Dailyprincetonian.com

Monday, November 13, 2006

ADMISSIONS

Rejected applicant alleges bias against Asians

By Kate Carroll

Princetonian Staff Writer

Yale freshman Jian Li has filed a federal civil rights complaint against Princeton for rejecting his application for admission, claiming the University discriminated against him because he is Asian.

The complaint, which was filed with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights on Oct. 25, alleges that the University's admissions procedures are biased because they advantage other minority groups, namely African-Americans and Hispanics, legacy applicants and athletes at the expense of Asian-American applicants.

"We've been notified of the complaint and asked to provide information to the Office of Civil Rights, and the University will provide the Office of Civil Rights with the information that it has requested," University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt '96 said yesterday. "But I will say that we do not believe that the case has merit."

The case, first reported this weekend by The Wall Street Journal, injects new life into a longstanding debate surrounding affirmative action and whether race can or should be a factor in college admissions. Li's minority status adds a new twist to the story, however, since previous complaints about universities' racial preference policies have been filed by white students alleging bias.

Li cites a recent study conducted by two Princeton professors as evidence for his case. The study, published in June 2005, concluded that removing consideration of race would have little effect on white students, but that Asian students would fill nearly four out of every five places in admitted classes that are currently taken by African-American or Hispanic students.

Current legal precedent on the question of racial preference grew out of two lawsuits filed in 2003 against the University of Michigan. In those cases, the Supreme Court ruled that colleges could use racial preferences benefiting underrepresented groups like African-Americans and Hispanics, but that quotas, points and other "mechanistic" policies are unconstitutional.

In Li's case, however, "you have a minority candidate, but a minority candidate from a category that is not regarded by the [court] as an underrepresented category," University politics professor and noted constitutional scholar Robert George said. "This is a minority candidate who is saying, 'I don't want my race to be counted for me or against me, but for my race not to be counted against me, it is important that no race be counted in any way that reduces my chances of admission.' "

"So you have two different categories of minority whose interests are allegedly in conflict."

The question now is whether a newly configured court — which now includes conservative justice Samuel Alito'72 — could reverse its earlier decision and deem all racial preferences in the college admissions process unconstitutional.

Li said in a phone interview yesterday that people have misconstrued his motives for filing the complaint. "I'm fine here," he said of being at Yale. "I'm just doing this because I want to do something about the situation. I want to bring attention to it."

Currently, Li said, colleges discriminate against Asian-Americans on the basis of their ethnicity or race. "I'm not saying that people with the highest SAT scores should be admitted to universities," he said. "Lots of things should be considered beyond that, but I don't think race should be one of them."

Li, who has a perfect 2400 SAT score and near-perfect SAT II scores, was rejected this past year from five of the nine universities he applied to — Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania — and accepted to four: CalTech, Rutgers, Cooper Union and Yale.

Princeton maintains that its admission policies do not discriminate against Asian-American or members of any other race. "We treat each application individually and we do not discriminate on the base of race or national origin," Cliatt said. "To the contrary, we seek to enroll and do enroll classes that are diverse by a multitude of measures."

With thousands of excellent applicants competing for a little over 1,000 spots, the process of selecting a freshman class involves difficult decisions, Cliatt said. Only about half of the applicants with perfect SAT scores, for instance, were admitted last year, she said.

A study published in October by the Center for Equal Opportunity, a group which advocates colorblind admission and says colleges are "legally vulnerable" to challenges from Asian students, found significant differences in the median SAT score of admitted students from various racial groups at the University of Michigan.

In 2005, the median SAT score for Asian students was 1400 points, out of a possible 1600 under the test's old scoring regimen. The score for white students was 50 points lower, while the scores for African-American and Hispanic students were 240 and 140 points lower, respectively.

The University of Michigan has publicly dismissed that study's methodology and dismissed any claim that it discriminates against minority students. It remains unclear whether there is a difference in the median SAT scores of various ethnic groups at Princeton.

George, a former presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, said that the complaint deserves attention because of the new questions it raises about racial preference in higher education.

He noted that the complaint comes at a time of change at the nation's highest court, with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's recent retirement and the appointment of the more conservative Alito. O'Connor's votes, siding with the liberal justices in one case, were crucial in maintaining the constitutionality of informal racial preference policies while rejecting formal systems.

One of the "things to keep your eye on," George said, is "how would the courts interpret the Michigan Law School decision, beginning with the lower courts, but then going all the way to the Supreme Court, where the complaining student is himself a member of a minority group, only an allegedly non-underrepresented minority group."

"Will the Supreme Court, with Justice O'Connor leaving and Justice Alito coming on, uphold or reaffirm the Michigan Law School decision or overturn it?" he asked, referring to the case in which the court upheld an informal racial preference system.

Reaction at Princeton

Princeton students from Li's high school, Livingston High School, in Livingston, N.J., argued that the complaint was unnecessary.

"I think it's absolutely ludicrous, considering that in the past few years the people that my high school has sent to Princeton are 50 percent Asian," Chen Zhang '08 said. "I think it's ridiculous."

Angela Wu '10, one of Li's high school classmates who read the Journal story over the weekend, agreed. "I think it's completely unwarranted," she said.

Li and Wu both emigrated from China to the United States when they were four and attended the same high school. While Wu was admitted to the University, however, Li was not.

"You could basically replace my name in the sentence, and I did come to Princeton," Wu said. "That's what really struck me when I read it."

Carra Glatt '09, who also attended high school with Li, said he contacted her over the summer as he was collecting GPA and SAT scores from fellow high school students. Li told her that he intended to use the information to show discrimination had taken place, but Glatt refused to provide the data.

"I felt like it just played into the idea that all that mattered in the process was SAT scores and GPAs, and I felt that that wasn't accurate in my case," Glatt said. "I didn't want to perpetuate that idea."

Glatt said that while she understands Li's concerns, she disagrees with his reasoning. "I think the approach he is taking to assume that he is entitled to admission to a particular school is inherently flawed. I don't think on an individual level he was discriminated against."

Lead-up to the complaint

Li's decision to file a complaint against Princeton instead of the five other universities that rejected him was "kind of arbitrary," he said.

"I think that this kind of discrimination pervades all elite universities so I just chose one as a test case thinking if something comes of it, it will send a message for all the universities," he said.

He also came closer to admittance to Princeton than some of the other universities he was rejected from. "Princeton was one of the ones who waitlisted me so I was pretty close — I was on the cusp. Even if race played a marginal effect in my decision it would have done something," he said.

Also influencing his decision was the 2004 Princeton study conducted by sociology professor Thomas Espenshade and statistical programmer and data archivist Chang Chung.

The article, published in the journal Social Science Quarterly and based on applications over three years to "three highly selective private research universities," concluded that Asian-Americans suffer the most from affirmative action.

Abolishing the system would decrease the percentage of admitted Hispanics and African-Americans, have relatively little effect on the percentage of white students admitted and would increase the number of Asian-American students admitted by a third, making it to 23 percent from 18 percent.

Espenshade was unavailable for an interview yesterday but said in an email that "academic merit is only one kind of merit that elite college admission officers consider when deciding whom to accept."

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is currently reviewing the information provided by Princeton. If the parties decide not to resolve their differences and the government finds that there is sufficient evidence that the law has been violated, "OCR will negotiate with the institution to reach a voluntary agreement that settles the complaint," according to the group's website.

If the office rules in Li's favor, he can request monetary damages, George said. "But I suspect that the more likely remedy in a case like this would be an injunction requiring the admission of the student who had successfully sued."

The University can also be required to revise its policy to prevent this type of discrimination, George added.

"Theoretically, affirmative action is supposed to take spots away from white applicants and redistribute them to underrepresented minorities," Li said. "What's happening is one segment of the minority population is losing places to another segment of minorities, namely Asians to underrepresented minorities.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6982737)

November 11, 2006

PAGE ONE

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

November 11, 2006; Page A1

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.

Write to Daniel Golden at dan.golden@wsj.com1

URL for this article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116321461412620634.html

Hyperlinks in this Article:

(1) mailto:dan.golden@wsj.com

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6983311)

Well you can see the response from fellow Asians who came from Livingston high school who are now enrolled at Prihceton.Presumably those 2 Chinese are mainlanders. Isn't livingston a 'burb northwest of West orange ? maybe there are other Asians who do not share this kind of garbage who go to school at Princeotn ( where ragnus and bostonian went and Tally ho too....) . You know this problem stretched way back in the 80's . I had said so many times that these Ivies are simply the lowest form of life on EArth. The Asian community should have nothing to do with it even by sharing a single cent with these schools. Is the Asian community really that blind to this abominable perversity of racism and discrimination ?. For 23 years these F______ING IVIES have been constanly denying they do not discriminate against Asians . The truth of that matter is that these dogs whether they be in the form of HARGADON OR sUMMERS OR WHATEVER SIMPLY DO NOT care!!!!!!!!!!!!!. tHEY ARE JUST PLAIN WHITE BREAD RACISTS LIKE THE kkk....THEY ARE WORSE THAN THE KKK. wE DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN to the nonsense of these apologists who spin constanly denying these schools do not discriminate. When will the Asian Community learn that the record of these Ivy schools toward asians had been an abomination ?. I know the Asians who post in xoxohth who graduated from Yale and Columbia.... These schools should been sued a long time ago. Sit -ins should have occurrd already at the offices of their lobbyists IN Washington and legislators who give tax money to these mother fucking IVY schools.... To hell with this Office of Civil Rights.... a whole bunch of lawyers working in that fucking office are Ivy grads ...Do you honestly expect them to deny money to these fucking Ivy schools?????????????????

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6987323)

Just listen to all the prestige whores on the xoxohth, especially the ones who are Asian, especially this Crazybug, the wannabe I-banker, who now uses the moniker "Robert Lowentstein".

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6987647)

The only response to this is to immediately demand that Congress deny tax money to any FUCKING PRIVATE SCHOOL that practices alumni legacy preferences

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6987347)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6987469)

November 14, 2006

Prize-Winning Red Sox Bid for a Big Off-Season

By BEN SHPIGEL

NAPLES, Fla., Nov. 13 — Wearing matching floral print shirts, the major league general managers spent a good chunk of Monday afternoon bowling at a nearby alley. At stake was only pride, not a greater prize, like the exclusive negotiating rights to Daisuke Matsuzaka, the star right-handed pitcher from Japan.

If only a 200 game would have been a sufficient price for General Manager Theo Epstein and the rest of the Red Sox organization. Boston submitted the highest bid, about $45 million, among the approximately eight suitors in the Great Matsuzaka Sweepstakes. The Red Sox will receive a 30-day window to negotiate a contract with a pitcher considered to be the best on the free-agent market.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6989257)

I agree biaknabato, even with the "foul" language.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6987598)

http://www.njmonthly.com/topschools/hslist2.lasso?-KeyValue=16

TOP Public High Schools IN NEW JERSEY

Livingston

Rank:

14

county:

Essex

district:

LIVINGSTON TWP

DFG:

I

Abbott:

Grade 9 Enrollment:

396

Grade 12 Enrollment:

360.5

Total Enrollment:

1564

3-year percent change in enrollment:

9.217877094972067%

Average class size:

23.3

Student faculty ratio:

10.6

Student computer ratio:

4.3

Percent faculty with masters or doctorate:

75.5%

Number of AP tests offered:

18

Percent of eligible juniors/seniors taking an AP test:

30%

Percent of AP test takers scoring 3+:

97.10144927536231%

Percent of students taking SAT:

99%

Average combined SAT score:

1185

2 year change in SAT score:

22

Percent of students achieving advanced

proficiency on HSPA (language/ math combined):

48.5%

Graduation rate:

99.4%

Percent of graduates going to 4 year colleges:

91%

Percent of graduates going to 2 year colleges:

5.5%

Percent of graduates going to

other post-secondary school:

.8%

Percent of graduates going into military:

0%

Percent of graduates going into workforce:

1.5%

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6987717)

shut up olive oyl. Fill yourself up with octane and go self-ignite.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6987911)

Not a fan of JGWAG, I take it?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6988214)

Hey OCtavia,

Open your mandibles or whatever orifice you've got, pitch it wide open by an octave, octavia. Then fill

it with octane and go self- ignite.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7000330)

then occlude your mandibles and go self -ignite

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7000963)

The OCR may also be biased based on political correctness (this may also be an understatement), and decide against Jian's allegation, that he was rejected because he was Asian.

If Jian Li is not made whole by the OCR, he can hire a lawyer, or get the attorney Roger Clegg, who worked for the passage of Prop 2/MCRI, to file a federal law suit in District Court, as Jennifer Gratz did. Clegg may take the case on a pro bono basis. This case has the potential to be much bigger. If not, another Asian American who was a victim of the de facto discriminatory quota in the Ivies/Elites can file a law suit. The Asian American quota/cap in the Ivies and the Elites is an open secret.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6989196)

Please read the WSJ article by Dan Golden.

