Anonymous
An Open Email to the Asian American Community
January 14, 2003

Asian Americans have come to this country in great numbers for the last 30 years. Over time, they gradually realized that they were enjoying every benefit from the establishment of the American’s great founding father as well as benefits resulting from Martin Luther King’s legendary civil rights work and the continuous efforts of the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union. As the years passed by, most of them became settled in this new country and they and their children became Asian Americans. Collectively these Asian Americans have become a new racial group, regardless of where they came from and whether they like it or not. Eventually, they all have found their place in the society that they now call home.

Most Asian Americans, other than refugees, are the cream of the crop from their motherlands. Some have immigrated to the US because of their wealth and others due to their excellent educations. Those from China are within the top 0.1 percent of the Chinese population in terms of education. These newest citizens and immigrants to America have built their new life on the core value of education. Many state universities have benefited from the determination of the Asian Americans’ search for higher education. California has benefited the most as Asian Americans’ academic superiority has propelled its state flagship university, Berkeley, to the top spot of American public universities and the private Stanford University into the top ten universities as ranked by US News. Asian Americans constitute about 45% of Berkeley’s student body--even with a higher admission requirement imposed on them. The average SAT score for the admitted Asian Americans at Berkeley is approximately 100 points higher than that of white Americans and is two to three hundreds points higher than that of Hispanic and African-Americans. Five California public universities, Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego, Irvine and Davis, are ranked in the top 20 public universities as a result of Asian American majorities in these schools.

A great number of Asian Americans went to Berkeley and, following in their parent’s footsteps, became engineers. It is perfectly fine for those less competitive students if they do not attend a name brand college. Many Asian Americans have come to realize that American society is dominated and controlled by non-engineers. Seeking a good and comfortable life as an engineer no long meets the goal and desire for identity of many. In the last twenty years, there have been many Asian Americans who have become successful in the public eye, including An Wang, Charles B. Wang, Jerry Yang, Bill Lann Lee, Margaret Cho, Lucy Liu, Yo-Yo Ma, Kristi Yamaguchi, Michelle Kwan, Michael Chang, Helen Zia, and Hoyt H. Zia, to name a few. Now Asian American broadcast news anchors are everywhere, especially female ones like Connie Chung. Asian Americans now have their first Governor, Gary Lock of Washington State, state representatives, David Wu and Mike Honda, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao and Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta. Asian Americans have occasional bright spots on TV, such as George Takei playing Mr. Sulu in the original Star Trek series, Bruce Lee as Kato in The Green Hornet, and the films of Jacky Chan and John Wu. However, many Asian Americans still have been unable to dispel the enduring media image of Asian Americans as Hop Sing, the Cartwright’s’ houseboy on Bonanza. The media still does not provide Asian Americans with heroes or role models that Asian Americans actually could dream of becoming.

Other than athletes and entertainers, Asian Americans have seen the success and leadership of Asian Americans who have graduated from highly selective colleges. They learned quickly that there really is no difference between the United States and their native lands; the combination of a good education and connections with those in power is the road to power and success. Asian Americans have come to recognize that Harvard and the Ivy League have been the major access roads to power in America for white Americans and African-Americans alike. Despite many articles questioning the value of an Ivy League school education, Asian Americans are now competing for spots at Ivy League schools in great numbers.

Ivy League Educations

(an excerpt from the Chicago Sun-Times)

The Ivy League Schools provide leadership training and a peer learning environment through a four-year residential college / liberal arts education. The eight Ivy League Schools are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Yale and U Penn. In addition, there are little Ivies such as Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Haverford, and Wellesley. Highly selective schools also include quasi-Ivy schools, such as MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, WASH U (Washington University in St. Louis), Georgetown, Rice, John Hopkins, and Tufts, which do not provide a comparable residential college experience.

