b*********k
发帖数: 335 | 1 读罗恩·昂茨（Ron Unz）的长文《美国任人唯贤的神话》
昂茨是一个犹太裔的商人，哈佛本科，斯坦福理论物理硕士。他试图获得共和党1994年
加州州长竞选的党内提名但没有成功，但当时他获得了34.3%的选票，被人笑称为“物
理学书呆子的竞选”。他写于2012年的这篇38页长文《美国任人唯贤的神话》（The
Myth of American Meritocracy）在美国教育界如同重磅炸弹，其翔实的资料（有120
处引文）和严密的逻辑使得他的论点极难被反驳。他甚至在论述中逐一讨论了反方论点
和论据，让人更难以挑战他的论述。
可惜的是，这样的真知灼见不能为今天的主流媒体所容，这篇文章很快就“沉下去”了
。他这篇文章的篇幅如此之大，以至于连华裔家长也没几个读完。
正因为此，我特意写了一个浓缩篇，算是节约一下大家的时间，但是本人水平有限，还
是强力推荐大家去读原文：The Myth of American Meritocracy
常春藤录取制度的时代背景
昂茨文中第一页就点明了整个问题的大背景：今日美国贫富悬殊愈演愈烈，中产阶级每
况愈下。在这种向上流动性大减，“胜者全拿”的社会里，对绝大多数家庭而言进入常
春藤名校是保证子女将来有出息的唯一道路。
This situation, sometimes described as a “winner take all society,” leaves
families desperate to maximize the chances that their children will reach
the winners’ circle, rather than risk failure and poverty or even merely a
spot in the rapidly deteriorating middle class. And the best single means of
becoming such an economic winner is to gain admission to a top university,
which provides an easy ticket to the wealth of Wall Street or similar venues
, whose leading firms increasingly restrict their hiring to graduates of the
Ivy League or a tiny handful of other top colleges.
常春藤名校录取有多腐败？
上图显示了美国社会顶层的1%人口占有了35.4%的财富，前5%的人口占有了63.1%的社会
财富，剩下的95%民众只有36.9%的社会财富。
昂茨无情地揭开了美国常春藤名校录取程序的老底，设计出这种独特的的超复杂和充满
主观因素的录取程序（uniquely complex and subjective system）的最初动机是：解
决常春藤名校里犹太人太多的问题。
二十世纪二十年代年之前包括哈佛在内的常春藤名校是按学术成绩来录取的，渐渐的学
术成绩优异的犹太裔学生大量涌入常春藤名校。掌控着常春藤名校的盎格努撒克逊后裔
们在二十年代发明了这套号称考虑多方面条件的录取制度好把犹太学生的比例限制在15
%之内。
During the 1920s, the established Northeastern Anglo-Saxon elites who then
dominated the Ivy League wished to sharply curtail the rapidly growing
numbers of Jewish students, but their initial attempts to impose simple
numerical quotas provoked enormous controversy and faculty opposition.
Therefore, the approach subsequently taken by Harvard President A. Lawrence
Lowell and his peers was to transform the admissions process from a simple
objective test of academic merit into a complex and holistic consideration
of all aspects of each individual applicant; the resulting opacity permitted
the admission or rejection of any given applicant, allowing the ethnicity
of the student body to be shaped as desired. As a consequence, university
leaders could honestly deny the existence of any racial or religious quotas,
while still managing to reduce Jewish enrollment to a much lower level, and
thereafter hold it almost constant during the decades which followed.
其实其中的秘密说出来一文不值，基于学习成绩的录取制度也许谈不上是什么好制度，
但是至少公平透明，客观性强。但是哈佛大学在二十年代年引入的这套复杂，充满主观
因素的录取制度最妙之处就在于完全失去透明性，你很难直接对比两个学生，而校方就
可以一手遮天，一方面把犹太裔学生数目限制在一定比例下，一方面脸不红心不跳地否
认自己有任何歧视性政策，是不是听上去很熟悉？
那犹太人社团最终是怎么打破这种歧视的呢？无他，掌握了权力而已。
Indeed, Karabel convincingly demonstrates that the collapse of the long-
standing Jewish quotas in the Ivy League during the decade following World
War II only occurred as a result of massive media and political pressure,
pressure surely facilitated by very heavy Jewish ownership of America’s
major media organs, including all three television networks, eight of nine
major Hollywood studios, and many of the leading newspapers, including both
the New York Times and the Washington Post. By contrast, Asian-Americans
today neither own nor control even a single significant media outlet, and
they constitute an almost invisible minority in films, television, radio,
and print. For most Americans, what the media does not report simply does
not exist, and there is virtually no major media coverage of what appear to
be de facto Asian quotas at our top academic institutions.
