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posted by janrinok on Wednesday June 03 2015, @03:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-he-can't-tap-dance! dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 03 2015, @09:39PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday June 03 2015, @09:39PM (#191789)

    Is being an interesting person a criterion for admission?

    Yes, actually: That's a big part of what the admissions essay and possibly interview are about.

    The first thing about Ivy League schools that Mr Wang fails to understand: They have enough applicants to fill their entire freshmen class and then some with students who never received a grade lower than an A, took the top-track courses offered at their school, got at most about 2 questions wrong on whichever standardized test they take, and have at least a couple of interesting extracurriculars on top of that. His academic record probably got him into the 10% or so of applicants to Harvard/Yale/Stanford/Princeton that make it past the initial screening. To get past that point, you need not only a great academic record and a couple of extracurriculars, you need to also be truly interesting. And yes, the schools also look at diversity - not just race, but also gender, geography, subject interests, languages spoken, and a whole lot of other factors to narrow down the list.

    The second thing about Ivy League schools that Mr Wang fails to understand: They aren't even close to the only fantastic universities in the country. Depending on what field he's interested in, he might do really well at John Hopkins, Berkeley, University of Chicago, MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, Harvey-Mudd, Swarthmore, or quite a few other schools that not only have great teaching but also strong brand recognition, particularly in the fields they excel at.

    My high school class valedictorian was absolutely certain she was going to get into Harvard - she had all the academics, was a good violinist in the school and local community orchestra, had a couple of extracurricular leadership officerships under her belt, and had recently received a special award for her achievements. She was turned down, went to Tufts University instead, and did quite fine for herself there.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday June 03 2015, @10:35PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 03 2015, @10:35PM (#191808) Journal
    Thanks for the insight.
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