Is Admissions Bar Higher for Asians At Elite Schools? School Standards Are Probed Even as Enrollment

Nov. 11, 2006

Though Asian-Americans constitute only about 4.5% of the U.S.
population, they typically account for anywhere from 10% to 30% of
students at many of the nation's elite colleges.

Even so, based on their outstanding grades and test scores,
Asian-Americans increasingly say their enrollment should be much
higher -- a contention backed by a growing body of evidence.

Whether elite colleges give Asian-American students a fair shake is
becoming a big concern in college-admissions offices. Federal
civil-rights officials are investigating charges by a top
Chinese-American student that he was rejected by Princeton
University last spring because of his race and national origin.

Meanwhile, voter attacks on admissions preferences for other
minority groups -- as well as research indicating colleges give less
weight to high test scores of Asian-American applicants -- may push
schools to boost Asian enrollment. Tuesday, Michigan voters approved
a ballot measure striking down admissions preferences for
African-Americans and Hispanics. The move is expected to benefit
Asian applicants to state universities there -- as similar
initiatives have done in California and Washington.

If the same measure is passed in coming years in Illinois, Missouri
and Oregon -- where opponents of such preferences say they plan to
introduce it -- Asian-American enrollment likely would climb at
selective public universities in those states as well.

During the Michigan campaign, a group that opposes affirmative
action released a study bolstering claims that Asian students are
held to a higher standard. The study, by the Center for Equal
Opportunity, in Virginia, found that Asian applicants admitted to
the University of Michigan in 2005 had a median SAT score of 1400 on
the 400-1600 scale then in use. That was 50 points higher than the
median score of white students who were accepted, 140 points higher
than that of Hispanics and 240 points higher than that of blacks.

Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal
Opportunity, said universities are "legally vulnerable" to
challenges from rejected Asian-American applicants.

Princeton, where Asian-Americans constitute about 13% of the
student body, faces such a challenge. A spokesman for the Department
of Education's Office for Civil Rights said it is investigating a
complaint filed by Jian Li, now a 17-year-old freshman at Yale
University. Despite racking up the maximum 2400 score on the SAT and
2390 -- 10 points below the ceiling -- on SAT2 subject tests in
physics, chemistry and calculus, Mr. Li was spurned by three Ivy
League universities, Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.

The Office for Civil Rights initially rejected Mr. Li's complaint
due to "insufficient" evidence. Mr. Li appealed, citing a white
high-school classmate admitted to Princeton despite lower test
scores and grades. The office notified him late last month that it
would look into the case.

His complaint seeks to suspend federal financial assistance to
Princeton until the university "discontinues discrimination against
Asian-Americans in all forms by eliminating race preferences, legacy
preferences, and athlete preferences." Legacy preference is the edge
most elite colleges, including Princeton, give to alumni children.
The Office for Civil Rights has the power to terminate such
financial aid but usually works with colleges to resolve cases
rather than taking enforcement action.

Mr. Li, who emigrated to the U.S. from China as a 4-year-old and
graduated from a public high school in Livingston, N.J., said he
hopes his action will set a precedent for other Asian-American
students. He wants to "send a message to the admissions committee to
be more cognizant of possible bias, and that the way they're
conducting admissions is not really equitable," he said.

Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said the university is aware of
the complaint and will provide the Office for Civil Rights with
information it has requested. Princeton has said in the past that it
considers applicants as individuals and doesn't discriminate against
Asian-Americans.

When elite colleges began practicing affirmative action in the late
1960s and 1970s, they gave an admissions boost to Asian-American
applicants as well as blacks and Hispanics. As the percentage of
Asian-Americans in elite schools quickly overtook their slice of the
U.S. population, many colleges stopped giving them preference -- and
in some cases may have leaned the other way.

In 1990, a federal investigation concluded that Harvard University
admitted Asian-American applicants at a lower rate than white
students despite the Asians' slightly stronger test scores and
grades. Federal investigators also found that Harvard admissions
staff had stereotyped Asian-American candidates as quiet, shy and
oriented toward math and science. The government didn't bring
charges because it concluded it was Harvard's preferences for
athletes and alumni children -- few of whom were Asian -- that
accounted for the admissions gap.