Different political blocs waged long battles for control of particular
universities, and sudden large shifts in admissions rates occurred as these
groups gained or lost influence within the university apparatus: Yale
replaced its admissions staff in 1965 and the following year Jewish numbers
nearly doubled.
昂茨说的很直白：二战之后，犹太社团通过靠着大规模在媒体和政治上造势给予常春藤
名校巨大的压力。与此同时犹太社团几乎接管了美国的主流媒体，所有三大电视网，九
个好莱坞制片厂中的八家，很多大报社，包括纽约时报和华盛顿邮报都被其控制。而掌
握了权力的胜利果实如此甜蜜：1965年耶鲁更换了招生办公室的工作人员，第二年，犹
太裔学生数量翻番。
与此相反的是，今天亚裔啥也没有，在电影电视电台和出版物上亚裔几乎毫无踪迹。对
大多数美国人而言，主流媒体不报道的事情就不存在，亚裔被歧视当然也就不会有多少
人注意到了。
亚裔成为新的“犹太人”，成为被歧视的新目标。
昂茨列出了触目惊心的数据：Princeton sociologist Thomas J. Espenshade and his
colleagues have demonstrated that among undergraduates at highly selective
schools such as the Ivy League, white students have mean scores 310 points
higher on the 1600 SAT scale than their black classmates, but Asian students
average 140 points above whites. The former gap is an automatic consequence
of officially acknowledged affirmative action policies, while the latter
appears somewhat mysterious.
也就是说，常春藤的白人学生平均SAT分数要比非洲裔同学要高310分（满分1600分），
但是亚裔要比白人同学平均还要高140分。310分差距应该是反映了对非洲裔学生的照顾
政策，但是140分差距则很难解释。
常春藤名校录取有多腐败？
在过去二十年里亚裔的人口，特别是18岁到21岁年龄段人口（上图虚线）大幅增长，于
此对应的是，录取时不考虑种族因素的加州理工的亚裔学生比例也随之增长（和虚线伴
随增长的那条实线）。但是奇怪的是所有八所常春藤名校（其他八条实线）的亚裔比例
都被稳稳地控制在15%-20%区间，而这一切，据校方说，只是巧合！
今天犹太裔学生学术成绩的崩溃（The Strange Collapse of Jewish Academic
Achievement）
昂茨没有停下来，他用大量数据揭示了一个很多人不清楚的事实：今天犹太裔学生学术
成绩的崩溃，如今犹太裔高中生的学术成绩不但远不如亚裔，连非犹太裔的白人学生也
不及。以下段落大家可以仔细阅读，其中数据实在惊人：哈佛大学录取的新生中45%是
白人，而犹太裔学生高达25%，也就是非犹太裔学生只有20%。而实际上只占总人口2.1%
的犹太裔学生的学术成绩不如非犹太裔的白人学生，离亚裔差得就更远了，但是他们占
了常春藤大蛋糕里最大的一份。
In fact, Harvard reported that 45.0 percent of its undergraduates in 2011
were white Americans, but since Jews were 25 percent of the student body,
the enrollment of non-Jewish whites might have been as low as 20 percent,
though the true figure was probably somewhat higher.The Jewish levels for
Yale and Columbia were also around 25 percent, while white Gentiles were 22
percent at the former and just 15 percent at the latter. The remainder of
the Ivy League followed this same general pattern.
This overrepresentation of Jews is really quite extraordinary, since the
group currently constitutes just 2.1 percent of the general population and
about 1.8 percent of college-age Americans.52 Thus, although Asian-American
high school graduates each year outnumber their Jewish classmates nearly
three-to-one, American Jews are far more numerous at Harvard and throughout
the Ivy League. Both groups are highly urbanized, generally affluent, and
geographically concentrated within a few states, so the “diversity”
factors considered above would hardly seem to apply; yet Jews seem to fare
much better at the admissions office.
在昂茨看来，犹太裔学生学术成绩的崩溃是如此明显，你无论用哪个指标去衡量都一样
。原因呢？无他，新的一代犹太裔学生失去了父辈和祖父辈努力向上的动力，读到此处
不禁让人唏嘘，二战结束之后的那一代星光灿烂的犹太裔科学家，工程师，医生和律师
们，如果知道后辈如此不长进，不知道会有何感想。昂茨甚至不留情面地指出，要不是
苏联解体为犹太社团带来了一波勤奋好学的新犹太移民，犹太学生团体的平均学术成绩
还要更糟。
他极其伤感地指出：几十年前，当一流高中生中25%是犹太裔的情况下，犹太裔占据25%
的常春藤席位是非常合理的。如今犹太裔在一流高中生的比例已经跌到了6%，可是犹太
裔学生在常春藤大学中的比例还略有增加。
My casual mental image of today’s top American students is based upon my
memories of a generation or so ago, when Jewish students, sometimes
including myself, regularly took home a quarter or more of the highest
national honors on standardized tests or in prestigious academic
competitions; thus, it seemed perfectly reasonable that Harvard and most of
the other Ivy League schools might be 25 percent Jewish, based on
meritocracy. But the objective evidence indicates that in present day
America, only about 6 percent of our top students are Jewish, which now
renders such very high Jewish enrollments at elite universities totally
absurd and ridiculous.
