Curtis WestbayFor Chinese students, the bar is higher than for anyone else in college admission.
But why?
In most countries, the plurality of international students come from mainland China. The United States is no exception, where around 30-35% of the international student population are Chinese citizens. This composition exists in an admission landscape where race-conscious selection is the normal, i.e. for the most part, colleges not only know, but consider, the race of applicants. (Of course, race is not nationality, but for our purposes today, we are going to consider the concept of racial diversity as a motivating factor for college admission offices.)
Colleges are proud of their diversity— proud to have a varied student community, in which students are challenged not only intellectually, but dispositionally. As the world has become most culturally diffuse than ever before, colleges have accordingly placed priority on ensuring that their student bodies are diverse, as well. Whether their motivations are virtuous (data shows that exposure to classmates of diverse backgrounds benefits students, as I will discuss in later blog posts) or cosmetic (it looks good on a brochure or website to enumerate the number of countries represented on campus), colleges have an interest in architecting a student body that is diverse. In the case of public universities, colleges also have an interest in ensuring that the diversity is representative of the larger population.
As far as representativeness goes, while Constitutional protections are only afforded to U.S. citizens or permanent residents, China is proportionally represented (even overrepresented) at American universities— with around 20% of the population of the world, 35% of international students in U.S. colleges come from China.
Regents of University of California v. Bakke (1977) and the concept of affirmative action
This case was among the first that brought the issue of race-based admission in front of the Supreme Court of the United States. In it, a white Marine veteran named Allan Bakke contended that the University of California-Davis's admission practices for its medical school were an unconstitutional violation of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause. We won't get into what the Equal Protection clause is, apart from saying that the statute says "[no state] shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." In other words, Bakke claimed that a higher admission standard for him, as a white man, than for the admitted minority students was unequal protection of the law. The 14th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution— the set of Federal laws that form the basis of the American legal code— in 1868, three years after the end of the American Civil War. If you know anything about the American Civil War, you probably know that it was fought, primarily, over the issue of slavery, and that since before America's founding, black people in America were forced into slavery by white people.
With the United States' original sin as the backdrop of the 14th Amendment and this clause, it's hard to imagine that, at the time it was written, the legislative body was referring to situations in which white people, who both in 1868 and 1977 made up the vast majority of the population, were being unequally protected. But that's how Bakke's legal team (and the conservative legal movement writ large) interpreted it.
Bakke scored highly in the admission process the first year he applied, with quantitative qualifiers that, within the context of the medical school's applicant pool, were slightly above the average of accepted students. However, with 100 spots for new students each year, the university reserved 16 of them for a special admission program designed to admit underrepresented racial populations. In this case, and as is the case in almost every admission program that resembles it from before or after, the quantitative profile of admitted minority students was lower than for the overall average admitted student. Bakke was encouraged to apply again the next year when he complained about the special admission program to university administrators. He reapplied, was rejected again, and then brought a lawsuit against the University of California-Davis. In the end, the Supreme Court hedged— in an 8-1 decision, the Justices required UC-Davis to admit Bakke but maintained that the special admission program was not unconstitutional, per se. Affirmative action could have been kneecapped in that moment, but the court stopped short of that.
["In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently." —Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, 1978]
In short, affirmative action is a practice or policy designed to offset discrimination against a historically-discriminated-against group. In this case, UC-Davis had designed a special admission program to increase the amount of black, Hispanic, and Asian students who would have the opportunity to study in their medical school. Each of these groups had, historically, been disadvantaged in the United States. The institutions that served them (e.g. public education) were designed in such a way that, on average, they would not be able even remotely competitive with the average white applicant. This case was only two decades removed from the Federally-mandated racial integration of American public schools, which was met with violence, new racially-motivated laws, and intimidation; hardly three decades removed from forced internment of Japanese-Americans; and situated in a centuries-long history of slavery, discrimination, and institutional violence.
Affirmative action is the acknowledgement that a person who doesn't appear as good on paper may have been systemically deprived of the opportunities that contribute to indicators of readiness, and its proponents seek to create equity by viewing the achievements of that person in context. It's important, but I understand why it can be infuriating. Many of our students will be rejected by highly selective American colleges, despite above-average grades, test scores, activities, etc. while students whom they surpass in nearly every measurable way will be admitted. In that case, students tend to feel cheated, like their hard work in test prep classes and students hours and academic competition teams was ignored... but at least these outlets were available to them in the first place.
For many students, these outlets are not available. For many students, caring teachers, skilled advisers, and committed coaches are nowhere to be found in their communities, and they manage to achieve anyway. You don't have to agree with affirmative action, though, so long as you understand that this is why things are the way they are, and it's not for nothing. In any event, you can take comfort knowing that college admission is not a reflection of a Chinese student's achievement, but that achievement is a reflection of a work ethic and persistence that will lead to greatness in the years to come.
Why should you care about any of this?
In a strict sense, you probably shouldn't. None of the precedents established by these court cases really apply to non-citizens, so unless your child is a U.S. citizen, they won't directly impact your child's chance of admission. Personally, I find the cases we will explore in the next three weeks interesting because of the process of legal discovery that was involved in them. That is, because the Supreme Court decided to review these cases, the universities being sued were required to disclose information about how their admission processes worked. Whether the court cases were decided correctly or the plaintiffs were correct in taking legal action to further constrain the license that these universities had in trying to create racially-diverse student bodies won't be at issue, and I'll let you arrive at those sorts of conclusions on your own.