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Business Insider reports:
With a perfect ACT score and 13 Advanced Placement courses under his belt, Michael Wang applied to seven Ivy League universities and Stanford in 2013.
As an Asian-American, Wang suspected his race might work against him. But but he was still shocked when he was rejected by Stanford and every Ivy League school except for the University of Pennsylvania.
Wang says he worked incredibly hard and excelled in every area possible. But it still wasn't good enough.
"There was nothing humanly possible I could do," Wang told us, explaining that he felt utterly demoralized after his rejections.
After Wang was rejected from most of the Ivies, he says he filed a complaint with the US Department of Education alleging Yale, Stanford, and Princeton discriminated against him because he was Asian-American.
[...] Wang isn't alone in his belief that the Ivies discriminate against Asians. A coalition of Asian-American groups filed a lawsuit against Harvard University last month alleging the school and other Ivy League institutions use racial quotas to admit students to the detriment of more qualified Asian-American applicants. The more than 60 Asian groups are coming together to fight what they say are unfair admission practices.
[...] He also stressed that he was not just academically driven, but also a well-rounded applicant who maximized his extracurricular activities. He competed in national speech and debate competitions and math competitions. He also plays the piano and performed in the choir that sang at President Barack Obama's 2008 inauguration.
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @05:13AM
Prospective students should not enter name, age, race, sexual orientation, income level, or even location. Only their academic record and extracurricular activities should be considered (with whatever essay or recommendations are requested). A random number is assigned to each entry which an independent organization keeps track of. Each school can make decisions based on that. They can decide that they want all Type A or some mix thereafter, but it will be based on facts, not anything outside the student's control (such as name, age, race, etc.).
(Score: 1) by sasha328 on Wednesday June 03 2015, @06:54AM
That's actually not a bad idea. Sounds simple, but it is a pretty useful starting point. Could also be useful in some job applications scenario prior to the interview stage.
(Score: -1, Troll) by jmorris on Wednesday June 03 2015, @08:10AM
Too bad it would be quite illegal to do what you suggest. Disparate impact; the numbers would be wrong in an illegal direction and you would have the Justice Dept so up in yer sh*t so fast it would amaze. Remember, some discrimination is illegal, while other discrimination is mandatory. Normal folk can't tell the difference between discrimination based on race, sex or national origin and discrimination based on race, sex or national origin but trained professional race baiters can. Paying protection money also helps keep the lawyers at bay.
(Score: 2) by subs on Wednesday June 03 2015, @11:50AM
How was this not implemented, say, a decade, or two decades ago? When I was applying to college over a decade ago, we already had a written entrance exam. The only personal data on the application form was name, place of residence and phone number (simply for administrative contact purposes) and for the test, everybody was assigned a random 5-digit number, thus guaranteeing that the examiners (who were separate from the faculty handling the administrative side of the admissions process) had no idea who's test they were scoring. Admission was determined simply by sorting the test results and drawing a line where the maximum number of admission slots had been reached or the test scores were below "acceptable".
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 03 2015, @01:16PM
Well over two decades ago this is how my local state schools did admissions, by ACT score. Each individual school admitted top down. They published historical cut offs and they were basically constant over the years so the day you got your ACT results was pretty much the day you found out which state school you could get into. Drop out rates were high enough that if there was any question as to if you could get in, then you would be guaranteed drop out even if you got in. Even the most competitive engineering oriented school was only around 26 or so.
(Score: 1) by twistedcubic on Wednesday June 03 2015, @03:54PM
It wasn't implemented because it won't work. All students who take violin and piano classes, and express an interest in pre-med, biology, or chemistry will be assumed Asian anyway. All the forbidden extracurriculars in the Tiger Mom book (marching band, saxophone, etc) will suggest a non-Asian student. Also, non-Asian students are certainly free to discuss their culture and affiliations in their applications. You would have to be an incredibly sophisticated teenager to successfully hide your culture or identity from an experienced application reader. Simply naming your high school will narrow your race down considerably.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday June 03 2015, @02:06PM
That is the system in most of northern Europe, as far as I know. Sure they know my personal-id number, name and such but all that matters are my grades, previous education and test scores. Do you meet the criteria for the eduction? If yes you get put on the list, sorted by score and then the people with the best scores get in. There is none of this extracurricular activities, writing essays or my dad is a billionaire nonsense. There are some educations that have an interview step/process such as medical doctors (normal academic doctors or phd is considered a job here so you could see that as any other employment interview). All these diversity quotas and getting the "right mix" is beyond bullshit. It's supposed to be academia, you get in on that and nothing else matters, or should matter. Having a parent or relative that is a billionaire could get you in, after all your rich relative could just buy you a spot there, but those go outside of the normal intake quota per education.