Top public universities such as Berkeley, Virginia, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina provide a solid academic education in specific fields compared to a diverse liberal arts education at elite schools. Many learned that to attend these public schools is as expansive as attending Ivy schools by out-of-state students. For non-residents, the cost of the freshman year at these public universities can reach over $29,000 and the cost at elite schools is approximately $36,000 per year. However, it will cost more to attend Berkeley for the remaining years for non-California residents. The Berkeley dorms can only accommodate students for their freshman year. The annual rents for an off-campus apartment easily can cost another $10,000 a year. Many high school graduates quickly learned from their peers that those admitted to the elite schools are actually paying less than those attending out-of-state public universities or even local state universities due to the generous financial aid and grants offered by the elite schools.

Many argue that the halo of attending an elite school may be losing its glow, in part, because increasing numbers of people go on to graduate or professional schools. A master's degree, law degree, or medical degree from a prestigious school can overshadow a bachelor's degree, especially because it's often more relevant to a person's career.

Of course, getting into a top-tier graduate or professional school is a challenge all its own, although statistically, a bachelor's degree from an Ivy League institution confers a certain advantage in that competition. Admission officers warn against choosing an elite college for that reason; "We don't assign it an automatic weight in the way people assume we do," said Jean Webb, the director of admissions at Yale Law School. However, Webb and other graduate-level admissions officers acknowledge that applicants from less respected institutions need much higher grades to compete against those who studied at elite colleges.

If a student wants to become an MD or lawyer with specialties, graduating from a top medical or law school is almost a requirement to open the door. One would have a better chance of being admitted to a top medical or law school by attending an undergraduate college at Ivy or little Ivy schools. Berkeley is the number one public university and its statistics for matriculation to medical/law schools (as reported by Berkeley) are outstanding, as many who graduate from other public universities cannot even get an admission from a medical or law school. However, it is extremely difficult for Berkeley graduates to be admitted to a top 10-ranked medical or law school, or even a top twenty-ranked. In the year 2001, there were 87 Berkeley graduates who applied to the medical school at John Hopkins University, none were admitted. Harvard Law School matriculated 550 first-year law students in the year 2001; 62 Berkeley graduates applied and resulted in two matriculations. These statistics can be examined on the following web pages. Due to multiple applications, one should only read the matriculation column.

UC Berkeley graduate Medical School Matriculation Statistics
UC Berkeley graduate Law School Matriculation Statistics

"But there's more to it than that, it's the overall record. It's the type of courses. It's so subjective,” said Patricia Tobiasen, the admissions coordinator for Columbia University's medical school. 

“Corporate recruiters may be more impressed than graduate schools with Ivy League credentials. When the top investment and consulting firms visit campuses in search of young employees, they go first to the Ivies,” said Sheila Curran, the director of career services at Brown University. 

After landing that first job, Curran said, the Ivy League advantage continues in the form of connections. "Even though the old boy network isn't quite as prevalent as it was before, the ability to get into contact with people who have high-level jobs -- and who can network you into getting an interview -- is something that may be more prevalent at the Ivies than at some of these other places," she said.

Cynthia B. Lin plans to use those connections. A 1995 graduate of Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest, she turned down a full scholarship to Boston University -- worth about $100,000 -- to attend Princeton. "I think it pays off a hundred-fold in the end," said Lin, now a software engineer in suburban Washington, D.C. "If I go to parties or receptions and I meet Princeton people, of course they're very receptive to helping me out, or giving me their card and trying to stay in touch, because Princeton people can rely on other Princeton people to be interested or good employees." However, Lin said she wasn't thinking of her career when she chose Princeton in the spring of 1995. In fact, she originally intended to accept Boston University's generous offer. Then she got a glimpse of Princeton's tantalizing mix of overachievers, and a decade's worth of debt seemed a small sacrifice. "It mattered more to me the quality of the education I would get and how comfortable I felt in the environment I was in," Lin said. "If I felt that Joe College's environment was even closer to what I was looking for, then I would have chosen that."

Krueger, the economics professor at Lin's alma mater, endorses that reasoning. Despite his doubts about the financial payoff of a prestigious degree, he believes there are legitimate reasons for going to a selective school such as Princeton. But a high salary, he said, isn't one of them. "Students need to find the right match," he said. "The world is more complicated than just saying, 'The most selective school is the best for every student.' I think a student and his or her family has to look into what the college offers, what the student's interests are, and how those are aligned."