我觉得耐人寻味的是，抨击现行体制的昂茨(Ron Unz)和诉讼现行体制的布鲁姆(Edward
Blum)都是犹太裔，难道他们都是我们常说的“自恨”类型么？当然不是，他们反对现
行体制因为他们看出现行体制是不可持续和损害美国的长远利益的。
昂茨雄辩般的总结陈词
Power corrupts and an extreme concentration of power even more so,
especially when that concentration of power is endlessly praised and
glorified by the major media and the prominent intellectuals which together
constitute such an important element of that power. But as time goes by and
more and more Americans notice that they are poorer and more indebted than
they have ever been before, the blandishments of such propaganda machinery
will eventually lose effectiveness, much as did the similar propaganda
organs of the decaying Soviet state. Kahlenberg quotes Pat Moynihan as
noting that the stagnant American earnings between 1970 and 1985 represented
“the longest stretch of ‘flat’ income in the history of the European
settlement of North America.” The only difference today is that this period
of economic stagnation has now extended nearly three times as long, and has
also been combined with numerous social, moral, and foreign policy
disasters.
权力导致腐败，集中的权利尤甚。在学校很大程度上决定人命运的社会大背景下，常春
藤名校的录取被把持在很小的一群人手中。而今天这种集中的权力和对权力的滥用竟然
还被主流媒体无穷无尽地吹捧和美化。这种腐败将对美国的将来造成未可估量的损害，
最终所有的族裔都将为此付出代价。 | n********h
发帖数: 13135 | 2 犹太裔的问题一个是藤校的录取已经被犹太裔控制，而且藤校有LEGACY，犹太裔上藤校
容易。另外一个原因是犹太裔在美国很多行业已经掌握了大权，犹太裔的孩子并需要一
个好大学来当敲门砖，靠家庭的CONNECTION，就行了。
120
【在 b*********k 的大作中提到】
: 读罗恩·昂茨（Ron Unz）的长文《美国任人唯贤的神话》
: 昂茨是一个犹太裔的商人，哈佛本科，斯坦福理论物理硕士。他试图获得共和党1994年
: 加州州长竞选的党内提名但没有成功，但当时他获得了34.3%的选票，被人笑称为“物
: 理学书呆子的竞选”。他写于2012年的这篇38页长文《美国任人唯贤的神话》（The
: Myth of American Meritocracy）在美国教育界如同重磅炸弹，其翔实的资料（有120
: 处引文）和严密的逻辑使得他的论点极难被反驳。他甚至在论述中逐一讨论了反方论点
: 和论据，让人更难以挑战他的论述。
: 可惜的是，这样的真知灼见不能为今天的主流媒体所容，这篇文章很快就“沉下去”了
: 。他这篇文章的篇幅如此之大，以至于连华裔家长也没几个读完。
: 正因为此，我特意写了一个浓缩篇，算是节约一下大家的时间，但是本人水平有限，还
| u*****a
发帖数: 6276 | 3 昂茨这篇文章，其数据分析的方法欠妥。比如，从姓名来确定某人是亚裔还是犹太裔而
不是直接去问/查一下该人的族裔；从某些“智力”或“学科”大赛的获奖人名单及其
姓名来代表其族裔在“优秀”的高中生中的数量等。
楼主如果真去看看其它社会学或统计学的学者，对昂茨文章的分析方法的剖析，就不会
如此崇拜昂茨的真知烁见了。
至于为什么一个犹太裔的学者或律师，居然扇自己族裔的耳光，原因是多方面的。说到
底，一个美国人如果真是想对一个重要问题刨根问底的话，就不该因该问题的起因或解
决方案可能对自己的族裔有不良影响而止步。他们的初衷并不“只”局限于为自己的族
裔谋福利。他们首先是美国学者。族裔只是其出生时就无法改变的一个标签而已（
invariable marker)。 | c******i
发帖数: 4091 | 4 能请您科普一下其他学者剖析之后的结论是支持还是否定了亚裔录取限额的事实吗？
【在 u*****a 的大作中提到】
: 昂茨这篇文章，其数据分析的方法欠妥。比如，从姓名来确定某人是亚裔还是犹太裔而
: 不是直接去问/查一下该人的族裔；从某些“智力”或“学科”大赛的获奖人名单及其
: 姓名来代表其族裔在“优秀”的高中生中的数量等。
: 楼主如果真去看看其它社会学或统计学的学者，对昂茨文章的分析方法的剖析，就不会
: 如此崇拜昂茨的真知烁见了。
: 至于为什么一个犹太裔的学者或律师，居然扇自己族裔的耳光，原因是多方面的。说到
: 底，一个美国人如果真是想对一个重要问题刨根问底的话，就不该因该问题的起因或解
: 决方案可能对自己的族裔有不良影响而止步。他们的初衷并不“只”局限于为自己的族
: 裔谋福利。他们首先是美国学者。族裔只是其出生时就无法改变的一个标签而已（
: invariable marker)。
| b*********k
发帖数: 335 | 5 "昂茨这篇文章，其数据分析的方法欠妥。比如，从姓名来确定某人是亚裔还是犹太裔而
不是直接去问/查一下该人的族裔；从某些“智力”或“学科”大赛的获奖人名单及其
姓名来代表其族裔在“优秀”的高中生中的数量等。"
Assuming there is quite some noise using his method as you point out, it
only suggests that if noise is removed, the SAT score for asian students
could be higher than 140 as shown by the study.
