Race and Princeton Admissions

There was a piece up on “BuzzFeed” recently about a federal probe into Princeton’s admissions practices.

A piece up on “BuzzFeed” by Molly Hensley-Clancy entitled “Asians With ‘Very Familiar Profiles’: How Princeton’s Admissions Officers Talk About Race” highlights comments about Asian, Latino, and African American applicants discovered as part of a federal probe into Princeton University’s admissions practices over potential racial bias. Regular readers of our college admissions blog may remember that Hensley-Clancy previously reported a couple of months back that Princeton was trying to block its admissions records from being released.

As reports Hensley-Clancy in her “BuzzFeed” piece, “Documents obtained by BuzzFeed News show Princeton’s admissions officers repeatedly wrote of Asian-American applicants as being difficult to differentiate, referring to them dismissively as having ‘very familiar profiles,’ calling them ‘standard premeds,’ or ‘difficult to pluck out.’ The comments were noted by civil rights investigators at the Education Department as they probed allegations of racial bias in the school’s admissions system. Of a Hispanic applicant, an admissions officer wrote, ‘Tough to see putting her ahead of others. No cultural flavor in app.’ Of a black student, another said, ‘Very few African Americans with verbal scores like this.'”

Hey hey, ho ho, discrimination has got to go. What do we want? Equality. When do we want it? Now.

We at Ivy Coach have been shouting from atop our college admissions soapbox for years and years how all highly selective colleges discriminate against Asian American applicants in particular in these very kinds of ways. While Princeton is being singled out in this federal probe, the university is certainly not alone. Not even close. And we firmly believe that Asian Americans deserve better in highly selective college admissions. Until we see this kind of change, until we see an end to Asian American discrimination in admissions practices, we’ll continue to speak about it vocally from atop our soapbox.