Whom Do Colleges Discriminate Against Most?

Asian-Americans love elite colleges more than elite colleges love Asian-Americans. But do East Asians or South Asians get the fuzziest end of the lollipop in college admissions?

From Scientific Reports:

The disparate impacts of college admissions policies on Asian American applicants

Open access

Published: 23 February 2024

Joshua Grossman, Sabina Tomkins, Lindsay Page & Sharad Goel

Abstract

There is debate over whether Asian American students face additional barriers, relative to white students, when applying to selective colleges. Here we present the results from analyzing 685,709 applications submitted over five application cycles to 11 highly selective colleges (the “Ivy-11”). We estimate that Asian American applicants had 28% lower odds of ultimately attending an Ivy-11 school than white applicants with similar academic and extracurricular qualifications. The gap was particularly pronounced for students of South Asian descent (49% lower odds). Given the high yield rates and competitive financial aid policies of the schools we consider, the disparity in attendance rates is likely driven, at least in part, by admissions decisions. In particular, we offer evidence that this pattern stems from two factors. First, many selective colleges give preference to the children of alumni in admissions. We find that white applicants were substantially more likely to have such legacy status than Asian applicants. Second, we identify geographic disparities potentially reflective of admissions policies that disadvantage students from certain regions of the United States. We hope these results inform discussions on equity in higher education.

… Here we analyze 685,709 first-year college applications submitted by 292,795 Asian American and white students to the “Ivy-11”, an 11-college subset of 13 highly selective colleges often included among the “Ivy-Plus”.

It would seem that if you got your hands of data for 685,709 college applications submitted by Asian and white high school students to elite colleges, you could also get your hands on data for applications by black, Hispanic, and American Indian students. But, apparently, that’s such a hot potato that that’s only available by a court-ordered subpoena, as in the 2023 Harvard Supreme Court case.

While there is not an agreed-upon definition of “Ivy-Plus”, the “Ivy-Plus” set of colleges most often includes all eight Ivy League colleges (Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University) along with one or more of five other institutions: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University, the University of Chicago, Stanford University, and Northwestern University15,16. Identifying potential disparate impacts of “Ivy-Plus” admissions policies is of particular importance, as alumni of “Ivy-Plus” schools are disproportionately represented in positions of power11. For students admitted in the 2018–2019 admissions cycle, both these 13 “Ivy-Plus” colleges and the “Ivy-11” colleges we consider have yield rates between 54 and 82%, and acceptance rates between 4.2 and 10.6%. The yield rate of a college is the probability an admitted student ultimately enrolls.

To respect the wishes of our data provider, we do not reveal the precise set of “Ivy-Plus” institutions included in the Ivy-11.

There’s a lot more fun stuff below about Asian and white applicants, but, please note, nothing really fun about affirmative action racial quotas.

Paywall here.