian-American students admitted to Harvard scored higher on the SAT than did their peer admits from other racial groups, according to data released in the admissions trial.
BY SHERA S. AVI-YONAH AND MOLLY C. MCCAFFERTY, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
Crimson analysis of the previously confidential dataset — which spans admissions cycles starting with the Class of 2000 and ends with the cycle for the Class of 2017 — revealed that Asian-Americans admitted to Harvard earned an average SAT score of 767 across all sections. Every section of the SAT has a maximum score of 800.
By comparison, white admits earned an average score of 745 across all sections, Hispanic-American admits earned an average of 718, Native-American and Native-Hawaiian admits an average of 712, and African-American admits an average of 704.
The same general pattern held true for Harvard applicants belonging to these racial groups in this time period. Asian-American applicants on average scored highest on the SAT and African-American applicants scored lowest.
Over the period charted in the dataset, Asian-American applicants to Harvard earned an average SAT score of 726. White applicants earned an average score of 713, Native-American and Native-Hawaiian applicants an average score of 658, Hispanic-American applicants a score of 650, and African-American applicants a score of 622.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/10/19/acceptance-rates-by-race/
10/18/2018 Asian-American Harvard Applicants Saw Lowest Admit Rate of Any ... that Asian-American candidates on average saw an admission rate of 8.1 ...
Over a nearly two-decade period starting in 1995, Asian-American applicants to Harvard saw the lowest acceptance rate of any racial group that applied to the school, according to data presented in court Thursday as part of the Harvard admissions trial.
Data for that time period — which begins with the admissions cycle for applicants to Harvard’s Class of 2000 and ends with the cycle for the Class of 2017 — show that Asian-American candidates on average saw an admission rate of 8.1 percent. By comparison, white applicants saw an average acceptance rate of 11.1 percent in that time period, African-American applicants saw an average acceptance rate of 13.2 percent, and Hispanic-American applicants saw an average acceptance rate of 10.6 percent.
To be race-blind is to be simply blind - The Boston Globe
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/.../race-blind-simply-blind/.../story.html
Oct 12, 2018 - A ruling against Harvard would forever alter admissions, especially at elite colleges — for the worse.
There are more than 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States, and the vast majority are nonselective. Of the 1,254 schools ranked by US News and World Report in 2016, for instance, nearly 80 percent admitted more than half of the students who applied.
When the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, 14 percent of whites 25 to 29 years old had attained a bachelor’s degree. Only 6 percent of blacks were able to do so. By 2014, 41 percent of whites that age had a degree. Yet only 22 percent of blacks had one.
Of the 21 million students in the higher ed system,
58 percent are white, 17 percent are Hispanic, and 15 percent are black. [If Harvard matched pool of college students] But those raw numbers are also misleading. At the country’s top schools, black students make up only 4 percent of undergraduates. In the Ivy League, that number jumps to 9 percent.
what of the Asian students at Harvard? If race were totally removed from the admissions process, their share of the freshman class would rise modestly, from 24 percent to 27 percent, [1.12] according to court filings. White students, meanwhile, would see a bump three times as large — increasing their share of the class from 40 percent to 48 percent. [1.2] If the goal is to make Harvard white again, stripping race from admissions is the way to do it.
BlogviewRon Unz Archive
American Pravda: Racial Discrimination at Harvard
RON UNZ • OCTOBER 22, 2018 •
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to myself or other outside observers, Harvard itself launched an internal investigation of the anti-Asian bias that I had alleged. Apparently, the university’s own initial results generally confirmed my accusations, indicating that if students were admitted solely based upon objective academic merit, far more Asians would receive thick envelopes. But Harvard’s top administrators buried the study and did nothing, with these important facts only coming out years later during the discovery process of the current Asian Quotas lawsuit.
statewide lists of National Merit Semifinalists (NMS), a group that constituted the highest-performing one-half percent of American high school seniors. By a fortunate coincidence, this fraction of the American student body was reasonably close in size to the total enrollment of students at the Ivy League schools together with similarly elite schools such as Stanford, Caltech, and MIT. The NMS dataset had previously been almost entirely ignored by researchers, but I found it a treasure-trove of useful empirical information.
