SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @02:32PM
Do you really think they are doing fine taking freshman classes with students who score an average of 280 points higher on SATs, and categorically got better grades in high school?
The SAT and high schools only care about rote memorization. They're quite meaningless. I guess that still doesn't help these people, but I'm tired of people referring to standardized test scores from abysmal tests and grades as if they mean anything at the moment; they don't. Plenty of rote memorization 'geniuses' pass the SAT and high school with ease, and if the university/college is good, they'll be weeded out almost immediately in classes pretty much designed to weed out such individuals.