常春藤的白人学生平均SAT分数要比非洲裔同学要高310分（满分1600分），
但是亚裔要比白人同学平均还要高140分。310分差距应该是反映了对非洲裔学生的照顾
政策，但是140分差距则很难解释。 | u*****a
发帖数: 6276 | 6 昂茨并没有去统计SAT分数。你自己读读他的文章，就知道我说的人名分析是怎么一回
事了。他是犹太人，关心的是犹太学生的水平。亚裔学生就一陪衬。
裔而
【在 b*********k 的大作中提到】
: "昂茨这篇文章，其数据分析的方法欠妥。比如，从姓名来确定某人是亚裔还是犹太裔而
: 不是直接去问/查一下该人的族裔；从某些“智力”或“学科”大赛的获奖人名单及其
: 姓名来代表其族裔在“优秀”的高中生中的数量等。"
: Assuming there is quite some noise using his method as you point out, it
: only suggests that if noise is removed, the SAT score for asian students
: could be higher than 140 as shown by the study.
: 常春藤的白人学生平均SAT分数要比非洲裔同学要高310分（满分1600分），
: 但是亚裔要比白人同学平均还要高140分。310分差距应该是反映了对非洲裔学生的照顾
: 政策，但是140分差距则很难解释。
| b*********k
发帖数: 335 | 7 what is your point. do you have some study to explain why Asian students
needs to have much higher SAT get admission to university.
No study is perfect. But I guess the key point of his study is that the
admission system is not fair.
【在 u*****a 的大作中提到】
: 昂茨并没有去统计SAT分数。你自己读读他的文章，就知道我说的人名分析是怎么一回
: 事了。他是犹太人，关心的是犹太学生的水平。亚裔学生就一陪衬。
:
: 裔而
| p**f
发帖数: 2610 | 8 本来系统就不公平，这个难道还需要研究吗？
只要学校有种族限额在那里，肯定会有这种现象，这难道不是明摆着的事吗？
现在关键是如何改变的问题。
显然， 按照华人希望的方法（择优录取或者说凭分录取）这是不现实的，这个好像中
国都做不到，中国自己也有少数民族问题以及地区之间高考难度不同问题。
让私立学校就范就更不太现实，听起来有点象扯淡。 本来那些潘石屹之流捐款的时候
可以搞个附件条款来帮助中国学生，但是我觉得他们心底里就不愿意。他们说不定还希
望哈佛降低亚裔的份额呢。 华人一般对族内竞争的重视远大于族外竞争。即使二战的
时候， 蒋委员长都说：攘外必先安内。 很多华人互相之间捅刀子还不亦乐乎。 互相
帮助？这事比较难。
另外太多亚裔就是有名校情结，这就好像中国人喜欢买房一样。其实大家冷静想想，就
算哈佛100%招收亚裔，这个竞争恐怕也很激烈，说不定更激烈（因为激发了更多的亚裔
热情）。就好像在中国买房的人抱怨房价高一样，其实理性一点，大家都别强着买房价
不就跌了吗，但是中国人就是做不到，也不想做。所以也永远摆脱不了自己折磨自己的
命运。
【在 b*********k 的大作中提到】
: what is your point. do you have some study to explain why Asian students
: needs to have much higher SAT get admission to university.
: No study is perfect. But I guess the key point of his study is that the
: admission system is not fair.
| u*****a
发帖数: 6276 | 9 http://sites.google.com/site/nuritbaytch/
自己读去吧。作者是另一个犹太学者。
裔而
【在 b*********k 的大作中提到】
: "昂茨这篇文章，其数据分析的方法欠妥。比如，从姓名来确定某人是亚裔还是犹太裔而
: 不是直接去问/查一下该人的族裔；从某些“智力”或“学科”大赛的获奖人名单及其
: 姓名来代表其族裔在“优秀”的高中生中的数量等。"
: Assuming there is quite some noise using his method as you point out, it
: only suggests that if noise is removed, the SAT score for asian students
: could be higher than 140 as shown by the study.
: 常春藤的白人学生平均SAT分数要比非洲裔同学要高310分（满分1600分），
: 但是亚裔要比白人同学平均还要高140分。310分差距应该是反映了对非洲裔学生的照顾
: 政策，但是140分差距则很难解释。
| u*****a
发帖数: 6276 | 10 Quote:
4. Do HYP discriminate against Asian-Americans?
To address the question of whether HYP discriminate against Asian-Americans,
it is instructive to review the Department of Education Office of Civil
Rights’ (OCR) findings from its investigation into this matter. In 1990,
OCR concluded that Harvard did not discriminate against Asian-Americans on
the basis of race but rather that Asians were disadvantaged by Harvard’s
admissions preferences for legacies (children of alumni) and recruited
athletes, both of whom are disproportionately white. OCR found that the
mean SAT score of recruited athletes, who comprised ~13% of Harvard College
students, was 1273 (out of 1600), while the mean SAT score of students who
were neither legacies nor recruited athletes was 1405. In addition, the
mean SAT score of legacies was 36 points lower than admitted students who
were not legacies.[48] As Asians were much less likely to be beneficiaries
of Harvard’s admissions preferences for legacies and recruited athletes,
their mean SAT score was higher than whites’: the mean score of Asian-
Americans in the Harvard College Class of 1995 was 1450 vs 1400 for whites;
as OCR found that Harvard’s preference for athletes and legacies accounted
for the admissions disparities between Asians and whites, white students
admitted to Harvard who were neither a legacy nor a recruited athlete
presumably averaged ~1450 on the SAT. The overall mean SAT score of Harvard
students was 1390 vs 1350 at Yale and 1340 at Princeton.[49] The SAT was
re-centered in 1995, so these math+verbal composite scores would correspond
to 1530 (for Asians) and 1470 (for whites) today, with the mean for Harvard
translating to 1460 (out of 1600).[50]
The impact of the admissions preference for athletes is vividly illustrated
by SAT score data released by Yale for its 2004 NCAA Self-Study. The mean
SAT score of Yale students in 2001 was 1437, while the mean SAT score for
whites was 1450 vs 1482 for Asians; 24% of white students were athletes (
with a mean SAT score of 1347) vs only 6% of Asian students. White students
comprised 75% of athletes but only 53% of Yale students in general.[51]
Based on the score and enrollment data in the NCAA Self-Study, I calculate
that white students who were not athletes had a mean SAT score of 1482,
while the corresponding score for Asians was 1487. Hence, the higher mean
SAT score for Asians could be accounted for almost entirely by Yale’s
admissions preference for athletes.
Furthermore, as previously noted, Asian-Americans are disproportionately
represented among STEM majors, which has a twofold impact on their admission
to HYP: HYP offer broad liberal arts educations and seek to admit students
with a diverse array of academic interests, thus limiting the number of
potential STEM majors they admit, which would have a disproportionate
adverse impact on the admission rate of Asians.[52] In addition, top STEM
students have higher scores than top humanities/social science students on
every section of the [P]SAT (on average).[53] Thus, the higher mean SAT
scores of Asians vs whites at HYP is not necessarily proof of discrimination
against Asian-Americans on the basis of race. That said, I disagree with
Unz’s conclusion that based on his NMS data, “there appears to be no
evidence for racial bias against Asians” (bolding mine):
Consider the ratio of the recent 2007–2011 enrollment of Asian students at
Harvard relative to their estimated share of America’s recent NMS
semifinalists, a reasonable proxy for the high-ability college-age
population, and compare this result to the corresponding figure for whites.