Since Asian last names are extremely distinctive, I was able to estimate that Asians nationally constituted roughly 25-30% of this top academic group, a figure considerably larger than their enrollment at Harvard and other elite schools. This conclusion was supported by the even greater Asian dominance in more highly selective academic competitions such as the Math Olympiad and the Intel Science Talent Search, though the far smaller numbers involved reduced the statistical validity of that analysis.
6/15/2018
Harvard reports revealed concern over Asian-American admissions rate
https://www.bostonglobe.com Harvard University's own internal research raised concerns about how Asian-American applicants are treated by the college's admissions ...
Harvard goes on attack to defend its admissions policies 6/13/2018 Boston Globe Harvard University is preparing for what is likely to be the fiercest attack yet on its use of race in student admissions and a court case that could fundamentally transform the legal landscape on affirmative action. In anticipation of court filings on Friday by a group representing Asian-Americans who contend that they were unfairly denied admissions to Harvard, outgoing university president Drew Faust went on the offensive. In a letter sent to the university community on Tuesday, Faust called the claims of discrimination by the group, Students for Fair Admissions, “inaccurate.”
6/13/2018
Harvard president issues defense of affirmative action as lawsuit ...
https://www.insidehighered.com/.../harvard-president-issues-defense-affirmative-actio...
Against that backdrop, Drew Faust, in her last month as Harvard's president, ... Those who oppose the consideration of race in admissions have ...
The plaintiffs have repeatedly cited the high SAT scores and grades of Asian-American applicants who are rejected to suggest that they must be victims of discrimination.
Those who oppose the consideration of race in admissions have
picked up this theme, noting that elite universities that do not consider race in admissions end up with larger Asian-American shares of their classes than do institutions such as Harvard, at which 22.7 percent of incoming students last year were Asian. (At the University of California, Berkeley, last fall, 39 percent of new students were Asian-American.)
In her message to the campus, Faust warned the following of the plaintiffs' arguments: "These claims will rely on misleading, selectively presented data taken out of context. Their intent is to question the integrity of the undergraduate admissions process and to advance a divisive agenda."
Faust pointed to
a Harvard website with more information about the university's defense of its practices. Harvard maintains that it considers race and ethnicity, among many other factors, in building a class, but that it does so without quotas.
The Harvard website suggests that the university's defense may be similar to that used by
Princeton University when it was investigated on similar charges -- and in 2015
cleared of discrimination -- by the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights.
Princeton never denied, nor has Harvard, denying admissions to numerous highly qualified Asian-American applicants with stellar credentials. Princeton's argument was that it rejects so many people of all ethnic backgrounds that there was no evidence of bias
admissions cycle (in which fewer than 2,000 applicants out of approximately 40,000 were admitted), over 8,000 domestic applicants had perfect GPAs, over 3,400 applicants had perfect SAT math scores [and] over 2,700 applicants had perfect SAT verbal scores," the university says.
Harvard's admission secrets for Asian-Americans like shielding 'recipe ...
www.scmp.com › News › World › United States & Canada
Apr 11, 2018 - Harvard says disclosure about its admissions practices would violate student privacy rights and amount to publishing confidential trade secrets ...
Marie Myung-Ok Lee: Asian-Americans rejected by Harvard need to resist the anti-affirmative action narrative Our community is being fed a story by a white man trying to preserve spaces at colleges for mediocre white students, not stellar Asian-American ones.
https://www.nbcnews.com Apr 8, 2018 - Image: Asian Students Turn To Advisers For College Help ... most commonly cited in service of the idea of "the Asian penalty" in admissions.
Apr 10, 2018
Race case against Harvard moves forward - CNNPolitics - CNN.com
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/10/politics/harvard-asian-american.../index.html
- A lawsuit against Harvard on behalf of Asian-American students moved a ... trial date andsuggested ground rules for admissions records to be ...
