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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @05:36PM
Why even do this screening? Shouldn't every high school grad who sincerely wants a college education be able to go?
In the USA they like having winners and losers. Allowing everyone into college who has a reasonable chance of graduating college is unamerican.
And yes it is due to the lack of resources. There are just so many teachers, professors, labs and particle accelerators available for students.
Plus they prefer to have expensive wars in the middle east, very expensive warplanes and ships, and billion-dollar bailouts for bankers.