Asian Youngsters Work Much Harder to Get Into Ivy Schools

Asian Americans have the lowest Ivy School admission rate among all applicants. At Ivy Schools, the selectivity is at 1 to 10 on average. Asian Americans’ admission rate to an Ivy School is from 1 to 15 and down to 1 to 25 Asian Americans applied. Asian Americans represent 31% of the total applicants to U PENN and yet only 23% of the matriculated Class of 2005. The numbers are the same for the Class of 2004. Asian Americans are accepted at two-thirds rate when compared to the entire applicant pool's acceptance rate, despite being the most qualified group. Asian Americans must meet higher objective standards such as SAT scores and GPAs, and to meet higher subjective or "holistic" standards such as motivation, overcoming adversities from poverty, prejudice, linguistic and cultural differences from being a racial minority, extracurricular, and character than the rest of the matriculated entering class at Penn. This is due to the upper-limit quota or cap imposed on Asian Americans restricting their numbers at Penn. If not for this imposed quota, their numbers would be much higher at Penn and they would be accepted, at the very least, at the same rate as the rest of the applicants. Yet Penn still has the highest percentage (23%) of Asian Americans of all the Ivy League schools, which average about 14% Asian Americans, in its entering classes. The percentage of White-Jewish students is at 35% at Penn and there is no quota imposed on them.

The upper-limit quotas that existed in the Ivies for Jewish-Americans before WW II have been abolished. Now, they exist at Penn and the rest of the Ivy League schools for Asian Americans. Asian Americans have taken the place of the American Jews in this respect. American Jews represent 2.5% and Asian Americans represent 4% of the American population.

Excellence is being sacrificed for the sake of racial diversity with the exclusionary upper-limit quotas or caps on the numbers of Asian Americans at Penn and the Ivy League schools.

Another common complaint is that the deck is stacked socially against Asian males in a system designed to preserve the princely status quo of the scions of WASP families. The Ivies admit a disproportionate number of attractive Asian American females, some have observed, while far fewer attractive Asian American males are admitted. This subtle bias, critics suspect, is implemented in the screening interviews used by most Ivy League schools.

Desire to Attend an Ivy School is Shared By All Races

(Excerpt from an article “Where are the Baptists at Harvard?” by Jonathan Tilove)

While Ivy League schools have made their mark around the rallying cry of diversity, their own enrollment reflects a lack of diversity. In short, students at schools like Harvard are far more likely to be Jewish or Asian than to be Southern Baptists, conservative evangelical Christians or Italian-Americans. Right now at Harvard, America's most elite school, an estimated 20 percent of undergraduate students are Jewish, and almost the same percentage is Asian. Although Jews and Asians together account for only 5 percent of the United States population, they make up nearly 40 percent of Harvard's enrollment. That's about the same percentage of Harvard students who are non-Jewish whites, a group that makes up more than 70 percent of the U.S. population. Christian whites are far more under-represented at Harvard, relative to their numbers in the general population, than even blacks and Hispanics. In rough terms, the combined Jewish and Asian representation in Dartmouth's student body is about 18 percent; at Princeton, about 25 percent; at Duke, Cornell and Brown, somewhere in the 30 percent range; at Yale, about 45 percent; and at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, about half. In each case, non-Jewish whites are equally under-represented at the other end of the spectrum.

Not all white Christians are underrepresented in the Ivy League. The old white elite--Episcopalians, for example--are bearing up well, abetted a bit by the admissions preference for children of alumni. Moreover, it appears that groups like Italian-Americans and Southern Baptists do not fare so well. "True diversity would look entirely different than it does today," said Brian Burt, who graduated from Harvard Law School last spring after three years as a lonely Christian conservative activist. This hasn't escaped the notice of conservatives like commentator Patrick Buchanan, who wrote in a January column: "Let's make the Ivy Leagues look more like America."

The stakes are high because Ivy League schools are the gateway to America's power elite. How these schools define diversity will help determine the diversity of those elite. Bill Clinton, a poor Baptist boy from Hope, Ark., became president, but only after having his ticket punched at Georgetown, Yale and Oxford.

Likewise, there is nothing diverse in the law school backgrounds of the nine justices of the Supreme Court--five Harvard, two Stanford, a Yale and a Northwestern. Yet Harvard's admissions director, Marlyn McGrath Lewis, says she has little patience with complaints about representation. "Whatever you are, you feel there are not enough of you," she said. "The Italians are after us. I'm sure the Irish may be too. I'm one. The evangelicals are not ones I think have a bone to pick. They are a growth industry in the country, and that's reflected in what's happening here.”  But more than that, she said, it is a "foolish notion" even to look at the question of college admissions--and the ambition to assemble a class of diverse backgrounds, intellects and talents--through the prism of group representation. 

The constitutional limits placed on college admissions decisions were outlined in the Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision. The court agreed that race could be a "plus factor" in admissions decisions, as far as it contributes to the school's diversity. But, as Justice Lewis Powell wrote then, "The file of a particular black applicant may be examined for his potential contribution to diversity without the factor of race being decisive when compared, for example, with that of an applicant identified as an Italian-American if the latter is thought to exhibit qualities more likely to promote beneficial educational pluralism." 

According to a UCLA survey of elite schools, the more selective the school, the more affluent the students are and the more liberal they are. They also tend to be less religious and decidedly less likely to be "born-again" Christians. In other words, if diversity is what these schools want, they ought to be searching out more Christian conservatives. 

To Queens College sociologist Stephen Steinberg, this is the bind that many defenders of affirmative action find themselves in for resting their case on diversity rather than what he considers the more compelling moral logic of reparations for the history of slavery, Jim Crow and continued discrimination. "As soon as you take this argument outside history, you lose. Only history provides the logic and justification for breaking the ordinary rules of admission and access," said Steinberg, the author of "Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy." The diversity argument may have seemed more politically and legally palatable but it is ill-prepared to defend itself against the advances of newly "underrepresented" groups staking their own claims to diversity's mantle, he said. "The whole thing begins to look like pork barrel." 

Kamil Redmond, a Harvard junior from Philadelphia who was just elected vice president of the undergraduate council, says she recoils when she hears conservatives on campus describe themselves as Harvard's true minority. As a black woman at Harvard, "I find that so disturbing. The appropriation of the term 'minority' is so powerful." Groups like Christian conservatives are only playing at a victimhood they have not earned, she said.

Part of the problem may be reluctance among Southern Baptists, Christian conservatives and Italian-Americans to go far from home for college. Olivia Hunt, a junior from San Antonio who heads the Baptist Campus Ministry at Harvard, said only four of the 600 students in her graduating class from Winston Churchill High School went to Ivy League schools, and few others left Texas. Most folks back home don't understand why her family would want to spend all that money when she could get a good education for less and never have to leave Texas, she said. 

Over-representation is not new in the Ivy League, of course. For most of Harvard's history, the over-represented were white, male and Protestant. In 1870, Harvard's student body included seven Roman Catholics, three Jews and no blacks. But now, the combined Jewish and Asian presence on Ivy League campuses has become "just too big to ignore," according to Arthur Hu, a Kirkland, Wash., software engineer and writer who has become a sort of Internet pamphleteer on issues of diversity and representation. "This huge sleeping monster, the Christian right, is the most underrepresented group and they don't know it," he said. But, Hu added, it is now only a matter of time until the least represented begins sounding the mantra of diversity.

Learning It from American Jews and Those in Power

(From Arthur Hu and The American Cause)

Jews were 21 percent of the Ivy League vs. 1.5 percent of the college-age population (14 times overrepresentation) and the figure is higher at the graduate level (at Yale, for example, 60 percent of graduate students are Jewish - an astonishing figure). Asians are about 16 percent (4 times overrepresentation) and let's double that for Chinese and maybe Indians as well. (1999 Princeton Review Best 331 Colleges and the Hillel Guide to Jewish Life on Campus.)

More than a tenth of college professors are Jewish, and that figure rises to about 30 percent at elite schools. According to Alan Dershowitz in his book, The Vanishing American Jew, 76 percent of the 200 most influential intellectuals are of Jewish background.

About 40 percent of the lawyers at the most prestigious New York and Washington law firms are Jewish. In addition, 23 percent of the 500 wealthiest Americans are Jewish and about 85 percent of college-age Jews are in college (this is from Seymour Martin Lipset, a highly respected, but ridiculously centrist and un-innovative, sociologist).

George W. Bush opposes "quotas," even though it was fine for him to get into Yale with a C average, so that "rich quota" was fine and it works for his daughter. Bill Clinton, from an Arkansas single-parent family married Hillary Rodham, who attended Yale law School with Bill. Hillary was from a wealthy Illinois family and graduated from Wellesley College. Not to take any credit from President Clinton of his achievements, but Mrs. Clinton’s family and his roots at Yale and Georgetown contributed significantly to his success throughout his career. Jack Welsh, the retired CEO and Chairman of one of world's largest and most respected companies - General Electric, earned his PhD in chemical engineering from Illinois. He handpicked successor, Mr. Jeff Immelt, who holds a B.S. degree in Liberal Arts with a major in Applied Mathematics from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Harvard University.

“Harvard and the Ivy League have become the major access roads to power in America, and these roads are being closed off to ethnic Catholics and white Christians,” cried Pat Buchanan. 

A few years back, Pat Buchanan’s view was echoed by a Harvard graduate, Ron Unz, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the admissions policies at his alma mater and the student body it produced: “With affirmative action for preferred minorities and set-asides for children of alumni and faculty, foreign students, and athletes, Harvard's student body, said Unz, had begun to look like the Greenwich Village Democratic Club. According to Unz, 15 percent of Harvard's student body is Hispanic or black, 20 percent is Asian, 25 to 33 percent is Jewish, but only 25 percent comes from that 75 percent of America that is white and Christian. Christians are being frozen out of the elite schools that control the access to power in a nation that Christians, primarily, built. 

However, in challenging this Ivy League bigotry, Republicans have shown all the courage of Larry Summers. Nevertheless, Congress ought to demand that the Department of Education require all Ivy League schools to report annually on the religious and ethnic composition of their faculties and student bodies, and, if Unz's percentages hold, should be asked what they are doing to end this discrimination. After all, if it is illegal for Irish cops to get their kids preferences, why is it OK for Harvard professors?” Regardless the fact of 70% white American presence at Ivy schools, Ron Unz’s number on Asian American’s Ivy school presence typified today’s bashing on Asian Americans. And what really matters here is that he is advocating that Ivy schools to admit student based on % of population and not by merit. There is definitely a confused issue of affirmative action on ivy school admissions.

The Trend

(References:  Attaining Ivy; Asian Americans at Duke; What to Do When "Outstanding" Is Average)

“These days, kids feel like they have to be veritable Greek gods and goddesses in order to get into college," says Richard Powell, upper school director at the private Oak Hall School in Gainesville, Fla. Zach Clayton, for example, a senior at Broughton High School in Raleigh, N.C., is a top cross-country runner and a former intern at the Washington office of Sen. Jesse Helms. He has taken several college-level courses and has served as the chair of the National Student Council and a statewide teen Republicans organization. He gets up at 5 a.m. and goes to bed at 1 a.m., answering e-mails deep into the night. Still, the 16-year-old has no illusions about actually getting into his triumvirate of hope: Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. "Everybody knows that more and more schools are simply impossible to get into," Zach says. "It's pretty intimidating."

Like many private high schools, Roxbury Latin High, with 21.1% graduates matriculated at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, strongly encourages its students to apply for early decision or early action. According to graduate Henry Seton, at least two-thirds of his classmates got into college early. For yield reasons, many colleges accept a higher percentage of early applicants than regular applicants; these are usually guaranteed, "Will come.” In the year 2000, Harvard accepted about 1,000 students of the 6,100 who applied early, leaving just 1,000 spots for the other 13,500 students who applied during regular admissions.

Asian Americans with SAT scores less than 1500 have little chance in gaining a regular admission to Ivy League Schools. Moreover, many Asian Americans with SAT scores higher than 1500 were not admitted by any Ivy School. However, those with SAT scores above 1400 if applied early may have a good chance to be admitted.

