Admissions about admissions

Correction and editor's note appended

An article appeared in this paper on Monday about how Asian kids who gain admission to elite universities tend to have higher SAT scores than kids of other races who also get in. On average, admitted Asians score 140 points higher than admitted whites, and 450 points higher than admitted blacks. This is troubling, of course, because it points to racist standards: If a white kid and an Asian kid both get a 1460 on their SATs, why should the white kid get in over the Asian kid almost every time? If, all other things being equal, the elite university picks the white kid every time, then something is wrong.

I think the universities have to say that all other things are not equal. In addition to SAT scores, they consider personal statements, recommendations, extracurriculars and interviews. The justification, then, is that the Asian kid with the 1460 doesn’t measure up to the white kid in these non-academic areas.

This explanation, however, leaves us in an uncomfortable position. Here we have a study of thousands of cases, almost all with the white kid prevailing. We’re forced to say that, for whatever reason, Asians are not as good at writing personal statements, garnering positive recommendations or giving positive impressions in interviews — or, at least, not as good at doing these things in a way that pleases admission committees.

Either the non-academic admission standards of a university are indeed good standards and Asians are deficient in these areas, or those standards are out of whack. So which is it?

I will feel dishonest if I don’t at least float the possibility that the stereotypes are true: that, say, many kids from Asian households are good at getting A’s but good at little else. Different cultures can, after all, emphasize certain personal attributes as important to acquire and gloss over others as less relevant. There is no guarantee that the emphasized aspects are good, or the glossed-over aspects bad.

On the other hand, I think that the history of college admissions gives us plenty of reason to be suspicious that today’s standards are far from perfect.

The SATs started in 1901, and for a while they and similar College Board tests were the only gate keepers. Anyone with good scores and enough money to pay tuition could go to a top school. Quickly, though, these standards threatened the old way of life: By 1922, more than a fifth of Harvard students were Jewish, much to the consternation of the administration. There was no mincing words over the Jews, who were seen as “sickly and grasping, grade-grubbing and insular.” But the genteel gentiles were not so crass as to shut the Jews out entirely, or even use a quota system. Instead, they adopted a new standard for admissions: well-roundedness.

Let me repeat that for emphasis. The notion of a well-rounded college applicant was invented to keep Jews out of the Ivy League. The full story behind this can be found in the book “The Chosen,” by Jerome Karabel. (There’s a copy on reserve in the CJL library.) Rather than being judged on a purely academic basis, applicants were now judged on other qualities, including athleticism, character and even “speech, dress, deportment and physical appearance.”

Eventually a concern for diversity took a more prominent role, but the “well-rounded” criterion stayed on. After all, the justification for seeking well-rounded students rings true: SAT scores are decent predictors of college grades, but do college grades predict post-college success? Evidence is inconclusive at best. So, since post-college success presumably matters more than college GPA, we should be selecting for more than just high school grades and SAT scores. Enter well-roundedness.

The problem is, while SAT scores are happily objective, well-roundedness is through-and-through subjective. Can there even be a definitive answer as to whether any given applicant is well-rounded or not? What we can say is that our current notion of well-roundedness has an elitist, good-old-boy, even anti-Semitic past.

I find it easy to believe that many Asian applicants are indeed well-rounded, in the sense that they are well-poised for post-college success. Cultural differences, however, might mean that well-rounded Asian kids would look different than well-rounded white kids. Since our current standards were originally designed by and for WASPs, they may well fail to recognize these success-poised Asian kids. Admissions criteria have come a long way, but there is still more nuance that they should recognize.

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Correction

An earlier version of this column incorrectly stated that a study covered in Monday's issue of The Daily Princetonian found that Asian students who gain admission to Princeton tend to have higher SAT scores than students of other races who also gain admission. In fact, the study found that Asian applicants may face discrimination in the admission process at many elite universities. The study did not include research done about Princeton’s admission policies.

Editor's note