Harvard, Princeton investigated for discrimination
Do Harvard and Princeton discriminate against applicants of Asian descent? Photo by Wikimedia Commons.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating a complaint that Harvard and Princeton discriminate against Asian-Americans in undergraduate admissions, Bloomberg reported late last week.
The complainant is an anonymous Asian-American applicant who says that Harvard and Princeton rejected him on the basis of his race and national origin. The student’s father told Bloomberg that his son was among the top students in his California high school, and that their family originally came from India.
Harvard spokesman Jeff Neal said Harvard does not comment on the specifics of complaints under federal review, but added that it “does not discriminate against Asian-American applicants." Sixteen percent of Harvard undergraduates in the 2010-2011 academic year were Asian-American, a two percent dip from the number of Asian-American undergraduates in 2005-2006, according to the university’s website.
At Princeton, meanwhile, Asian-Americans now comprise 17.7 percent of undergrads, up from 14.1 percent in 2007-'08.
Comments
yalengineer 3 months, 2 weeks ago
SATs do not make a good Ivy League candidate.
conceredMom 3 months, 2 weeks ago
That is very true. But the fact assumption of every Asian applicant gets high test scores since they don't do anything else is very wrong. I know for a fact that my children (Asians) have been very active on all school activities, sports, volunteering, and etc. None of my two children really study for standard tests. People, especially the college shall not judge an applicant by his/her race. There are always exceptions. Be fair and kind to the hard working Asian applicants please!
willowlewis71 3 months, 2 weeks ago
Do the schools keep demographics for all cohorts? Were those cohorts changed as well?
sharonreedy 3 months, 2 weeks ago
To yaleengineer: Are you implying that Asians are only good at studying at nothing else? I can tell you for sure that the moment HYP uses ID numbers for applicants rather than actual names, the percentage of Asians will shoot up. That is because all else equal -- including extra-curricular/leadership activities -- whites will always be chosen before Asian Americans. If that is not discrimination, I don't know what is.
When California banned affirmative action, extra curricular activities were still considered in admitting students to the UC schools. Within a few years, the percentage of Asian-Americans increased dramatically. What happened? The only thing they removed was race considerations not leadership or other soft skills considerations. But it still went up. And that tells us the admissions offices in universities are still actively discriminating against Asian Americans.
Or login with:
OpenID