Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

Last week on Nightline there was a story about the admission process at elite universities. In particular it focused on Duke where Keith Brodie, a former president of the university, said that there are three ways a student may be admitted. One is through pure merit, a second way is through legacy where family members had graduated from Duke and have contributed to it, and a third way is what he called "development admit" where a rich and or famous person's son or daughter is admitted with the good possiblity that a donation will be forthcoming. In the past I have heard that legacy is very important, seeing how Bush got into Yale that way as did Gore's children got into Harvard, for example. This so called development admit, which I had not heard of, is even more odious as this is simply buying a spot. Several years ago, in response to protest from Asian Americans regarding their need to have higher grades and SAT scores than whites to get in, Harvard actually came out and said legacy admits and the lack of athletes among Asians were the reason for the higher scores and grades of admitted Asian students than white students. I guess Harvard and other schools feel that is a fair way of doing admission because several years later the policies have not changed. I wonder if develeopment admits are also present at Ivy League schools?

I think most of us would agree that we should have a total meritocracy. Legacy and development admits are bad words to me in the process of admissions. We should have more outcry to get rid of them. There is also the so-called "holistic" approach to admission among the elite universities today. Of course everybody knows that is just euphemism for trying get underrepresented minorities into the schools. And the real reason why these schools try so hard to recruit these minority students is just to make the numbers look better so that the university is not charged with racism. (as they have been at UCLA and Berkeley) Many Asian Americans, despite being well-represented at elite universities, feel that they are being discriminated against as a result of "legacy"and "holistic" admissions. Daniel Golden, who wrote "Price of Admission" was also on the Nightline story. He agrees with these Asian Americans that if merit was the only consideration, Asian Americans would be even more represented in the elite schools.

While I personally would agree that legacy, development, sports and holistic are all bad words and ideas that should be rid of in the admission process, I feel that Asians should not feel too bad about this. The Jews were discriminated at the universities in the past and yet they came to dominate at every elite university. Many Jews who were denied admissions to certain schools in the past have became tremendously successful after going to some lesser known school. The truth is you can do quite well by going to a less prestigious school. This is particularly true if you plan on going to graduate or professional schools. A cousin of my wife went to Boston University after not getting into Ivy League schools. Upon graduating with a chemistry degree she was overwhelmed with offers to prestigious graduate programs. So it is not so much where you go to school but how you use the opportunities that were given to you. In the long run those who have to run uphill will be stronger than those who can coast downhill.