Dueling columnists: Cezary Podkul | Don't complain about success

Remember that time in your organic-chemistry class when the professor gave back exams? You got a 60, while the kid next to you got a 94 and went straight to the professor to complain that he should have gotten a 96.

"Give it rest," you thought.

This is precisely the same reaction one is wont to have to 17-year-old Yale University freshman Jian Li's lawsuit against Princeton University. The suit claims that unfair affirmative-action policies prevented Li from getting accepted.

"What's he complaining about? He's at Yale," said Alex Man, an Asian freshman at Princeton who may have just stolen Li's spot in the class of 2010.

Just think how terrible things would have been had Li and other rejected Asian Princeton applicants had been forced to - gasp! - attend Dartmouth (oh, my). Or, even worse, Cornell.

Give it a rest. The idea that Asians are getting a raw deal in college admissions due to affirmative action is nothing short of crying over a 94 instead of a 96.

Judged by any standard, Asians have been profoundly successful in getting admission into our nation's top universities. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article on this very subject, although Asians represent about 4.5 percent of the U.S. population, they typically constitute about 10 to 30 percent of students at many elite colleges.

For example, Asian students represent 24 percent of the Penn Class of 2010. By contrast, black and Latino students comprise 9 and 8 percent, respectively.

On the face of it, then, it doesn't look like Asians are getting shafted due to affirmative action.

But, in The Price of Admission, journalist Daniel Golden argues that "Asian Americans are the new Jews, inheriting the mantle of the most disenfranchised group in college admissions" precisely because Asians are being held to a higher standard than other minority groups (read: higher SAT scores).

And, to be sure, the evidence is growing to support this.

Princeton sociology professor Thomas Espenshade recently published a study that Li mentions in his lawsuit against Princeton in which Espenshade concluded that SAT scores and race were highly correlated.

Average SAT scores for white applicants in his study were 1347, 1202 for blacks, 1230 for Latinos and 1363 for Asians. And, because groups with lower SAT scores are given admissions preference due to affirmative action, Asian applicants are the clear losers.

But the major problem with this approach is that it over-emphasizes the importance of SAT scores in gaining college admission.

"College admission isn't all about SAT scores," Man said, "well-roundedness is important too."

Not just important: critical.

More than any pencil-and-paper Saturday morning test ever can, the unquantifiable, personal qualities that candidates bring to the college admission table - their accomplishments, community and extracurricular involvement, motivation and interests - give college admissions officers a true flavor of who the candidate really is.

And so long as our society demands diversity be a goal of our admissions processes, race and ethnicity will inevitably play into the personal qualities under consideration. And historically disenfranchised minorities such as blacks, Native Americans and Latinos will continue to be given an advantage to correct for past injustices and present inequalities.

Rightfully so.

But this is not a racist policy of using non-academic admission criteria to cheat Asians out of admission, as Golden and Li would have us believe. When applicants like Li get rejected, it's not because Penn (which also rejected him) dislikes Asians. Both admit more Asians than any other minority group. Rather, it's because, in the end, they're forced to make trade-offs to satisfy their different stakeholders - purse-wielding alumni, governmental civil-rights watchdogs and irate parents, among others - and pick the most qualified applicants as a result.

And, given that more Asians apply to elite schools than any other minority group, it's only inevitable that even perfect SAT applicants like Li get rejected.

Thus, Asians aren't the victims of any racist college admission procedures. More than anything, they are the victims of their own success. And this, certainly, is nothing to complain about to the Department of Education.

Instead, it's a call to fight the stereotypes that currently pervade the public mindset: That Asians tend to be shy, nerdy, math-and-science-oriented people with little extracurricular or community involvement, save for playing the violin or piano since age 4.

And, if you immediately imagined the complaining student in organic chemistry as a nerdy Asian kid, you can see how much work there is to be done.

So let's fight racism where it actually exists - in our minds - not in admissions rejection letters.

Cezary Podkul is a College and Wharton fifth-year senior from Franklin Park, Ill. His e-mail address is podkul@dailypennsylvanian.com. The Salad Strikes Back appears on Tuesdays.

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