Fairness in college admissions? Asian American students will tell you to think again

October 14, 11:26 AMCollege Admissions ExaminerLauren Starkey

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A new study by Princeton sociology professor Thomas Espenshade highlights an issue that’s been debated since the early 1980s. The Daily Princetonian reports, “According to the data, not all races are considered equal in the college admissions game. Of students applying to private colleges in 1997, African-American applicants with SAT scores of 1150 had the same chances of being accepted as white applicants with 1460s and Asian applicants with perfect 1600s.”

The feeling among Asian-American students that they need to be “twice as good” as other students seems to have a basis in fact according to the study. But Espenshade warns against using the findings to draw such a conclusion.  He notes that he did not have access to the “soft variables” of admissions, including extracurriculars, community service, and teacher recommendations. He told the Daily Princetonian, “The data we had is only part of the data that admission deans have access to. If we had access to the full range of info, it could put Asian candidates in a different light. This so-called ‘Asian disadvantage’ does not necessarily mean that Asian applicants are being discriminated against.”

Is Espenshade backpedaling from his own study? A recent US News and World Report article cites Mitchell Chang, a professor of higher education at UCLA, responding to the study’s documentation of a threefold difference for similarly qualified students at elite private universities as “stunning. Really worrisome.”

The article summarizes Espenshade’s findings “comparing applicants with similar grades, scores, athletic qualifications, and family history for seven elite private colleges and universities:

·                     Whites were three times as likely to get fat envelopes as Asians.

·                     Hispanics were twice as likely to win admission as whites.

·                     African-Americans were at least five times as likely to be accepted as whites.

·                     Athletes were more than twice as likely to get in as non-athletes with similar qualifications.

·                     Students from .private high schools were twice as likely to receive acceptance letters as similar students from regular public high schools.

·                     Students from highly regarded public and private high schools were three times as likely to win admission as others.

·                     Students in the top 10 percent of their high school classes were about twice as likely to get in as students in the next 10 percent.

Whether the new study can be used to strengthen then argument that Asian American students are held to a higher standard in college admissions, it is clearly more evidence that the myth of the leveling playing field is just that. Colleges are interested in creating racially and ethnically diverse student bodies, and they’re doing it at the expense of some highly-qualified but well represented groups. What the study doesn’t touch is the fact that a more pressing concern is maintaining a gender balanced student body, and the students most affected by such policies are women.