The Asian ratio is 63 percent, slightly above the white ratio of 61 percent,
with both these figures being considerably below parity due to the
substantial presence of under-represented racial minorities such as blacks
and Hispanics, foreign students, and students of unreported race. Thus,
there appears to be no evidence for racial bias against Asians, even
excluding the race-neutral impact of athletic recruitment, legacy admissions
, and geographical diversity. However, if we separate out the Jewish
students, their ratio turns out to be 435 percent, while the residual ratio
for non-Jewish whites drops to just 28 percent, less than half of even the
Asian figure. As a consequence, Asians appear under-represented relative to
Jews by a factor of seven, while non-Jewish whites are by far the most under
-represented group of all…
Since Unz’s NMS data underestimates the percentage of Asian-Americans among
the students with SAT scores most likely to gain them admission to HYP (
2250+), it is invalid to conclude on the basis of the NMS data that there is
no evidence suggestive of bias against Asian-Americans. Indeed, Asians
reported the highest average SAT scores (2299) in The Crimson's survey of
the Class of 2017, while white freshmen reported a mean SAT score of 2233;
given that Jewish freshmen reported an average SAT score of 2289, this
suggests that the mean SAT score of non-Jewish whites was below 2233,
invalidating Unz's claim that non-Jewish whites are the most
underrepresented group at Harvard in relation to their academic merit.
Finally, Unz’s enrollment data for Asian-Americans at Harvard, from which
he deduces that Harvard has a 16.5% quota for Asian-Americans, is faulty for
two reasons: 1. He does not adequately account for the students who do not
indicate their race (e.g. 6% of Harvard College students do not identify
their race vs only 0.5% of Caltech undergrads) or those who identify as bi/
multiracial (5% of Harvard undergrads vs 3% of Caltech undergrads).[54] 2.
He used the NCES IPEDS racial enrollment data for full-time undergraduates
at Harvard University, which groups together students from Harvard College
and the less selective Harvard Extension School. Harvard College’s Office
of Admissions reports that Asian-Americans represent 22%, 18.9%, 22.6%, and
20% of the Classes of 2014-2017, respectively.[55] Furthermore, according
to The Crimson's freshman survey, 26% of respondents reported Asian heritage
(see footnote 38). While this figure presumably includes international
students, who comprise 11% of the class, this data undermines Unz’s
allegation that Asian-Americans are subject to a quota of 16.5% at Harvard
College.
I would like to emphasize that I am not asserting that HYP do not
discriminate against Asian-Americans but rather that the data Unz presented
do not prove or disprove this question (nor am I defending admissions
preferences for legacies or athletic recruits); in addition, there is no
evidence in the data sets that Unz examined that Jewish students are the
recipients of admissions preferences or that non-Jewish whites are victims
of discrimination (claims that have proven to be untenable in light of The
Crimson's SAT score data). In No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal, Thomas
Espenshade (a professor of sociology at Princeton) and Alexandria Walton
Radford report that Asians applying to eight selective colleges and
universities (in 1997) had the same chances of admission as white applicants
with SAT scores that were 140 points lower (after controlling for GPA and
several other quantifiable variables).[56] Despite this enormous disparity,
which appears to be much greater than that exhibited in the 1991 Harvard
data and 2001 Yale data (and which I believe may be due both to the fact
that Prof. Espenshade’s data conflate Asian-American and Asian
international students and to the overrepresentation of Asians among STEM
students, as I discuss in footnotes 53, 56, and 58), Prof. Espenshade
cautioned against concluding that this SAT score data proves the existence
of racial bias against Asians:
Many times people will ask me, "Do your results prove that there is
discrimination against Asian applicants?" And I say, "No, they don't." Even
though in our data we have much information about the students and what they
present in their application folders, most of what we have are quantifiable
data. We don't have the "softer" variables -- the personal statements that
the students wrote, their teacher recommendations, a full list of
extracurricular activities.[57]
In contrast, Unz had far less definitive data (especially that regarding
Jewish students) and drew sweeping conclusions that were not supported by
the evidence.[58]
While it is true that the percentage of Asian-Americans at HYP is lower than
that among high academic achievers in many data sets that Unz considered,
it is important to note that this is also true for males. This may not be
surprising for the US math olympiad high scorers since 2000 (of whom 55% are
Asian-American and 96% are male), as males are known to be overrepresented
among the highest performing math students, but it has also historically
been the case that males are overrepresented among NMS semifinalists – e.g.
