Asian-Americans and College Admissions

American higher education remains the primary ambition of society. It has become the most prized path to social mobility and economic independence, rewarding people from all backgrounds and races. Yet striking changes have occurred in American universities that shifts emphasis on merit towards offering higher education to a specific, privileged race, while limiting the quotas of others, namely Asian-Americans.

Just as their predecessors of the 1920s always denied the existence of “Jewish quotas,” top officials at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the other Ivy League schools today strongly deny the existence of “Asian quotas.” (Unz) , however, statistical evidence suggests otherwise. Based on the data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics, Harvard’s enrollment of Asian-Americans began gradually declining from 20.6 percent in 1993 to about 16.5 percent over most of the last decade. While the decline may seem small, an increase in the college-age Asian population increased, while the non-Hispanic white numbers remained almost constant, thus resulting in an unchanged percentage of non-Hispanic whites enrolled in Harvard (“Digest of Education Statistics”). During the same period of time, the total amount of Asian-Americans enrolled at other Ivy League schools also fell and have remained static over time. As a result, suspicions of a joint Ivy League policy to restrict Asian-American numbers to a particular percentage have become apparent.

With over thousands of colleges to choose from, the ones that are on the list of most Asian-Americans seem to be schools such as MIT, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, and maybe Duke, if all else fails. Even with perfect SAT’s and stellar transcripts, so few make the ...

... middle of paper ...

...rsity, many of these students would be denied an equal opportunity for higher education. Moreover, diversity consideration in admissions enables colleges to form the most effective learning environment, allowing students to learn how to interact with all different kinds of races, thus setting up success in todays multicultural economy.

College admissions have began to place more and more consideration and emphasis on race rather than merit alone. While some races benefit from this shift, Asian-American applicants struggle to make the cut. They have become the demographic that has gotten squeezed by the admissions process and put to a disadvantage from the rest of the applicant pool. People should think openly about race and diversity, as it is the key to a more uniform and more unbiased society, both inside and outside the closed walls of the admissions process.