The University of California came under similar scrutiny at about
the same time. In 1989, as the federal government was investigating
alleged Asian-American quotas at UC's Berkeley campus, Berkeley's
chancellor apologized for a drop in Asian enrollment. The next year,
federal investigators found that the mathematics department at UCLA
had discriminated against Asian-American graduate school applicants.
In 1992, Berkeley's law school agreed under federal pressure to drop
a policy that limited Asian enrollment by comparing Asian applicants
against each other rather than the entire applicant pool.

Asian-American enrollment at Berkeley has increased since
California voters banned affirmative action in college admissions.
Berkeley accepted 4,122 Asian-American applicants for this fall's
freshman class -- nearly 42% of the total admitted. That is up from
2,925 in 1997, or 34.6%, the last year before the ban took effect.
Similarly, Asian-American undergraduate enrollment at the University
of Washington rose to 25.4% in 2004 from 22.1%in 1998, when voters
in that state prohibited affirmative action in college
admissions.

The University of Michigan may be poised for a similar leap in
Asian-American enrollment, now that voters in that state have banned
affirmative action. The Center for Equal Opportunity study found
that, among applicants with a 1240 SAT score and 3.2 grade point
average in 2005, the university admitted 10% of Asian-Americans, 14%
of whites, 88% of Hispanics and 92% of blacks. Asian applicants to
the university's medical school also faced a higher admissions bar
than any other group.

Julie Peterson, spokeswoman for the University of Michigan, said
the study was flawed because many applicants take the ACT test
instead of the SAT, and standardized test scores are only one of
various tools used to evaluate candidates. "I utterly reject the
conclusion" that the university discriminates against
Asian-Americans, she said. Asian-Americans constitute 12.6% of the
university's undergraduates.

Jonathan Reider, director of college counseling at San Francisco
University High School, said most elite colleges' handling of Asian
applicants has become fairer in recent years. Mr. Reider, a former
Stanford admissions official, said Stanford staffers were dismayed
20 years ago when an internal study showed they were less likely to
admit Asian applicants than comparable whites. As a result, he said,
Stanford strived to eliminate unconscious bias and repeated the
study every year until Asians no longer faced a disadvantage.

Last month, Mr. Reider participated in a panel discussion at a
college-admissions conference. It was titled, "Too Asian?" and
explored whether colleges treat Asian applicants differently.

Precise figures of Asian-American representation at the nation's
top schools are hard to come by. Don Joe, an attorney and activist
who runs Asian-American Politics, an Internet site that tracks
enrollment, puts the average proportion of Asian-Americans at 25 top
colleges at 15.9% in 2005, up from 10% in 1992.

Still, he said, he is hearing more complaints "from Asian-American
parents about how their children have excellent grades and scores
but are being rejected by the most selective colleges. It appears to
be an open secret."

Mr. Li, who said he was in the top 1% of his high-school class and
took five advanced placement courses in his senior year, left blank
the questions on college applications about his ethnicity and place
of birth. "It seemed very irrelevant to me, if not offensive," he
said. Mr. Li, who has permanent resident status in the U.S., did
note that his citizenship, first language and language spoken at
home were Chinese.

Along with Yale, he won admission to the California Institute of
Technology, Rutgers University and the Cooper Union for the
Advancement of Science and Art. He said four schools -- Princeton,
Harvard, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania -- placed him
on their waiting lists before rejecting him. "I was very close to
being accepted at these schools," he said. "I was thinking, had my
ethnicity been different, it would have put me over the top. Even if
race had just a marginal effect, it may have disadvantaged me."

He ultimately focused his complaint against Princeton after reading
a 2004 study by three Princeton researchers concluding that an
Asian-American applicant needed to score 50 points higher on the SAT
than other applicants to have the same change of admission to an
elite university.

"As an Asian-American and a native of China, my chances of
admission were drastically reduced," Mr. Li claims in his complaint.