Princeton receives monies from the Feds and these monies can be stopped by the Feds, if Princeton, or any other private Ivy/Elite for that matter, is found guilty of this charge.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6989224)

Princeton students from Li's high school, Livingston High School, in Livingston, N.J., argued that the complaint was unnecessary.

"I think it's absolutely ludicrous, considering that in the past few years the people that my high school has sent to Princeton are 50 percent Asian," Chen Zhang '08 said. "I think it's ridiculous."

nice work, DETECTIVE ED MING CHIN, FAILED M.D.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6989514)

"I think it's absolutely ludicrous, considering that in the past few years the people that my high school has sent to Princeton are 50 percent Asian," Chen Zhang '08 said. "I think it's ridiculous."

=================================================

If this is really the case at Livingston HS, there is is no argument against Jian Li's complaint.

This supports and bolsters Jian Li's complaint against Princeton EVEN MORE SO.

And because of the de facto Asian quota, limiting and capping Asians, he was rejected. If this is indeed the case, he will win his case, based on his charge and complaint to the OCR that he was rejected because of his Asian race.

The complaint is necessary and Princeton will have to open its admissions files for EVERY application Princeton received when Jian Li applied. This is something that Princeton doe not want to do and has not done before.

This is a GOOD thing, even if the politically correct OCR decides against Jian's complaint. I would not be surprised if it did.

If this case proceeds, the private Ivies/Elites will be shaking in their boots for fear of being having to reveal their own admission files and the standards and criteria they used for each admission decision.

It really does not matter what the OCR says. Jian can file a federal law suit in Disrict Court. Jian did not want go Princeton, but he wanted to expose the quotas and racial bias against Asians that these schools use in admissions.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6989708)

Anotehr article about the li case just came out of inside higher education today.....

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6989760)

The link and article are posted. Commentaries are also posted.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6990448)

Nov. 14

New Challenge to Affirmative Action

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 year’s 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 Department’s 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 Li’s 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 university’s 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 doesn’t list as optional other questions that Li answered: his name, his mother’s and father’s 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 doesn’t 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 doesn’t 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 can’t say someone was or wasn’t 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 hasn’t 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 Michigan’s 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 aren’t impressed with Li’s 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.”

— Scott Jaschik

The original story and user comments can be viewed online at http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/14/princeton.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6989874)

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 hasn’t 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.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6989939)

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/14/princeton

Nov. 14

New Challenge to Affirmative Action

Comment posted from link:

Whatever the outcome Jian Li is to be commended. We know from the California experience with Prop 209 that Asians are being disproprtionately harmed by legally-sanctioned discrimination under the guise of affirmative action. The rejoinder that ‘it just hurts Asians in general not any specific Asian’ is a ludicrous copout. The policy of affirmative action must end before it exacerbates the divisions between racial winners and losers even more than it has to date.

Thanks, at 8:31 am EST on November 14, 2006

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6990004)

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/14/princeton

“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.”

Without an explicit (and completely transparent) formula to determine admission, Princeton and other institutions of higher education set themselves up for continuing legal challenges.

========================================

It’s about transparency

Point of this lawsuit is that Mr. Li may well be able to make a prima facie case that Asians are being discriminated against as a class in applications to private colleges. If that is so, then the burden may shift to Princeton to first, make clear the types of yardsticks it is using in admissions and, second (unlikely) to provide a compelling case for those criteria. It might be interesting to see Princeton admit that they give preferences to legacies, prof’s brats, development admits, Title IX minor sports kids, and sons and daughters of celebrities in addition to minority non-Asian applicants.

Patrick Mattimore, teacher, at 11:00 am EST on November 14, 2006

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6990035)

Postings from this site:

UPDATE [14 November]

Anonymous, in the comment below, is right; the article in the Daily Princetonian is thorough, and definitely worth reading. I believe, however, that it exaggerates the novelty of a minority person challenging a system of preferences designed to help some minorities.

“Li's minority status adds a new twist to the story,” the article asserts, “since previous complaints about universities' racial preference policies have been filed by white students alleging bias.”

In Li’s case, however, “you have a minority candidate, but a minority candidate from a category that is not regarded by the [court] as an underrepresented category,” University politics professor and noted constitutional scholar Robert George said. “This is a minority candidate who is saying, ‘I don’t want my race to be counted for me or against me, but for my race not to be counted against me, it is important that no race be counted in any way that reduces my chances of admission.’”

“So you have two different categories of minority whose interests are allegedly in conflict.”

Professor George is correct (he usually is), but the Daily Princetonian is wrong to argue that it is “a new twist” for a minority to challenge racial and ethnic preferences. For example, as I mentioned a number of times (such as here), the student, Daniel Podberesky, who complained, successfully, about a scholarship at the University of Maryland that was available only to blacks is Hispanic.

In addition, consider Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District, a case brought by the Asian American Legal Foundation on behalf of Chinese students in San Francisco who complained that city’s racial school assignment policy. Here is a brief summary from a law review note:

In San Francisco Unified School District, the voluntary integration policy divided students into thirteen racial/ethnic categories: “American; American Indian; Chinese; Filipino; Hispanic/Latino; Japanese; Korean; White; Arabic; Samoan; Southeast Asian ; Middle Easterner; and Other Non-White.” The policy mandated that “[n]o school shall have fewer than four racial/ethnic groups represented in its student body [and] [n]o racial/ethnic group shall constitute more than 45% of the student enrollment at any regular school, nor more than 40% at any alternative school.” Chinese Americans had become the largest identifiable ethnic group in San Francisco, and they were disproportionately burdened under the policy. In some heavily Chinese neighborhoods, young children were forced to attend schools far from their homes to satisfy the 45% requirement. The greatest controversy erupted at one of the district’s “alternative” high schools. Lowell High School, one of the best high schools in the country, admitted students through a competitive magnet admissions policy. Under the 40% cap, this policy became a quota for students of Chinese descent. This led the Ho plaintiffs, Chinese-American students that were turned away from their schools of choice, to challenge the policy. The litigation spanned five years until, on interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit, the court placed the burden on the school district to prove a remedial interest. With the courts unwilling to recognize diversity as a compelling interest, the school district settled on the first day of trial, eliminating the use of race in student placement.

