The Los Angeles Times is running an article describing the challenges faced by Asian Americans as they apply for acceptance to top colleges.
The article describes the impact that their race and ethnicity has on their SAT scores:
Lee's next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It uses the term “bonus” to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant's race is worth.
She points to the first column. African Americans received a “bonus” of 230 points, Lee says.
She points to the second column. “Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points.”
The last column draws gasps. Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.
“Do Asians need higher test scores? Is it harder for Asians to get into college? The answer is yes,” Lee says.
A core tenet of the American philosophy, even from before the days of the Founding Fathers, is that through hard work and excellence one should be able to obtain success in life. But is this ideal even possible when certain underachieving groups are given artificial advantages, while those with the most merit are artificially held back?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Wootery on Monday March 02 2015, @10:01AM
The summary seems to imply that the existence of a -50 'penalty' is the outrageous part here, but removing that penalty wouldn't solve the issue: it's still harder to get in if you're ethnically Asian.
If you add 50 to the 'handicap' for all races except Asian, that's exactly equivalent to the current -50 penalty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @12:46PM
The summary addresses both parts of the problem: