I am shifting my focus from the typical topic of Hispanics and African Americans in education to Asian Americans, because I feel like people don't necessarily talk about them much. The stereotypes like "all Asians are good at math", or "all Asians get straight-A's" aren't really considered bad stereotypes. In fact, it's quite flattering that one would assume us Asian Americans as "smart". However, it's not always a good thing, because as research has founded, more colleges are using these stereotypes to base their admissions on.
According to USA Today, Asian Americans often need test scores hundreds of points higher than applicants from other ethnic groups in order to have a fair shot at admission; and they only represent 6% of the U.S. population. Six.
I also want to take in consideration time, because fixing racial equality isn't just going to happen with a snap of a finger. In 1996, they passed a law in California that banned state universities from considering race and admissions, which has definitely changed the admission rate for Asian Americans throughout the years. However, most people aren't really looking to go to a state school, especially the Asian Americans in California. They prefer to go to UC schools such as UCLA or UCSD. Besides that, studies have shown that the law has increased the number of Asian Americans admitted, which is an improvement and good. Hopefully, other ideas or laws will be considered because colleges should look for students based on overall achievements, not based on race.
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Being an Asian American myself, I found this post to be really intriguing. I definitely agree with all the points you made, and I truly believe that major universities shouldn't simply limit a person's goals solely on their race. I think that as vital as it is to have a diverse ethnic representation at universities, it would be even better to have students that will be successful. Universities with successful students and graduates would give the school more publicity and would give a demographic with higher grades. If Asian Americans do have great achievements, then I would think that universities should prioritize accepting them more. This goes to say for any ethnic background that if you score well, you should be given greater opportunity to be admitted.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your background info on why you researched this topic and found it actually very interesting. I found it very frustrating after reading your blog to find out that some schools require Asian Americans to obtain higher test scores in order to gain admission. It goes to show that stereotypes are still largely prevalent in today's society and hopefully this will change soon.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe that Asian-Americans are only 6% of the population! I'm curious then what you think about the fact that they make up a very large percentage of the UC system. It would be interesting to compare the percentage of Asian-Americans in CA to the percentage in the UC system.
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