Look at the two people nearest to you. Is one of them Asian? If not, then it’s you!

I mean, it’s not a foolproof experiment, but the point is that there are a lot of Asians at Cornell. So many, in fact, that we can safely label them an overrepresented demographic. So many, in fact, that it just makes sense to rein in the number of Asians we admit.

Sorry, does that reasoning make you uncomfortable? I feel like that argument has been used before somewhere … oh right, it’s the justification that Harvard once used for imposing a ceiling on Jewish applicants. I’ll try to be more original this time.

Let’s admit fewer Asians to elite schools because Asians have historically held virtually all of the political and economic power in the U.S., and have routinely applied it to the detriment of other races.

Oh wait, sorry, that wasn’t Asians.

Noting the absurdity of the above arguments then, it might surprise you to know that admissions committees at top U.S. schools, Cornell included, do indeed tend to judge Asian applicants by higher standards than non-Asians. The practice seems at best perplexing, at worst highly illiberal, and deserves discussion.

Before we explore the “why” of this puzzle, let’s take a look at its significance. The first question on your mind, I’m sure (especially if you’re an Asian wondering about whether Cornell’s admissions team had it in for you), is the extent to which Asians actually are disadvantaged in our admissions process. As our undergraduate admissions office couldn’t help me with these numbers, the answer requires a bit of sleuthing.

In 1996, California passed Proposition 209, putting an end to racial considerations in the admissions processes of U.C. schools. This sucks for black Californians, but creates ideal conditions for a comparativist Sun column, as Berkeley’s Asian population has since rocketed to around 42 percent. Assuming West Coast Asians are on average just as strong collegiate candidates as East Coast Asians are, and controlling for East Coast/West Coast Asian population differences, we can use Berkeley’s admissions stats to glean a picture of what Cornell’s would look like without the heightened standards for Asian applicants.

In the interest of space I’ll put the calculations on The Sun website instead of here. The figure I arrive at suggests that Cornell would have around 258 more domestic Asian/Pacific Islander undergrads in the absence of racial considerations in our admissions process. It’s also worth noting that this number is conservative, as Cornell has stronger academics than Berkeley (if we decide to invest our confidence in the current rankings), and the gap between Asians and non-Asians can be expected to articulate itself more broadly among better schools. As this number is rough, it is not intended to incriminate or vilify in a McCarthian sense — only to lend us some frame of reference. The point is not the magnitude of the effect, but the policy itself. Even if the number were 5 or 10 students, the question remains; how did we decide that Asians are, for admissions purposes, white?

Any defensibility of our current admissions tiers should lie in the logic behind affirmative action, which I would construct in one of two (radically distinct) ways:

The first line of reasoning centers itself around individual merit, noting that certain ethnic groups have been subject to extreme experiences that have negatively influenced the trajectories of those communities’ development. As long as the effects of these developmental roadblocks still exist, and their cleavages are still racial, a prospective student coming from a background of disadvantage can be expected to have overcome more challenges than an equally strong candidate from a background of privilege. Thus, the minority applicant is more deserving of the slot. This argument is often vulnerable to class-based critique, although there is evidence that social constructions of “blackness” and “whiteness” influence academic success in more complex ways.

The second rationale is concerned less with individual entitlement than the instrumental value of a college education. Because education of the caliber that we Cornellians enjoy is a sparse commodity, and undoubtedly one of the most valuable resources in the world, an institution with a mind for social justice would aim to distribute that resource evenly among all communities that fall within its scope of concern. This raises an extremely interesting issue. Noting that Cornell is a truly global institution, can the geographic limits of its responsibility to educate defensibly be established within the U.S.? I would argue not. And if Cornell has a global responsibility, any affirmative action policy rooted in this second “instrumental” argument would be expected to aim for a student body that’s a microcosm of global, not simply U.S., demographics.

Seeing as a) Asian Americans have indeed been subject to extreme experiences, even within the past century (deportation, concentration camps, reproductive manipulation, ghettoization), and b) even aggregating the domestic and international Asian populations at Cornell only gives us less than half of 42 percent — the percentage of the world projected to be Asian by 2011 — I find it hard to justify Cornell’s policies towards prospective Asian students.

“Wait — more Asians? We already have so many, and they’re ruining the curve!”… well yeah, that’s probably because a lot of Asians had to be stronger candidates to get here in the first place. This cycle surely contributes to stereotypes about Asians being naturally smarter, which (I’m taking an educated guess here) might feed into the higher suicide rates among Asians at many universities. So we’ll have more Bhangra and Collegetown will continue its transformation into Flushing. We’ll deal with it.

Does this mean Cornell should end racial considerations in admissions? Of course not — the rest of Berkeley’s demographic story boasts a black population of only 3.8 percent. Those who point to the flaws or side effects of affirmative action policies as justification for their repeal miss the larger picture — that the legacies of centuries of staggered citizenship systems (e.g. slavery, colonialism) are still visible and cannot even today be fully explained by class, and that development usually correlates more closely to education than anything else. Either of the above constructions of affirmative action justifies its application towards blacks, Latinos and Native Americans. The loosening of admissions standards for Asians should instead come at the expense of white applicants. This would strengthen the academic caliber of our student body while furthering our commitment to diversity; the combination should not be taken lightly.