The Princeton study cited in the article apparently found that eliminating preferences would have little effect on whites but would significantly reduce the number of blacks and increase the number of Asians. This may well be true, but it is worth noting, as I did here, that that was not the case in the University of California system when preferences were eliminated. There, the proportion of Asians admitted rose significantly, but the proportion of whites fell significantly. The proportion of blacks also fell, but not by as much as is generally thought. As I wrote in the post just linked:

For a graphic depiction of the freshman enrollment by race in the University of California and the California State University systems from 1997 (the last year before Prop. 209 took effect) through 2005, take a look at the graphs here.

As you will see, the racial group most affected by the ending of race preferences in [the University of California system] is whites: their proportion of entering freshmen fell from 40% in 1997 to 34% in 2005. Two minority groups saw their proportion of entering freshmen increase: Asians, whose proportion rose from 37% in 1997 to 41% in 2005; and Latinos, who rose from 13% to 16%. The proportion of blacks fell from 4% in 1997 to 3% in 2005.

The experience at the University of Texas during the several years it was barred from using racial preferences was similar to the experience in California, as reported in this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2003:

In 1997, the year after a federal appeals court precluded the University of Texas at Austin from using race-conscious admissions, the university accepted 81 percent of its Asian applicants, up from 68 percent the year before. Supporters of affirmative action challenge such figures, and contend that Asian enrollments have risen little at selective public colleges in other states, such as California, which no longer considers race and ethnicity in admissions.

As we have seen, the argument of “supporters of affirmative action” noted above is incorrect.

UPDATE II

InsideHigherEd also has a long discussion of this case. The tone of the article, and the substance of a number of comments there so far, following this rather snide observation in the lede:

Jian Li, who despite his top grades and perfect SAT scores was one of this year’s 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.

Posted by John Rosenberg on November 12, 2006 1:02 PM

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6990203)

Use this above link to view the internet edition of the ABC News Nightline Program, “College For Sale”

Mr. Bashir interviews Jian Li, a Yale student, about racism and stereotyping against Asians by elite colleges in the admissions process. Dan Golden of the WSJ is also interviewed on the program.

Jian filed a complaint against Princeton with the OCR for discrimination in his rejection based on his Asian race,

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6991521)

ABC News

The Privilege of Education

Harvard. Yale. Princeton. How Much Does a Name-Brand Education Amount To?

By MARTIN BASHIR

Nov. 2, 2006 — - Jian Li was the perfect student. Incredibly, he got a perfect score on his SATs.

He should also be a perfect example of how second-generation immigrants can transform their lives when they work hard in the land of meritocracy and opportunity.

But he doesn't see it that way.

Watch a special two-hour edition of "20/20" Tonight at 9 p.m. ET

"I was completely naive," said Li, now age 19.

He applied to Harvard, Princeton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford, among other places and didn't get into any of those colleges.

Yet, he soon became aware that other high school students with lower SAT scores had sailed past him.

"There are lots of preferences given to academically unqualified individuals." he said. "For example, George Bush. I doubt he had the academic qualifications that would have gotten him into an elite university [Yale], but because of who his father was, he had the advantage over other applicants with better academic records."

A Tricky Process: Children of Prominent Alumni Versus Hardworking Students Versus 'Development Admits'

So why was Li shut out from some of the most prestigious colleges in the country?

For eight years, Keith Brodie was the president of Duke University in North Carolina and ultimately, in charge of admissions.

He still teaches part time, within the university's department of psychiatry. According to Brodie, sifting through applicants is an arduous process.

"You look at the last several years, they've seen over 15,000 applications a year [at Duke]," he said.

"You end up discarding about 5,000 as coming from folk you just wouldn't think could graduate. But that leaves you with 10,000 people, and you end up offering about 3,000, of those 10,000, admission. And so the question is how do you pick those 3,000 from that 10,000? And that's where it gets tricky," he said.

Tricky is one way of describing Duke's admissions, but Brodie also says it involves a carefully defined process. Applications are divided into three basic categories.

There's the ordinary hardworking 18-year-old who hopes that exceptional SAT scores will get them in -- students like Li.

Then there's the legacy applicant, whose parents are prominent alumni. One example would be Al Gore's four children -- all of whom went to Harvard, following in the former vice president's footsteps. Or Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist, whose son, Harrison, followed him to Princeton.

And finally there is the "development admit," a student recommended by the college's financial development office.

Brodie has no bones about explaining what a "development admit" is.

"A 'development admit' would come in perhaps with very low numbers but with high potential for donating money to the university through the family," Brodie said.

Schools as Businesses

Because all of these elite universities are also private businesses, there is a strong push to admit at least some students who will bring additional funds with them in the form of hefty donations.

Duke University's development department has found ever more creative ways of raising capital. Brodie recalls the genius of Joel Fleishman, former Duke vice chancellor.

"He was a consummate artist in basically bringing wealthy applicants to Duke," he said. "He had a Christmas card list that was a mile long. He gave very nice gifts to the families of some of these kids. Many of these families appreciated good wine. And so they would receive fairly expensive bottles of wine from him, and that endeared Duke and Joel to these families."

This way of cultivating development contributions was particularly effective. Author Daniel Golden, who went to Harvard and wrote "The Price of Admission," provided illuminating details with the story of fashion billionaire Ralph Lauren.

According to Golden, Dylan and David Lauren were good students but not outstanding. After the Lauren family reportedly sought consideration as a "development family," he said the Lauren offspring were admitted to Duke and that Fleishman wined and dined the Laurens at Parents' Weekend and other social events.

Golden said the fashion guru eventually pledged a six-figure sum to Duke.

The Power of Influence

According to Brodie, he cut down the number of development admits during his tenure, but it was difficult to stem the tide. He estimates that about 50 percent of Duke's student body is admitted on academic performance alone.

But affluence isn't the only advantage that will help win a place at an elite university.

Influence is also a powerful asset. Author Daniel Golden, who went to Harvard and is the author of "The Price of Admission," details the story of Christopher Ovitz, son of former Hollywood agent and president of Walt Disney, Michael Ovitz.

According to Golden, Christopher Ovitz applied to Brown University, but "was not even in the range of the normal stretch that Brown would make for children of the wealthy and powerful."

But he was granted a place at Brown. Although Christopher Ovitz lasted only a year, according to Golden, Brown has reaped the ongoing rewards from Ovitz and his extensive Hollywood contacts.

"He brought a number of his key clients. A-list people like Martin Scorsese for well-publicized events that gave the campus, you know, a lot of panache," Golden said.

In his book, Golden details strategies utilized by other universities to provide places for the children of privilege.

His analysis asks: Are Ivy League colleges putting places up for sale?

According to Brodie, there's little doubt.

"I believe that is the case that there are few slots in every entering class that are basically for sale," he said.

And as for Li, he was eventually accepted at Yale University, without a donation from his parents or a visit from a celebrity.

He's likely to graduate with honors.

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6995846)

WHO WILL STOP THE RUTGERS JUGGERNAUT?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6991692)

I know many Asian students just as stellar as Jian at Rutgers, a fine school, but Rutgers is only ranked #6 in the BCS (Bowel Selection Committee for football).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6991999)

I agree with you, Hero, about highly-qualified Asians winding up at less selective schools--like Rutgers, for instance--because of race quotas at the Ivies/elites that adversely affect them the most.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6992051)

Also, he chose Yale over Caltech, maybe because he was a well rounded student with interests in the liberal arts, and humanities, as well as the math and sciences. He was rejected by MIT. He certainly had the apptitude for the liberal arts.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6992061)

Jian Li is a very courageous Asian American (Chinese American with ESL and immigrant parents) student filing his complaint, just to open the admissions files of Princeton in its admissions process with its use of preferences, especially the race preference resulting in a de facto anti-Asian quota and racial discrimination against Asians, which is an open secret at the private Ivies/Elites. This is illegal according to Artcle VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the courts can deny the hundreds of millions of dollars that these schools receive from the feds each year. They can do this if the OCR decides in Jian's favor. The courts only need one case of this to take action.

Jian must brace for the personal attacks on him, mostly from pundits and racists coming out of the woodwork, because of his noble action, which was not for a Princeton acceptance letter. He wants it to eliminate the alleged discrimination against future Asian American applicants.

Just read some of the racist comments on the xoxohth, and you can understand what Jian Li is in for from the bigots coming out of the woodwork. Also read the comments from the Asian prestige whores on the xoxohth who are already in elite schools. However, many of the posters on the xoxohth are only wannabe elite school students and they are just ignorant of the discrimination against Asian American applicants to the Ivies/Elites.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6992173)

November 14, 2006, 7:00 a.m.

The Big Lie of Diversity

Elite audacity and the MCRI.

By Peter Kirsanow

Quote

These aren’t the only questions about affirmative action that academic elites strenuously avoid. They also fail to tell Asian students that many, if not most, admissions offices discriminate against Asian applicants in a manner resembling the Jewish quotas of the 1950s. How many Asian students know that their odds of being admitted at selective schools are 200 times worse than those of a similarly qualified black or Hispanic applicant?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6992295)

No admission spurs probe

Princeton accused of Asian-American bias

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

BY ROBERT STERN

PRINCETON BOROUGH -- When Jian Li applied to start his freshman year at Princeton University this fall, he secretly hoped for the one thing most college applicants dread: rejection.

Princeton fulfilled his secret wish, he said.

By doing so, the university unwittingly played into Li's plan to spotlight alleged bias against Asian-American students in the admissions offices of prestigious schools like Princeton.

And now Princeton finds itself under a federal civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which opened a case against Princeton in response to a complaint Li filed over the summer calling for the federal probe of his admission denial.

"I was actually hoping to be rejected by Princeton University so I could file a civil rights suit," Li said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Li was speaking from Yale University, where the 17-year-old Chinese immigrant who aced his SATs is a freshman considering a major in psychology.

Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said the university views the case as unfounded but will cooperate with the federal investigation.

Li and his family moved to the United States when he was 4 years old and attended public schools in New York City, Long Island and eventually in Livingston, Essex County, where he graduated from Livingston High School earlier this year.

Li, who said he is a permanent U.S. resident but not a U.S. citizen, said his dispute with Princeton isn't about his own situation but rather about the broader issue of Asian-American students allegedly getting shortchanged in the admissions stakes of Princeton and other elite schools.

"I don't really seek to gain anything personal from it," said Li, adding that he doesn't even have an attorney, although he is seeking legal counsel.

"I just want to draw attention to this issue (of admissions discrimination against Asian-Americans by top colleges) that's really been left unaddressed in our country," where he said race issues tend to be viewed in terms of black and white.

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 (which benefit children of alumni) and athlete preferences," according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the federal investigation Saturday.

But Princeton officials aren't scrambling to change their admissions practices just yet.

"We do not believe the case has merit," Cliatt said. "The university treats each application individually and we do not discriminate on the basis of race or national origin."

"To the contrary, we seek to enroll and we do enroll classes that are diverse by a multitude of measures" that include a wide range of factors, from race to socio-economic and religious background to talent and sexual orientation, she said.

Li said he doesn't want to leave Yale for Princeton, which rejected him despite his perfect combined score of 2,400 on the SATs.

Cliatt said Princeton rejected about half of the applicants who had perfect SAT scores for the current freshman class. "I can say with absolute certainty that that half that were not admitted constituted a diverse group of students."

At first, the DOE's Office for Civil Rights rejected his overture to make his case the basis for an investigation of Princeton, he said.

His request for an investigation was denied initially because of "insufficient" evidence pertaining to his specific situation.

The Office for Civil Rights informed Li that his reliance on statistical information about SAT scores and the racial composition of students enrolled at Princeton wasn't adequate to justify an investigation.

What his complaint lacked at first was any information about specific non-Asian-American applicants admitted to Princeton's current freshman class with lower SAT scores than Li.

Li managed to get his hands on one such example -- information from a white, American-born applicant he knows whom Princeton admitted despite having "marginally" lower SAT scores than his -- and reluctantly passed that information to the Office for Civil Rights, a move that prompted the case to be opened for investigation in late October.

"I was reluctant to make this argument that I was somehow more qualified than this person but the department required me to give a concrete example," Li said. "Furthermore, I don't believe I was more qualified."

"This merely serves as kind of a tool, a means by which the case could start," he said. "It's not the basis of my actual opinion."

Although Li said he set out on his own to play a role in the effort to level the playing field for Asian- American students in the college admissions process, he drew his inspiration from a Web site, www.asianam.org, that highlights these and other issues important to the Asian-American community.

In part, the Web site calls on Asian-American students rejected by the nation's top schools to file civil rights complaints in the hope of helping end admissions practices that favor other applicants to the detriment of equally or better qualified Asian-American students.

Neither Cliatt nor a DOE spokesman late yesterday could immediately provide an estimate of the number of civil rights complaints or investigations against Princeton University in recent years.