In addition to applying for early decision, applying to certain schools that traditionally lack Asian American applicants (Chicago, Duke, WashU-STL, Rice, and Tufts) may increase the odds substantially. Duke has difficulty in attracting Asian American students for several reasons, particularly its location in the South. "Most Asians don't pick Duke as their first choice, the most qualified Asian students aren't even bothering to apply." said Patty Chen, president of Asian Student Association at Duke University. 

Christoph Guttentag, director of undergraduate admissions, agreed that Duke's location might be a detractor. "Many families do have a problem with the fact that we are in the South," he said. Stanford has been a favorite for California Asian Americans. However, more and more Asian Americans start to realize that the good old boy network and the geographic center of culture, education and finance of the northeast are important to highly qualified whites. 

Stanford’s white American ratio is at 45% of its student body, a number somewhat less than the white high school student ratio graduated in California, as compared to 70% white at Ivy Schools. This preference by the white Americans is even worse at Berkeley, where white applicants (no correlation to admission) have dropped 50% in the last ten years. Even with a lower admission standard for the white Americans on SAT requirement (100 points lower than the Asian American’s average scores of 1300), the white students at Berkeley are 31.7% of total students. While the SAT scores required for African and Hispanic Americans are substantially lower than those required for the white Americans, Asian Americans are vital to the achievement of academic excellence at Stanford and Berkeley. Consequently, Asian Americans at those schools are peering with less competitive students.

Most Asian Americans cannot forego the temptation of applying to Harvard. Almost all Asian Americans are applying early at Harvard regardless of their real chance in getting into Harvard or other Ivy Schools. The rule of thumb in getting the Harvard admission is pending on the achievement of the 18 year-old high school senior. If the applicant has not won a national title, recognition, or distinguishable accomplishment, the chance of being admitted is almost zero. 

Asian Americans are slow in learning from WASP to apply early to increase the odds of being admitted by an Ivy school. They have difficult time assessing their qualification and accomplishment realistically. However, some have started to work with the high school counselors closely to formulate college application strategies. Particularly the parents of Asian Americans, in against to their tradition of distancing between the teacher and student, are listening to the suggestions from school consolers. On average, an applicant spent 45 days in filling out their early application form and writing that essay. Applicants completed the remaining 6 to 9 applications in less than two weeks after their first school of choice (Harvard) deferred them. It is evident the quality of the subsequent applications have little chance to win. Those who did met with greater success with the benefit of the experience of the high school counselors, who knows what kinds of students from that high school have been admitted by various highly selective colleges in the past.

Determination

Those being admitted by a highly selective college know that the application process alone is worth three credit hours of an advanced humanity class. It is actually more than that; it requires years of preparation to be admitted by an Ivy League school. It takes a joint effort of the parents and children. It takes money, planning, determination, and lots of hard work. 

Most Asian Americans are very academically demanding of their children, but many give up at the very end due to concern for the cost of attending a highly selective college. However, there is no shortage of Asian American parents willing to pay that premium to send their kids to Ivy schools, as they can easily relay the experience of what their parents have done for them to come to America and its relative cost associated with their parent’s income and wealth. The cost does not scare many Asian Americans and prevent their children from applying to a highly selective college. 

Some people say, “Ivy Schools are not for every child” or “Ivy Schools are for nobody but rich and spoiled kids.” To Asian Americans, this sounds like sour grapes or a strategy to eliminate competitions at precious Ivy school admissions. Many Asian American parents with graduate degrees truly believe that their achievement was limited to lack of “Kuan Xi” as “who you know” and concluded that that is where they want to make it up for their children. Moreover, they truly believe it is their responsibility to give their children the opportunity to grow and prosper. Either through their savings, grants, scholarships, or loans, they always seem to find a way to pay.

“Just look at those in the Ivy Schools, you know who will be running our country tomorrow. We need to ensure the dominance of White Christians at Ivy Schools,” said by Pat Buchanan, the conservative Republican and former presidential candidate. Mr. Buchanan may not realize just how much impact that will have on Asian Americans.