58% of 1995 NMS semifinalists were male.[59] In order to narrow the gender
gap among NMS semifinalists, the writing section was added to the PSAT/
NMSQT in 1997, but it appears that males still comprise the majority of NMS
semifinalists (despite that, on average, females earn higher grades in high
school than males).[60] Indeed, males represent 54.7% of students scoring
2300+ on the SAT, 53.4% of those scoring 2200+, and 52.6% of students
scoring 2100+.[61] Furthermore, among junior Phi Beta Kappa inductees from
the Harvard Classes of 2010-2013, 66% are male, while 42% are Asian.[62]
Should we conclude from this data that female students are over-admitted to
Harvard College? Of course not. In fact, while males are overrepresented
among the top 1.5% of Harvard College students (junior PBK inductees),
females are overrepresented among the top 20% of Harvard College students,
as females comprise 53% of students graduating magna and summa laude.[63]
Hence, we must be careful not to draw far-reaching conclusions from the data
sets Unz considered, as the metrics by which Unz quantified merit are also
gender-skewed and wrongly imply males are underrepresented at Harvard.[64]
[48] The Chosen (2005) Jerome Karabel, pp. 504-6:
http://books.google.com/books?id=zwf-Ofc--toC&pg=PA504&lpg=PA50
Note that OCR found that the UCLA math department was discriminating against
Asian-Americans for graduate admission:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1990/10/2/ucla-program-faulte
[49] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1993/5/7/report-discloses-sats-admit-rate-pa/
[50] http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/equivalence/sat-composites
[51] http://www.yale.edu/ncaa-certification/aintegrity.pdf
A few notes: white and Asian students probably comprised a slightly higher %
of the athletes than I reported, as the “Other” category’s mean SAT
scores were intermediate between those of whites and Asians. Asian athletes
had significantly higher SAT scores than white athletes, which would be
more suggestive that Asian-Americans were discriminated against on the basis
of race, but the number of Asian athletes was too small to draw definitive
conclusions. Finally, the gap between white and Asian students at Yale was
32 points (on the re-centered scale) in 2001, while a decade before at
Harvard, the gap was 50 points, which corresponds to 60 points on the re-
centered scale. The smaller gap may reflect a narrowing gap with time,
disparities between the two universities’ admissions practices, and/or
disparities between their applicant pools, etc.
[52] Indeed, Michele Hernandez, a former Assistant Director of Admissions at
Dartmouth whom Unz cites in his article, advised a male Asian-American
student whose academic interests are science and Latin to emphasize his
passion for Latin:
“‘I told him Latin was way better to stress, and that helped him a ton,’
she said. (He is already in to his first choice institution.) If, as an
Asian American, you apply, ‘as another biology major, as another pre-med,
you are doomed,’ Hernandez said.”
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/03/federal-probe-rai
[53] http://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/7/researchreport-2006-6-psat-nmsqt-scores-academic-achievement-high-school.pdf
see Table 8 and Figure 3. I’m comparing the top math/science students to
the top humanities/social sciences students (i.e. academic intensity = 3).
Not only do top math/science students have significantly higher math scores
than top humanities/social sciences students, they also have higher verbal/
critical reading and writing scores.
[54] Data for Harvard College is taken from “Fall Enrollment by Ethnicity,
2011” here:
http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/harvard_f
Caltech data is from the Fall 2011 NCES IPEDS data.
[55] The Harvard College Office of Admissions Asian-American enrollment data
can be found on the following sites:
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/05/yielding-strong-r
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/05/high-yield-for-cl
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/05/yielding-to-an-in
http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/apply/statistics.html
I suspect that the Harvard College Office of Admissions may be counting bi/
multiracial students reporting Asian heritage in their Asian-American
enrollment figure.
Please see footnote 36 for details on how I determined that Unz used the
incorrect enrollment data for Harvard College.
[56] http://books.google.com/books?id=47rORpFmuBwC&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92
Please note that Prof. Espenshade et al did not disaggregate Asian
international students and Asian-American students, so this may account for
some of the disparity, as Asian international students comprise a nontrivial
percentage of ethnic Asian students at selective universities. My
understanding is that admissions for international students are more
competitive than for American students.
[57] https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/34/81K42/index.xml?
section=featured
[58] In fact, despite that Prof. Espenshade et al found that Asians had the
same chances of admissions as white applicants with SAT scores that were 140
points lower (after controlling for high school GPA and several other
quantifiable variables), Asians underperformed white students in college, as
25.5% of white students graduated in the top quintile vs 20.2% of Asian
students. The median class rank at graduation for white students was 57th
percentile vs 52nd percentile for Asians.
http://books.google.com/books?id=47rORpFmuBwC&pg=PA246&lpg=PA24
Please note that the class rank data cited above does not absolve
universities of the charge that they discriminate against Asian-American
students. Asian students are more likely to major in the natural sciences
and engineering than white students, and science and engineering students
graduate with the lowest GPAs on average (controlling for HS GPA, SAT scores
, etc):
http://books.google.com/books?id=47rORpFmuBwC&pg=PA250&lpg=PA25
Hence, the college GPA of Asians may be depressed by their disproportionate
enrollment in science and engineering courses that award lower grades on
average than humanities courses that are more popular among white students.