At Princeton, minorities make up 37 percent of the current freshman class of 1,231 students, including almost 14 percent who are Asian-American, excluding non- U.S. residents or citizens, according to the university. Five years ago, Princeton's freshman class consisted of 12.5 percent Asian-American students.

Contact Robert Stern at rstern@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5731.

© 2006 The Times of Trenton

© 2006 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6993276)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6995851)

He can certainly write an essay with the best of them.

To bad the was not Mexican, Latino, or Black with the same credentials and admissions file at Princeton, if there are any Mexican, Latino, or Black applicants, with his accomplishments at all. If there were, these other applicants would have been flown into Princeton by jet, placed in a first class hotel along with their parents, and the adcom would be on their knees, begging him to enroll, while the adcom is genuflexing in unison. Harvard, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford would also do this if Jian Li were Mexican, Latino, or Black. They all rejected Jian Li. Too bad he was not Mexican, Latino, Black . His chances for admission would have been assured and he would have been an AUTOADMIT! Too bad he was not white, because his chances would been significantly improved.

Jian Li CAN WRITE AN ESSAY AND INTERVIEW WELL.

See his interview by Martin Bashir of AASC News here.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2625731

Use this above link to view the internet edition of the ABC News Nightline Program, “College For Sale”

Mr. Bashir interviews Jian Li, a Yale student, about racism and stereotyping against Asians by elite colleges in the admissions process. Dan Golden of the WSJ is also interviewed on the program.

Jian filed a complaint against Princeton with the OCR for discrimination in his rejection based on his Asian race,

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6995852)

Per the Yale daily news article. Predictably, the views expressed by the Princeton and Yale Asian student organizations are simply disgusting . sick and stupid. Sounds to me like the views of Asian student organizations here at UCLA and Berkeley who refuse to cast a condeming eye on race preferences. Tells you something about the hypocrrisy, greed and self interest of these Asian students in the Ivies. Why are they worried about the exchange value of their diploma sheepskin when they go out there in the working world ?.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6995947)

Just listen to the Asian hypocrites at the elite schools here on the xoxohth.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6995971)

http://www.discriminations.us/2006/11/preferences_as_a_zerosum_game.html

UPDATE [14 November]

Anonymous, in the comment below, is right; the article in the Daily Princetonian is thorough, and definitely worth reading. I believe, however, that it exaggerates the novelty of a minority person challenging a system of preferences designed to help some minorities.

“Li's minority status adds a new twist to the story,” the article asserts, “since previous complaints about universities' racial preference policies have been filed by white students alleging bias.”

In Li’s case, however, “you have a minority candidate, but a minority candidate from a category that is not regarded by the [court] as an underrepresented category,” University politics professor and noted constitutional scholar Robert George said. “This is a minority candidate who is saying, ‘I don’t want my race to be counted for me or against me, but for my race not to be counted against me, it is important that no race be counted in any way that reduces my chances of admission.’”

“So you have two different categories of minority whose interests are allegedly in conflict.”

Professor George is correct (he usually is), but the Daily Princetonian is wrong to argue that it is “a new twist” for a minority to challenge racial and ethnic preferences. For example, as I mentioned a number of times (such as here), the student, Daniel Podberesky, who complained, successfully, about a scholarship at the University of Maryland that was available only to blacks is Hispanic.

In addition, consider Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District, a case brought by the Asian American Legal Foundation on behalf of Chinese students in San Francisco who complained that city’s racial school assignment policy. Here is a brief summary from a law review note:

In San Francisco Unified School District, the voluntary integration policy divided students into thirteen racial/ethnic categories: “American; American Indian; Chinese; Filipino; Hispanic/Latino; Japanese; Korean; White; Arabic; Samoan; Southeast Asian ; Middle Easterner; and Other Non-White.” The policy mandated that “[n]o school shall have fewer than four racial/ethnic groups represented in its student body [and] [n]o racial/ethnic group shall constitute more than 45% of the student enrollment at any regular school, nor more than 40% at any alternative school.” Chinese Americans had become the largest identifiable ethnic group in San Francisco, and they were disproportionately burdened under the policy. In some heavily Chinese neighborhoods, young children were forced to attend schools far from their homes to satisfy the 45% requirement. The greatest controversy erupted at one of the district’s “alternative” high schools. Lowell High School, one of the best high schools in the country, admitted students through a competitive magnet admissions policy. Under the 40% cap, this policy became a quota for students of Chinese descent. This led the Ho plaintiffs, Chinese-American students that were turned away from their schools of choice, to challenge the policy. The litigation spanned five years until, on interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit, the court placed the burden on the school district to prove a remedial interest. With the courts unwilling to recognize diversity as a compelling interest, the school district settled on the first day of trial, eliminating the use of race in student placement.

The Princeton study cited in the article apparently found that eliminating preferences would have little effect on whites but would significantly reduce the number of blacks and increase the number of Asians. This may well be true, but it is worth noting, as I did here, that that was not the case in the University of California system when preferences were eliminated. There, the proportion of Asians admitted rose significantly, but the proportion of whites fell significantly. The proportion of blacks also fell, but not by as much as is generally thought. As I wrote in the post just linked:

For a graphic depiction of the freshman enrollment by race in the University of California and the California State University systems from 1997 (the last year before Prop. 209 took effect) through 2005, take a look at the graphs here.

As you will see, the racial group most affected by the ending of race preferences in [the University of California system] is whites: their proportion of entering freshmen fell from 40% in 1997 to 34% in 2005. Two minority groups saw their proportion of entering freshmen increase: Asians, whose proportion rose from 37% in 1997 to 41% in 2005; and Latinos, who rose from 13% to 16%. The proportion of blacks fell from 4% in 1997 to 3% in 2005.

The experience at the University of Texas during the several years it was barred from using racial preferences was similar to the experience in California, as reported in this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2003:

In 1997, the year after a federal appeals court precluded the University of Texas at Austin from using race-conscious admissions, the university accepted 81 percent of its Asian applicants, up from 68 percent the year before. Supporters of affirmative action challenge such figures, and contend that Asian enrollments have risen little at selective public colleges in other states, such as California, which no longer considers race and ethnicity in admissions.

As we have seen, the argument of “supporters of affirmative action” noted above is incorrect.

UPDATE II

InsideHigherEd also has a long discussion of this case. The tone of the article, and the substance of a number of comments there so far, follow this rather snide observation in the lede:

Jian Li, who despite his top grades and perfect SAT scores was one of this year’s 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.

