A study conducted by three researchers at Princeton has concluded that African Americans and Hispanics receive “boosts” equivalent to 230 and 180-point SAT increases, respectively, in college admissions. Asian Americans, meanwhile, are penalized by the equivalent of 50 points.
According to the authors (Thomas J. Espenshade, Chang Y. Chung and Joan L. Walling), the objective of the study was to examine “how preferences for different types of applicants exercised by admission offices at elite universities influence the number and composition of admitted students.” In essence, the study attempts to quantify how much an applicant’s race is worth using SAT scores as a benchmark.
Ann Lee, who runs a college preparatory tutoring center in Arcadia, Calif., an area home to a large population of Asian Americans, said in a presentation about college admissions that Asians need higher SAT scores than students of other races to be admitted to top universities nationwide. Her business has begun to attempt to help Asian applicants differentiate themselves from other applicants of the same race in order to increase students’ admissions chances.
Read more about Lee and her business at the Los Angeles Times, and read the Princeton study here.
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