Murky, “holistic” admissions policies have shut out highly qualified Asian-American students at Ivy League schools for years, says a complaint that seeks federal intervention at Brown University, Dartmouth College and Yale University.
The Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE) filed the complaint with the Departments of Justice and Education Monday, stating that as the population of college-age Asian Americans has grown in the past 20 years, their representation has leveled off or declined at Brown, Dartmouth and Yale. The group points the finger at the schools’ “highly subjective and discriminatory” admissions decisions.
“The so-called ‘Holistic’ evaluation of applicants by Ivy League colleges disproportionately penalizes Asian-American applicants during the admission process, allowing admissions officers to unreasonably perceive Asian-Americans’ academic strengths as weaknesses and to unjustifiably give Asian-American students low scores in non-academic areas,” a summary of the complaint reads.
The filing requests a federal investigation into the colleges’ admissions processes and calls on the government to ban consideration of race in admitting students there.
A similar complaint against Harvard, brought by Students for Fair Admissions, argued that holistic admissions—consideration of race as an integral part of the “whole applicant”—evolved from Harvard’s earlier efforts to keep out Jewish students to work against Asian-American applicants today:
In the latest complaint, the AACE cites Department of Education data showing that the percentage of Asian American students at Brown has decreased since 1995, remained flat at Yale over the same period, and plateaued in the last decade at Dartmouth.
A spokesman for Yale defended the school’s holistic admissions practices.
“All relevant factors are considered in the context of the application as a whole, and the decision on any applicant does not turn on any one factor alone,” university spokesman Tom Conroy told the Yale Daily News. “In conducting a holistic review, applicants are not disadvantaged in the admissions process on the basis of race or national origin.”
The suit comes at an awkward time for Ivy League colleges. Dartmouth recently denied tenure to English professor Aimee Bahng, despite her earning unanimous approval of the department’s tenure committee, Inside Higher Ed reported. The outcome meant that Bahng, who specializes in Asian-American studies, must have been blocked “higher up in the review chain.”
Meanwhile, former presidential candidate and Harvard Law alumnus Ralph Nader fell short in his bid for a seat on the college’s Board of Overseers. His election campaign centered on the opacity of the admissions process there, and allied him with opponents of affirmative action. His candidacy caused a stir with liberals and the school.