It is evident that the question of whether selective universities
discriminate against Asian-Americans is a complex, nuanced issue that I
believe is impossible to resolve based on public data (which is far more
comprehensive than the data available for Jewish students), suggesting the
potential need for another OCR investigation (which would have to control
for intended major).
[59] http://www.fairtest.org/national-merit-awards-again-biased-toward-boys
[60] http://www.fairtest.org/gender-gap-narrows-revised-psat
While females are overrepresented among high scorers on the PSAT writing
section, males are overrepresented among high scorers on both the verbal and
math sections, suggesting that there remains a nontrivial gender gap among
NMS semifinalists. See PSAT score data by gender here.
It is important to note that it has been shown that SAT scores tend to under
-predict the college GPAs of female students:
http://spp.sagepub.com/content/4/5/600
[61] http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat-percentile-ranks-composite-cr-m-w-2010.pdf
[62] Note that Unz claims that 56% of the junior Phi Beta Kappa inductees in
the 1970s were Jewish, yet neither Unz nor anyone else, as far as I know,
has argued that Harvard had a quota for Jews at that point in time, casting
doubt on the significance of the demographics of junior Phi Beta Kappa
inductees. Of course, it is not unlikely that Unz overestimated the
proportion of Jewish PBKs in older data (I haven’t checked), just as he did
with the IMO data (as shown by Prof. Mertz), enabling him to exhibit a
spurious collapse in Jewish academic achievement.
Also, neither Unz nor I attempted to disaggregate Asian international
students from Asian-American students among Harvard Phi Beta Kappa inductees
. It’s possible this may overstate the performance of Asian-American
students at Harvard; for example, Prof. Mertz showed that the majority of
Putnam Fellows of Asian descent were actually Asian international students,
not Asian-American students here (see Table 1b on p. 5). For further info
on the ethnic background of high scorers in the Putnam math competition,
please see Prof. Mertz’s article published in Notices of the American
Mathematical Society.
[63] My calculations are based on the commencement data published here:
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/05/degrees-certifica
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/05/degrees-certifica
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/05/degrees-of-succes
Harvard College is 50% female: http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/harvard_fact_book_2012_enrollment.pdf
[64] I want to clarify that I am not contradicting myself by asserting that
Asians and Jews represent a higher proportion of the highest scorers on the
[P]SAT than Unz claimed and then cautioning that such data should not be
used to draw sweeping conclusions about the demographics of HYP. I’m
arguing that properly applying Unz-ian logic that the ethnic/racial
distribution of HYP should mirror that of the top 0.5% of [P]SAT scorers
does not support Unz’s conclusion that non-Jewish whites are
underrepresented at Harvard, as the % of Jews and Asians among the top 0.5%
of [P]SAT scorers is almost certainly higher than their representation among
NMS semifinalists. However, my broader point is that the whole notion that
the demographics of Harvard should mirror that of the top 0.5% of [P]SAT
scorers is flawed.
Furthermore, Unz did not account for the fact that the Harvard applicant
pool may not mirror the set of NMS semifinalists in another respect: low-
income students who score in the top 10% on the SAT are less likely to apply
to elite universities than high-achieving middle and upper class students:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/education/scholarly-poor-ofte
Finally, as I discuss in footnote 90, white students comprised only 56% of
the applicants to the most competitive private institutions studied by Prof.
Espenshade:
http://books.google.com/books?id=47rORpFmuBwC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73 | t*******m
发帖数: 999 | 11 多谢楼主。好文要顶。华人要掌握话语权。
我们这一代父母可能不会引导孩子进入政治，媒体等领域。一是风险未知，二是也不知
如何引导。
但是我们自己，可以做些努力。对于事业已经比较稳定的华人，我们可以有多种渠道参
政。
120
【在 b*********k 的大作中提到】
: 读罗恩·昂茨（Ron Unz）的长文《美国任人唯贤的神话》
: 昂茨是一个犹太裔的商人，哈佛本科，斯坦福理论物理硕士。他试图获得共和党1994年
: 加州州长竞选的党内提名但没有成功，但当时他获得了34.3%的选票，被人笑称为“物
: 理学书呆子的竞选”。他写于2012年的这篇38页长文《美国任人唯贤的神话》（The
: Myth of American Meritocracy）在美国教育界如同重磅炸弹，其翔实的资料（有120
: 处引文）和严密的逻辑使得他的论点极难被反驳。他甚至在论述中逐一讨论了反方论点
: 和论据，让人更难以挑战他的论述。
: 可惜的是，这样的真知灼见不能为今天的主流媒体所容，这篇文章很快就“沉下去”了
: 。他这篇文章的篇幅如此之大，以至于连华裔家长也没几个读完。
: 正因为此，我特意写了一个浓缩篇，算是节约一下大家的时间，但是本人水平有限，还
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