A Cornell undergrad can major in Asian Studies, China and Asian-Pacific Studies and concentrate in Asian American Studies, East Asian Studies, South Asian Studies or Southeast Asian Studies. We pride ourselves in our groundbreaking relationship with Beijing University, and are perpetually fascinated with our all-inclusive motto. We are not an institution that has historically waited for the prompting of others to adapt our admissions policies in accordance with evolving conceptions of education, citizenship and justice. I speak directly to President Skorton, the student trustees, and not least the faculty, when I implore you to convince yourself of the integrity of our admissions policies.

Calculations:

I’m only considering the domestic Asian Pacific Islander (API) population here, since Cornell doesn’t post a global breakdown for international students. This doesn’t affect the calculations though, since the point is to find the percentage of Asians that attend Cornell compared to the percentage that apply. Also I’m using the stats on the “Asian alone or in combination” population, meaning for instance that kids with only one Asian parent count. This is the only group that fully represents all prospective students who could legitimately mark ‘API’ on their application. Again, employing this count of the Asian population doesn’t affect the calculations as long as I use the same standards for Cornell and Berkeley. Finally, the numbers from both Cornell and Berkeley don’t represent the entire undergraduate domestic API populations, as they’re only the students who chose to mark ‘API’ on their application. Once again, this doesn’t really matter for a comparison between the two schools, unless we had proof of a behavioral difference between Californian Asians and non-Californian Asians.

The numbers I’m using are Berkeley’s and Cornell’s total undergrad populations in the Fall of 2006.

Berkeley was 42.2% domestic API undergrad. 92% of Berkeley’s students came form California at that time. California has an API population of about 12.3%.

Cornell was 16.1% domestic API undergrad.

If we consider California to be the pool from which Berkeley draws most of its applicants, we can easily calculate the percentage of Asians at Berkeley compared to the percentage of Asians in the applicant pool, a.k.a. California. The trick, then, is to determine a comparable applicant pool for Cornell, calculate the percentage of Asians in that applicant pool, and project Berkeley’s “API’s in applicant pool: API’s at Berkeley” ratio onto Cornell to glean an image of how many API’s would be at Cornell in the absence of racial considerations in the application process. Because Berkeley draws a small percentage of its students from outside California, the coefficient we could actually use is higher than the one I do use, ensuring that the guess is conservative.

The obvious “pool of applicants” to use for Cornell is the U.S. on the whole. Cornell drew 91.7% of its students from the U.S., giving us a percentage comparable to the 92% Berkeley drew from California (not that these specific numbers necessarily need to be comparable for the calculations to be sound, but the larger the “pool” we establish the better).

Here’s the breakdown of domestic API population by region, according to the 2000 Census. I’ve segregated New York from the rest of the Northeast, as Cornell give specific numbers for New York state, which are significant.

Northeast (w/out NY): 3.5% API

New York: 6.2% API

Midwest: 2.2% API

South: 2.3% API

West: 9.3% API

Here’s the breakdown of Cornell’s domestic population by region. Note that this isn’t Cornell’s overall regional population breakdown, as I’ve re-calculated the percentages not as fractions of the student body on the whole but simply the domestic student body.

Northeast (w/out NY): 34.6% (i.e. 34.6% of Cornell’s students come from the northeast)

New York: 35.3%

Midwest: 8.1%

South: 5.9%

West: 15.8%

Note also that there may not be precise overlap between these two sets of numbers - the Census may be including Montana in the West while Cornell includes it in the Midwest or something. Overall though I think the regional divisions of the U.S. are pretty standard, and one or two states aren’t going to unhinge the general calculations, much less my central point.

Multiplying the regional API percentages by the regional percentages of Cornell’s population,

(.353)6.2+ (.346)3.5+ (.081)2.2+ (.059)2.3+ (.158)9.3= 5.1829

we can establish that the overall pool from which Cornell draws its domestic applicants is about 5.18% API.

Now, Berkeley’s pool (the state of California) is 12.3% API, and Berkeley’s domestic API population was 42.8% last fall. Dividing this second number by the first gives us the relationship between the two figures:

42.8/12.3= 3.48.

In other words, in the absence of racial considerations, we can expect the API population at a top school to be about 3.48 times that of the API percentage in the pool from which that school draws.

Multiplying that number by the percentage of API’s in the pool from which Cornell draws its students, which we established to be about 5.18%,

3.48* 5.18= 18.03

Meaning that, in the absence of racial considerations in the admissions process, we could expect Cornell’s domestic student body to be about 18% API. This is 1.9% higher than our actual domestic API population of 16.1% last fall. There were 13562 undergrads at Cornell at the time.

.019* 13562= 257.7

Thus the 1.9% difference translates into about 258 students.

Obviously, there may very well be academic or behavioral difference between Californian and non-Californian API’s. There are certainly differences in the ethnic compositions of API populations on the East and West coasts. In order for that to significantly affect these calculations, one would have to show that West Coast API’s are smarter than- or have more resources than- East Coast Asians. I have no way of knowing this. The other factor that could affect these calculations is whether or not Californian Asians are more likely to accept an offer of admission from Berkeley than U.S. Asians in general are to accept an offer from Cornell. Again, there are no statistics on this matter, so we have no way of knowing whether this is true. My guess, however, would be that Cornell’s higher academic rank would offset the proximity issue as far as average matriculation rates are concerned.

Tim Krueger is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at tkrueger@­c­o­r­n­ellsun.com. Educating Your Guesses appears alternate Thursdays.