"Admissions Bar Higher for Asians" (#256, Topic A)

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal carried a front-page story: "Is Admissions Bar Higher for Asian at Elite Schools?" (it is abbreviated to that shown above as this entry's title). This is a mere rhetorical question, since, from reading the story, the answer is an emphatic YES. A 17-year old, who came from China when he was 4 years old, armed with an almost perfect score -- 2400 (out of 2400) in SAT and 2390 (out of 2400) in SAT2 subject tests in Physics, Chemistry, and Calculus -- applied for admission to 9 schools. One would think that all 9 would welcome him, an apparent genius and a future Nobelist (mark my word), with open arms. Perish the thought. He was rejected by Princeton (#1 in 2006's US News's ranking), Harvard (tied for #2), and even my alma mater Pennsylvania (#4) in the Ivy League, as well as by MIT (#6, the only school affliated with the Ivies for admission purposes) and Stanford (#5) -- the last one is not unexpected, since it is in the Bay area close to San Francisco. Luckily, he was accepted by, and is now a freshman at, Yale (tied for #2). (He was also accepted by Cal Tech (many considered this the most difficult school to get into in the US), Rutgers and Coopers Union.) After reading a research study indicating that for an Asian-American to be admitted to Princeton, he/she "needed to score 50 points higher on the SAT than other applicants to have the same chance of admission", this young man filed a complaint with DOE's Office for Civil Rights, asking the Government to withhold funds to that institution until this inequity is remedied. The matter is now under investigation. The story also cites a 2005 study that Asian-American applicants admitted to U of Michigan had a median score of 1400 in SAT (at that time, before SAT was revamped, the score for SAT ranged from 400 to 1600), 50 points higher than that of "white students", 140 points higher than Hispanics, and 240 points higher than "blacks." The story also gives statistics at UC Berkeley after affirmative action in college admission was banned by California voters -- Asian-Americans constitute 42% of this year's freshman class, up from 34.6% in 1997, the last year before the ban took effect. What a story!