Marie Myung-Ok Lee: Asian-Americans rejected by Harvard need to ...
https://www.nbcnews.com/.../asian-americans-rejected-harvard-need-resist-anti-affirm...
Apr 8, 2018 - There is a story about race-based college admissions that holds particular sway overAsian-American students like I once was — my father ...
Apr 4, 2018
Asian-Americans Suing Harvard Say Admissions Files Show ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/harvard-asian-admission.html- A lawsuit against Harvard University says that it discriminates against Asian-American applicants. The plaintiffs are arguing for the release of ...
Suit accusing Harvard of capping Asian-American admissions could
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/10/politics/harvard-college-lawsuit-asian.../index.html
Mar 10, 2018 - Suit accusing Harvard of capping Asian-American admissions could be tried this summer. By Joan Biskupic, CNN Legal Analyst and Supreme ...
Harvard president issues defense of affirmative action as lawsuit proceeds
Inside Higher Ed
Harvard goes on the attack to defend its affirmative action policies
The Boston Globe
More for harvard university admissions asian
Asian-Americans Sue Harvard for Admissions-Based Discrimination
https://studybreaks.com/news-politics/asian-americans-harvard-discrimination/
Apr 6, 2018 - In 2014, a group of Asian Americans filed a lawsuit against Harvard, claiming theuniversity discriminated against their racial identities during ...
The Uncomfortable Truth About Affirmative Action and Asian-Americans
https://www.newyorker.com/.../the-uncomfortable-truth-about-affirmative-action-and-...
Aug 10, 2017 - ... in Massachusetts in 2014, a group representing Asian-Americans is claiming thatHarvard University's undergraduate-admissions practices ...
The Harvard Plan That Failed Asian Americans - Harvard Law Review
https://harvardlawreview.org/2017/12/the-harvard-plan-that-failed-asian-americans/
Dec 7, 2017 - While the number of Asian applicants has increased manifold in the last few ... where an internal committee found that “Asian American applicants have .... Instead, the Court has left thesequestions to university administrators on the .... and its own research “showed that more classes lackedAsian-American ... Their objection is to “negative action,” or unequal treatment in comparison to the white majority.
First, Asian Americans challenge the notion that they are overrepresented. The question of parity depends on the baseline for comparison: although Asians are overrepresented in relation to the general population, they tend to be the most underrepresented group when compared to the applicant pool. Studies show that Asians have the lowest acceptance rates of all racial groups
One study showed that in order to be admitted to certain selective institutions, Asian applicants needed to score — on the 1600 point scale of the “old SAT” — 140 points higher than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and 450 points higher than African Americans if other factors are held equal.
Stanford, the Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, after an exhaustive internal investigation, conceded negative action against Asian applicants. 20. Dana Y. Takagi, The Retreat from Race 39–40 (1992). Its 1986 report stated: “No factor we considered can explain completely the discrepancy in admission rates between Asian Americans and whites.” 21. Id.
Subconscious bias by admissions officers was likely the culprit, it concluded, but the Committee “elected not to investigate the bias because ‘the analysis required would be formidable.’” 22. Id. at 40. A similar episode took place at Brown, where an internal committee found that “Asian American applicants have been treated unfairly in the admissions process.” 23. Id. at 29. Like Stanford, Brown maintained that the unequal treatment was unintentional and due to cultural bias. Karabel, supra note 19, at 501. On the other hand, internal investigations at Cornell, Princeton, and Harvard did not find discrimination against Asian applicants.
1988, the U.S. Department of Education launched two high-profile civil rights investigations into Harvard and UCLA. After two years of review, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) cleared Harvard but found that UCLA had discriminated against Asian applicants. 25. Id. at 164. OCR determined that UCLA’s graduate math program had not complied with Title VI because it had rejected Asian students whose qualifications were comparable to admitted white students. Per the OCR order, UCLA made “belated admissions offers” to the rejected students. 26. Id. At Harvard too, OCR found that Asian students were admitted at significantly lower rates than similarly qualified white students. But Harvard’s preference for legacy applicants and recruited athletes explained the disparity.