The implication here is that Li is a whiner, that it doesn't really matter whether or not Princeton discriminated against him since he wasn't really harmed. But what if instead of Yale he had landed at, say, Michigan? Or Michigan State? Another implication that comes through the article and many comments is that there really coudn't be any discrimination agains Li because Princeton did admit many Chinese and Chinese-American students. This is another version of the view that racial preferences to blacks and Hispanics don't discriminate against whites and Asians since so many of them are accepted anyway.

Posted by John Rosenberg on November 12, 2006 1:02 P

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#6995993)

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=260920&page=18

Alumother

Senior Member

Join Date: Feb 2005

Location: Northern California

Posts: 2,071

Amother, I can't prove to you that it doesn't exist. But you said it was a fact that it does exist. It isn't yet a fact as facts are understood in America. And believe it or not, I'm on your side as far as the eventual outcome, IF what you want is a level playing field for all regardless of race. Although I do believe part of that level playing field for the time being is atoning for harm done to African Americans and Latinos in past history.

But I think statements that something is a fact when it's not a fact hurt your case.

It is a fact, however, that stereotypes, pernicious stereotypes, about Asians permeate America. Let's focus on that instead of on college admissions. It's much more damaging and racist if Asian Americans never get made CEO in large American companies, don't sit on corporate boards, are rarely elected Senator, do not make the Managing Committee at top law firms, and don't run prestigious American universities than if all the Asian Americans who get 2400 on their SATs fail to get into Princeton.

========================================

Here's more discussion on the Parents Forum of the CC on the thread "Rejected applicant alleges bias against Asians"

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=260920&page=18

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7003444)

How do responses to your posts on CC compare to responses here?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7003451)

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=260920

" Rejected applicant alleges bias against Asians"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7003494)

Whether Jian wins or not, his complaint will open the files to the Princeton admissions process and that's a good thing.

Also, this complaint to the OCR will bring more federal law suits in federal District Court by more Asian Americans and anyone else of any group for alleged racial bias from Princeton/Ivies/private Elites based on Article VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

These law suits may come from individuals as well as from groups with class action suits, or "primae facie", putting the burden of proof againtst these complaints on these schools.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7003531)

Again, you could also read the responses of the racist posters towards Jian Li on the xoxohth, with racist epithets from the xoxohth posters.

Here's one racist poster on the law board of the xoxohth.

http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=525613&mc=166&forum_id=2#6998162

Date: November 15th, 2006 3:30 PM

Author: akaRonMexico

bump this one more time with another fucking article and i swear to god i will beat the shit out of a random chink today. this will be on your conscience.

the fate of one of your fellow countryman is in your hands. choose your course of action wisely.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7003547)

Blue or Red, racists abound and are plenty on both the college and law boards.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7003554)

Oh, how much he wished he could post on CC. He sure tried over and over, only to get his stupid ass banned every time.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7021108)

The racists are coming out of the woodwork again, including this OliviaNY, aka Ms. Olivia Adams, who coincidentally is black, formerly known as the censor/moderator of the NYTimes Education Forums. She had the political agenda of favoring race preferences, racial quotas, and anti-Asian American quotas, by stifling all opinion against them with her censorship on these now defunct Forums. She is now lurking on the xoxohth, offerring nothing, but ad hom attacks. The fact that Olivia Adams is black is really secondary, exemplifying that RACISTS, come in all colors and shades, including black ones.

There were so much censorship and banning of posters on the NYTimes Education Forums from Olivia Adams, the censor/moderator, that these Forums simply died because no poster could express an opinion contrary to hers, making these Forums a farce and a joke, shunned by many potential new readers.

Ms. Olivia Adams, who called these aforementioned facts above racist and censored all the posts with the same or similar content against all racial quotas/preferences, which were similar to the posts written here on the xoxohth, because they were politically incorrect according to her racist views. She is the racist who also censored all other posters who held views contrary to her own racist views, in favor of race preferences and racial quotas, simply by deleting their posts labeling them as racist, a knee-jerk reaction, from a true racist, stifling a real debate, opinion, and discussion on this topic of anti-Asian American quotas/caps in elite colleges. Her user name on the NYT Education Forum was "OliviaNYT", instead of this "OliviaNY" and she was the racist CENSOR hired by the NYTimes. She even allowed a racist poster on the NYTimes Forums named, "Nubianan", spew his racist epithets on the NYT Education Forums, while censoring all others who disagreed with him. Her real name is Olivia Adams and her picture was even posted by the NYT Education Forums on-line as the censor/moderator. Her claim to her expertise on "education" was based on being a mother of a middle-school child and a college age child at that time several years ago.

Olivia Adams, is a holder of a BA degree from the U. of Washington, in "the study of languages", and she was always in perpetual pursuit of that elusive master's degree for years, who is a self-professed "expert" on education and educational issues.

You could actually respond to my point, Ms. Olivia Adams, which is sounder than your filthy ad hom attacks and low blows against me, jumping on your personal crusade against me and not dealing with the issues on the table. I am not going away!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7022531)

Date: November 13th, 2006 12:58 PM

Author: my roommate is onto me (not even the sunrise can brighten this day)

"Chang Chung" lol

=======================================

This is the response coming from the racist poster.

"my roommate is onto me ".

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7003549)

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=260920&page=11

Old Yesterday, 01:10 PM #152

midmo

Junior Member

Join Date: Aug 2006

Posts: 129

"Whysostressed" asks why so many cc posters are comfortable with accepting a stereotypical view of "Asian" students. If college admissions officers share the biases I have seen displayed on this thread, it is no wonder Li and others are convinced there is a problem. My 12th grade son, who is white, has many friends whose parents have immigrated to the US from Asian countries; some of his friends were born overseas, many others were born here. Since this is a college town, all of these kids have highly educated parents. These "Asians" include Koreans, Taiwanese, Indians, Pakistanis, Burmese (Myanmar). The only part of the stereotype that rings true for these kids is that they are serious students, which means, in part, that they spend little time watching stupid TV programs on school nights, and virtually no time watching sports shows on weekends. They are always prepared for class, do the homework, etc. If that makes them grinds, then my kids are grinds, too. These friends of my son do many ECs, and those activities run the gamut of high school and community activities. They don't play football or basketball, but they do play tennis and golf. They tend to play orchestral musical instruments rather than marching band instruments because marching band eliminates all science and math competitions that are held on Saturdays (the very same reason my son gave up the trumpet, by the way.) These kids do not share the same religion, food preferences, dating rules, skin color, clothing styles or political outlook. They do share the belief that education is of utmost importance for personal gratification as well as the type of success they will gain them acceptance into American society. They do not think of themselves as some monolithic group of "Asians" and they very much wish the rest of America would stop treating them as such.

