Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian' - Yahoo! News

"My math scores aren't high enough for the Asian box," she says. "I say it jokingly,
but there is the underlying sentiment of, if I had emphasized myself as Asian, I would
have (been expected to) excel more in stereotypically Asian-dominated subjects."

"I was definitely held to a different standard (by my mom), and to different standards
than my friends," Holmes says. She sees the same rigorous academic focus among many
other students with immigrant parents, even non-Asian ones.

Does Holmes think children of American parents are generally spoiled and lazy by
comparison? "That's essentially what I'm trying to say."

Asian students have higher average SAT scores than any other group, including whites.
A study by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade examined applicants to top
colleges from 1997, when the maximum SAT score was 1600 (today it's 2400).
Espenshade found that Asian-Americans needed a 1550 SAT to have an equal chance
of getting into an elite college as white students with a 1410 or black students with an 1100.

Top schools that don't ask about race in admissions process have very high
percentages of Asian students. The California Institute of Technology, a private
school that chooses not to consider race, is about one-third Asian. (Thirteen percent
of California residents have Asian heritage.) The University of California-Berkeley,
which is forbidden by state law to consider race in admissions, is more than 40 percent
Asian — up from about 20 percent before the law was passed.

Steven Hsu, a physics professor at the University of Oregon and a vocal critic
of current admissions policies, says there is a clear statistical case that discrimination exists.

"The actual dynamics of how it happens are really quite subtle," he says, mentioning
factors like horse-trading among admissions officers for their favorite candidates.

Also, "when Asians are the largest group on campus, I can easily imagine a fund-raiser
saying, 'This is jarring to our alumni,'" Hsu says. Noting that most Ivy League schools
have roughly the same percentage of Asians, he wonders if "that's the maximum number
where diversity is still good, and it's not, 'we're being overwhelmed by the yellow horde.'"

Yale, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania declined to make admissions
officers available for interviews for this story.

Kara Miller helped review applications for Yale as an admissions office reader, and
participated in meetings where admissions decisions were made. She says it often
felt like Asians were held to a higher standard.

"Asian kids know that when you look at the average SAT for the school, they need
to add 50 or 100 to it. If you're Asian, that's what you'll need to get in," says Miller,
now an English professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

Highly selective colleges do use much more than SAT scores and grades to evaluate
applicants. Other important factors include extracurricular activities, community
service, leadership, maturity, engagement in learning, and overcoming adversity.

Admissions preferences are sometimes given to the children of alumni, the wealthy and
celebrities, which is an overwhelmingly white group. Recruited athletes get breaks.
Since the top colleges say diversity is crucial to a world-class education, African
-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders also may get
in despite lower scores than other applicants.

A college like Yale "could fill their entire freshman class twice over with qualified
Asian students or white students or valedictorians," says Rosita Fernandez-Rojo,
a former college admissions officer who is now director of college counseling at
Rye Country Day School outside of New York City.

But applicants are not ranked by results of a qualifications test, she says
— "it's a selection process."

"People are always looking for reasons they didn't get in," she continues. "You
can't always know what those reasons are. Sometimes during the admissions
process they say, 'There's nothing wrong with that kid. We just don't have room.'"

In the end, elite colleges often don't have room for Asian students with
outstanding scores and grades.

That's one reason why Harvard freshman Heather Pickerell, born in Hong Kong
to a Taiwanese mother and American father, refused to check any race box on her application.

"I figured it might help my chances of getting in," she says. "But I figured
if Harvard wouldn't take me for refusing to list my ethnicity, then maybe I shouldn't go there."

She considers drawing lines between different ethnic groups a form of racism
— and says her ethnic identity depends on where she is.

"In America, I identify more as Asian, having grown up there, and actually
being Asian, and having grown up in an Asian family," she says. "But when I'm back
in Hong Kong I feel more American, because everyone there is more Asian than I am."

Holmes, the Yale sophomore with the Chinese-born mother, also has problems
fitting herself into the Asian box — "it doesn't make sense to me."

"I feel like an American," she says, "...an Asian person who grew up in America."

Susanna Koetter, a Yale junior with an American father and Korean mother, was
adamant about identifying her Asian side on her application. Yet she calls herself "not
fully Asian-American. I'm mixed Asian-American. When I go to Korea, I'm like, blatantly white."

And yet, asked whether she would have considered leaving the Asian box blank, she
says: "That would be messed up. I'm not white."

"Identity is very malleable," says Jasmine Zhuang, a Yale junior whose parents
were both born in Taiwan.

She didn't check the box, even though her last name is a giveaway and her essay
was about Asian-American identity.

"Looking back I don't agree with what I did," Zhuang says. "It was more like a symbolic
action for me, to rebel against the higher standard placed on Asian-American applicants."

"There's no way someone's race can automatically tell you something about them, or
represent who they are to an admissions committee," Zhuang says. "Using race by itself
is extremely dangerous."

Hsu, the physics professor, says that if the current admissions policies continue, it will
become more common for Asian students to avoid identifying themselves as such, and
schools will have to react.

"They'll have to decide: A half-Asian kid, what is that? I don't think they really know."

The lines are already blurred at Yale, where almost 26,000 students applied for the
current freshman class, according to the school's web site.

About 1,300 students were admitted. Twenty percent of them marked the Asian
-American box on their applications; 15 percent of freshmen marked two or more ethnicities.

Ten percent of Yale's freshmen class did not check a single box.
Of course living in Thailand and meeting loads of Thais, you would know the stereotype isn't true. Interesting story.