[fish45]

I just want to point out that this is part of the premise of the original article:

> Harvard’s admissions policies make me especially queasy, because the burden rests so heavily on Asian Americans. Still, it advances the important goals of exposing students to a somewhat broader range of colleagues and helping to lift more underrepresented minorities into positions in the power elite, which remains heavily white.

Generally, going to prestigious schools benefits under represented minorities more than it benefits Asian Americans to an extent that affirmative action can be effective at addressing systemic inequalities, but it's still discriminatory against Asian americans to do so. It's a matter of opinion whether it's a good tradeoff or not

[strikelaserclaw]

Is there anything that the admissions committee can do to make sure that admission is totally discrimination free? Even evaluating by pure test results would mean that there is systematic discrimination towards the unprivileged. Asians are extremely well represented at top schools, i'm not sure what they are fighting for?

[fish45]

The thing is that there's two levels of possible discrimination; systemic discrimination and admissions discrimination. Pure test results are discrimination free at the admissions level, but they don't address systemic inequities. To accommodate for systemic inequities, we use admissions discrimination. Again, that's not necessarily a bad thing; the author thinks it's a worthy tradeoff.

> Asians are extremely well represented at top schools, i'm not sure what they are fighting for?

The truth is that Asian Americans have to get higher test scores / GPA / extracurriculars to get into prestigious schools. It's true that this might have a positive affect on reducing systemic discrimination in the long run, but it's hard for Asian American applicants to accept that the burden should be placed on them.