College is a strategy for the students to build their future pathways. Yet for the Asian students, their access to college might be different compared with students in other races. This article presents the possible racial bias of colleges when applying, cultural expectation from the Asian students, competition of the colleges, and the impact to the students made by the COVID-19.
Does racial bias really exist among the top schools?
According to Robert VerBruggen’s report on racial preferences on campus, the result indicates a predictable pattern that most types of school display: following by the rise of Asian shared college-age population, the percentage of Asian population also increases among colleges. The only exception takes place at top schools. The percentage of Asian freshmen remained stable around the mid-1990s and grew again around 2010.
According to VerBruggen, the report has its limitation when it operates “descriptive exercises using less-than-perfect data, and they do not prove discrimination at any specific school”. As clarification, however, he also says that it is certain that the top schools limit the percentage of Asian freshmen to maintain the racial balance.
This is because the report indicates that the Asian students score higher grades in academic performance. For example, as the report indicates, “in 2019, Asian SAT-takers scored an average of 637 on math and 586 on reading and writing; the averages for all test-takers were 528 and 531, respectively … In statistical terms, the standard deviation of each SAT test is about 100, so the difference is roughly one standard deviation for math and just half a standard deviation for reading and writing.”
In its upcoming 2022-2023 term that starts October 3, the U.S. Supreme Court plans to take on an Asian-focused affirmative action case challenging the admissions process at Harvard University. The likely decision considering the conservative majority of the Justices could reverse four decades of legal precedent allowing for the use of race as a factor in higher education admissions.
This is not the first time that the Students for Fair Admissions calls for an action through a lawsuit process. In 2019 by Judge Allison Burroughs and in 2020 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, the appeals court demonstrates: “The issue before us is whether Harvard’s limited use of race in its admissions process in order to achieve diversity in the period in question is consistent with the requirements of Supreme Court precedent. There was no error.”
While Students for Fair Admissions is waiting for the further steps of the Supreme Court, Harvard’s admissions process seems like an individual case. In VerBruggen’s report, nevertheless, the Asian American student population in Ivy League schools remains around 20%, while at other elite non-Ivy League schools the rate is 30%. This clearly indicates the selective difference in race.
“[W]hen the overall population share of a small minority group rises, its representation should generally rise even faster in settings where it is overrepresented,” the report says. “And this, in turn, means a small but growing group can cause great worry for those who want to see racial proportionality in all areas of life.”
Does this mean that the Asian American students are experiencing the racial discrimination in academia through access to top universities? To put it in another way, is there such a thing as selective bias? There are also counterarguments in response to Harvard’s case.
According to Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce analysis of data, Asian American students are more likely to apply to the top universities regardless of their grades. For example, if the SAT test score is 1300, 65% of the students are more likely to apply to the top schools, compared to the 50% rate of non-Asian American students. This decision will create competition within the group.
Surprisingly, the pandemic of COVID-19 is also making an impact on the university applicants’ success.
N was a graduate school applicant student in 2020-2021. He decided to apply for graduate degree because he believed that the universities had become easier to apply for, since many potential applicants had chosen to stay home during the pandemic. Last year, many of the top universities that he applied to claimed that the number of applicants were higher than usual. His applications were rejected by many of the top schools. He ended up going to a non-Ivy League school. N. concludes, “It just feels like everyone was trying to get that ‘easy access’ to university during the COVID. This is where the competition really took place.”
