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Rejected applicant alleges bias against Asians
Published: Monday, November 13th, 2006
Yale freshman Jian Li has filed a federal civil rights complaint against Princeton for rejecting his application for admission, claiming the University discriminated against him because he is Asian.
The complaint, which was filed with the U.S. Department of ...
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Good luck to Mr. Li on his complaint. The time for racism is over - it is time to step out into the light of a colorless society.
http://skyofashes.blogspot.com
This lawsuit has zero merit. Just another whiny kid who didn't get what he wanted so he sues. Get over it.
I have seen the number of qualified Asian students who lost to other, underqualified, minorities. If somebody can't compete, then he doesn't belong at a tough institution. Racism in ALL FORMS must end.
Racism of any kind is wrong. Mr. Li is a fully qualified applicant who deserves a seat in Princeton. When will academia repent of this great evil?
Mr Li is right. Proving it is another matter. People aren't used to seeing asians speak up. If Mr Li had been black would we even be having this conversation?
Maybe he should have changed his name to Jack Bauer --- as the Daily Princetonian had suggested.
Why do people always assume that a spot was given to an UNDERQUALIFIED minority as if its impossible for minorities to score well on the SATs and do well in school. He needs to face that Princeton just didn't want him. That underqualified minority could have just have easily been an underqualified athlete or musician who was white or asian or of any other ethnicity. This dude got into Harvard and Yale and needs to quit being a prestige whore. This is just another case of an inflated ego getting hurt. 2400 does not guarantee admission into any university if you dont have anything else to offer but grades and numbers.
This is more about questioning what constitutes minority status. The word minority is generally used to describe someone of black or hispanic descent. Li's argument is more in the realm of semantics. He wants universities to treat Asians as minorities, because, in the context of the population of the United States at large, they are. They do not constitute a majority of the general population, and thus should be dubbed minorities, which would put them in contention with Black and Hispanic students for affirmative action spots. Rather than do this however, they are often pooled with white students, because Asians are an over-represented minority group on college campuses. They are still a minority group, but they are the largest. This eliminates Asians from consideration as a minority in the eyes of the university. What I think Li is really after is for Asians to be put in the minority pool with all other minorities. That means all non-white students would be considered for admission under affirmative action. This doesn't mean I support Li, as I would rather see affirmative action taken out of the picture, because university acceptance should come from qualification not from name and photograph. I simply think he gives the community at large something to seriously consider. In other words, don't just write this off as the immature outburst of a scorned high schooler.
IMHO, something has to be done to address this issue that makes it harder for some kids to attend the school they want than other kids, simply because they are a different skin color.
It's good to know that I'm not the only one who believes Li's lawsuit has absolutely no merit. Li applied to Princeton hoping that he may be rejected, so that he may bring this lawsuit to life. It seems to me that he wasn't all that serious about the application process-- who is to say that he tried as hard on the Princeton application as he did on, say, his application to Yale? What kind of student applies to a college HOPING to get rejected so that he/she may file a lawsuit against the said college?
Furthermore, a high GPA and perfect SAT scores do not guarantee admission to a university. You have to be a well-rounded student. Also, when it comes down to more than a dozen students with perfect scores-- as is commonly the case for elite colleges-- the essay and other components truly do play a big role in differentiating the student from his peers. Mr. Li was not good enough, obviously. I doubt this has little to do with him being Asian American, and more to do with what the admissions officials saw of Li's personality and drive on his application.
I don't mean this to be offensive, but... come on, he didn't get accepted to UPenn. That definitely says something about Mr. Li. UPenn, while an Ivy League school, accepts way more students than the other Ivies, and so there is an increase in the chance that a student has in being accepted in comparison to a student's chances at another Ivy. There was obviously something lacking in Mr. Li's application, since he was denied to UPenn.