Li's complaint (NOT a lawsuit) is intended to give the Dept. of Education the obligation to investigate the widely-held belief among many immigrant families that a racial/ethnic stereotype is determining the personal fate of individuals as far as college choice is concerned. It is entirely possible the investigation will indicate there is no such problem. Perhaps the data that xiggi believes is "buried deeply and conveniently" will be uncovered and exposed. On the other hand, perhaps the evidence will expose a version of racism most Americans would like to see swept under the rug. In any case, the Dept. of Education spends a lot of money doing less useful things than this, so I'm not sure what all of the hubbub is about unless many of you really would rather just deny the allegation than see it investigated.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7003731)

Yesterday, 02:03 PM #173

ramblin

New Member

Join Date: Aug 2005

Posts: 21

I support the goal of creating racial diversity on college campuses via some form of affirmative action, although it can be irksome to see an URM student who drives a Mercedes and whose highly educated parents own two or three homes get admitted over a student with a more impressive academic and extracurricular record who isn't a URM and whose family is only middle-class or in need of financial aid. And these situations do create resentment in the rejected.

But the stereotyping and vilifying of Jian Li that some have expressed in these threads is disturbing and racist. Whether this particular complaint has merit or not, the accusations of entitlement, the assumption that he must have no ECs, that he must have had a flaw in his application, that he must interview poorly, that he must have had lousy essays, are ad hominem attacks.

http://www.nacacnet.org/MemberPortal...id=I2878651130

Why should Asians only be considered for slots in competition with other Asians? Why not, at least, judge them by the same criteria used to judge Caucasians. This is apparently what they try to do at Stanford after they determined there were biases in their admissions practices.

Quote:

Reider said he thought the article and the question of “Too Asian?” that it posed was “shameful” and said that he was “embarrassed” as an American that such a piece would appear today. He asked whether anyone would think of publishing an article called “Too Latino?” and compared the bias to the kind of bigotry that for decades limited the enrollment of Jewish students at top private universities. “This is a racist question,” he said.

He also said that the bias is real — and cited his experience in his previous job as part of the admissions office at Stanford University. There, he said, the office did a study some years ago in which it compared Asian and white applicants with the same overall academic and leadership rankings. The study was only of “unhooked kids,” meaning those with no extra help for being an alumni child or an athlete. The study found that comparably qualified white applicants were “significantly” more likely to be admitted than their Asian counterparts.

Stanford’s admissions office responded with some serious self-reflection, he said, and officials now spend some time each year studying different kinds of bias — like letters that compare Asian applicants to other Asians — in an attempt to weed out any unfair judgments. With bias removed, he said, “there’s no way that a school or college can be considered too Asian.”

http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/10/asian

Also interesting, although old:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=107...2-M&size=LARGE

Um, divide and conquer?

ramblin is offline

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7003796)

Racism by another name is `diversity'

Jonah Goldberg, Tribune Media Services

November 16, 2006

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7004774)

What happened to the Asians in this post-60s development was even more

curious. While they certainly weren't either white or European, and the older generations

47

had certainly endured more than a little white hostility and discrimination, they

nevertheless were too successful -- too good in school and at making money -- to be

eligible for special consideration within the white-created preference regime. Hence they

would acquire in the minds of the white penitents something of the status of "honorary

whites." In view of their newly acquired honorary status, the guilty whites could in good

conscience discriminate against Asians in favor of blacks and Hispanics, just as they

discriminated against the members of their own guilty race. Asians, however, were

accorded one modest consolation. Since their honorary white status did not entail

culpability for the whites' racist past, Asian protests against the preference regime were at

least treated with a degree of sympathy and respect by the guilty whites which they

would never accord to similar protests from the members of their own race. White

protests against quotas were often seen to partake of an unseemly lack of shame and

contrition (when not motivated by white racism). Similar protests by Asians were seen

by the white penitents as at least understandable, though not, of course, justified.

If white guilt really is at the heart of much of the enduring support we see for

affirmative action, it suggests that at the elite universities where white guilt is so much in

evidence the policy will be with us for many years to come regardless of the verdict of

social science research. A "catharsis for white guilt about slavery, segregation, and acts

of racism" is not likely to be undone by a regression analysis. For those of us who have

long contended against affirmative action policy, the one hope on the horizon is longterm.

As generations pass and those whose views on race relations were forged by the

upheavals of the 1960s increasingly retire and pass from the academic scene, the

experience of the "archetypical Fall" and the white guilt it produced will fade into ever

more distant memory. Blacks will increasingly be viewed by a new generation of whites,

Asians, Mideasterners and others, simply as people, not as pitiable victims or objects of

expiatory atonement for guilty whites. As Asians assume a more prominent place at elite

colleges and universities, the pull of the meritocratic ideal will become increasingly

strong. And in time affirmative action will come to be viewed as a policy, not a crusade.

And as a policy it will be judged by its merits -- and found deeply wanting.

====================================

This is a fascinating report on the facts which I had known with my own previous reading of the researchers quoted in this paper of about 50 pages.

PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING LINK for the actual link to the pdf version of the report.

http://www.nas.org/print/pressreleases/hqnas/releas_18oct04.htm

Press Release

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NAS Report Presents Evidence of Need for Colorblind Admissions

Web Site Coordinator, National Association of Scholars (609) 497-2480

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7047586)

Author: hero

LOL!

Asians are also less hirsuite, or have less body hair than whites, a sign of a more advanced development of the Mongoloid race in the human species.

LOL!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=530263&forum_id=1#7038128)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: November 20th, 2006 11:11 PM

Author: biaknabato

oh Lord, this is hilarious......

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=530263&forum_id=1#7038394)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: November 20th, 2006 11:17 PM

Author: hero

Fucking hairy and smelly bastards these whites are, aren't they?

LOL!!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=530263&forum_id=1#7038430)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7068163)

Date: November 20th, 2006 11:44 PM

Author: Voice of Reason

White are a little more hairy, as they're more masculine than asians, who are all essentially women.

But asians clearly smell worse. Ever try to study in the engineering library?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=530263&forum_id=1#7038611)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7068169)

The poster above, with the moniker ".hero" is an imposter and is not the real "hero".

There is a "dot" before the word hero in this imposter's moniker.

This is the same racist moron poster who called himself/herself "Reasonable Voice" and "Rational Thought" previously.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&forum_id=1#7070542)