Archives
To see all posts by APSC, please visit the All Articles page.
Blog
- In the DP: Asian American admissions bias under investigation at Harvard, Princeton
-
By Kyle Hardgrave | February 12, 2012 at 8:52 pm | via the Daily Pennsylvanian
A recent investigation into alleged discrimination against Asian-American college applicants has prompted discussion about admissions policies at Penn and throughout the Ivy League.
Last week, the United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights began looking into whether Harvard and Princeton universities discriminate against Asian-American applicants in their admissions processes.
The investigation came in response to a complaint from an Asian-American student whose application was denied from both institutions. The student alleged that, in spite of high SAT scores and excellent grades, he was rejected because of his ethnicity.
Because of the nature of college admissions at elite institutions — being both highly subjective and competitive — it will be difficult for the OCR to “tease out” the question of outright discrimination, according to Penn Dean of Admissions Eric Furda.
Still, the case is raising questions both nationally and here at Penn about whether Asian-American students face higher standards in admissions, and what should be done about it.
At Penn and its peer schools, “we’re not discriminating against students or any class of students because of their background, whatever their background may be,” Furda said. “Extremely difficult decisions are made in what is a highly selective process.”
According to research conducted by Princeton professor Thomas Espenshade, however, admissions numbers bring to light several gaps between the bar of entry for Asian-American students and other applicants. In his book, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life, Espenshade found that the average SAT score of Asian-American students was about 140 points higher than for other applicants, or a 3.4-point boost on the ACT composite.
Experts stress, though, that there’s much more to an applicant than grades and scores.
“Test scores are obviously only one part of the admissions decision, and so by themselves don’t say anything,” said David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
Michele Hernandez, president of Hernandez College Consulting, noted that other factors can still explain the gap in test scores.
“I think colleges unintentionally discriminate against Asians, in that a lot of the things they look for — like deep passion, love of learning, real go-getters — sometimes go against the Asian stereotype,” she said.
Still, she said, there is little question that Asian-Americans face extra difficulty — a feeling echoed among some Penn students.
“I think there’s a sense that, ‘because I’m Asian-American, I have to set myself above all the other Asian Americans,’” said College junior and Chinese Students’ Association President Anthony Tran.
Tran acknowledged that there are other components to college admissions that aren’t purely meritocratic, but he said this can be frustrating for applicants.
“There’s a narrative that if you do really well in high school, you can go anywhere,” he said. “If that doesn’t happen, that image is shattered.”
“It’s fair to hope for a meritocracy,” added College senior Nicky Singh, the former chair of the Asian Pacific Student Coalition. “Race is not something you can control, and I can see where the frustration comes from.”
But Singh, like many Asian-American student leaders, was sympathetic to the challenges admissions officers face in creating a diverse student body.
“When they put together a class,” he said, “they’re attempting to put together a mosaic, and they need all the puzzle pieces to fit together.”
Tran pointed to examples like the University of California system, which wholly did away with race-based considerations in its college admissions process in 1996. Soon after that time, the U.C. system’s Asian-American population soared to an all-time high of 40 percent, much higher than the proportion of the state population.
According to College sophomore and APSC Vice Chair of Political Affairs Nishat Shahabuddin, one concrete step that College Hall could take to improve understanding of how Asian Americans are treated in the admissions process would be to release better disaggregated admissions data for minorities and minority subgroups.
Ultimately, while Shahabuddin said it is impossible to tell whether there is bias in the admissions process without detailed data, she noted that the attention drawn by the OCR investigation would be positive.
“While I don’t know for sure that [Asian Americans] are discriminated against, I do think that it’s really important to at least give attention to issues like these,” she said.
Posted at 11:00 pm • Add Comment
- 2/12/12 Board Meeting
-
Click here for full meeting minutes
APSC Board Meeting Agenda
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Updates
- Position Updates
- Constituent Group Updates
- 5B Updates
- Recap: JT Tran
Old Business
Old Business
- Administration speakers for GBMs
- Admissions
- APSC Budget
- APSC Dollars
- ARCH Renovations
- ASAM Partnership w/ Peer Institutions
- ASAM Wish List
- APA Blogger Event
- Blog
- Eddie Lee - White House contacts
- ICF Resource Guide
- Lunch with a Senior
- Newsletter
- PAACH Director Search (Alumni phone conference)
- Quaker Oats
- Ramey Ko Contacts
- Video
- AAA
- Awareness Campaign
- Social/Events Workshop
New Business
- GBM Planning
- University Council App
- Mtg w/ Chuck
Posted at 10:52 pm • Add Comment
- In the DP: Asian Playboy talks about his career as a professional Casanova
-
By George Rosa | February 10, 2012 at 1:20 am | via the Daily Pennsylvanian
The catalog of rakes, womanizers and pick-up artists typically unravels as such: Casanova, Don Juan, James Bond. Enter the “Asian Playboy,” JT Tran.
The Asian Pacific Student Coalition hosted Tran Thursday night in Huntsman Hall to address challenges and stereotypes facing Asian American men in the dating world.
College junior and APSC Communications Director Jessica Yan described the event as a forum for discussion of sensitive Asian cultural issues. She said she was “happy that people who often wouldn’t be interested in Asian issues came to the event, and got a deeper perspective on issues we face as Asian-Americans.”
The event filled a second-floor Huntsman classroom, drawing a crowd with equal numbers of males and females.
Shaohan Zhou, an international Drexel student from Beijing, had heard of the Asian Playboy in California and expected to hear advice “about how to meet people, how to be confident.”
Tran’s presentation launched into a host of cultural issues, drawing upon both statistical data and colorful anecdotes.
He touched on themes like the “bamboo ceiling” — the phenomenon describing corporate trends where Asians often have excellent representation in entry and middle-management jobs but not upper management.
In his more than two-hour talk, Tran also discussed experiences of both conscious racism and unconscious bias against Asians, cultural differences between Asians abroad and Asian-Americans, higher suicide rates among ethnic Asians in the military and statistics like how approximately 20 percent of Asian-American men never marry.
Tran described how he entered the relationship coaching industry. He graduated from the Florida Institute of Technology and became an aerospace engineer.
Dissatisfied with perpetual bachelorhood, Tran began adopting a scientific approach to increase his success in the social sphere. He started a blog geared towards dating from an Asian-American perspective.
Tran said his role as a dating guru “was forced upon” him, describing the fateful call he received one day from a Canadian woman who had discovered his blog.
She explained that Neo-Nazis had bullied her son for his entire high school career, stinting his social development. She had hoped to enlist Tran to increase the youth’s self-esteem and social adroitness.
The woman flew Tran northward, put him up in a hotel and paid him to serve as positive role model and “big brother” to her son.
Tran’s first client has now graduated college and is in a serious relationship.
There was some controversy surrounding the playboy’s appearance, however.
An anonymous poster on the Pan-Asian American Community House Tumblr page wrote, “the whole jt tran talk is disgusting. so disgusting. so disappointed in our student body.”
Another agreed, criticizing APSC for “spending their budget on bringing in controversial speakers for the sake of ‘generating interesting debate’ when they could be bringing in role models and community activists.”
Tran responded, “I believe I am a positive role model. My solutions are simple, effective and not necessarily politically correct.” These are issues that no one else addresses or has a solution to, he said.
This story has been updated to reflect that Jessica Yan is the APSC Vice Chair of Communications, not the APSC Communications Director.
Posted at 11:01 pm • Add Comment