I went to an Ivy for undergrad but also got into all the UCs. My main reason for choosing Ivy was for relatively more diversity since they use affirmative action compared to UCs at the time which was not (and therefore had many many more Asians). As I reflect on my four years there I still see the value in Affirmative Action because by being so much closer with people who were different than me, I learned so much more about the world.

I guess my question is will you feel the same way if you were rejected b/c that you’re Asian?

I also went to an Ivy League and I admit that I cannot feel the same if I were on the other side of the wall because of my race. Our friends are sour because these schools say they value diversity but group us Asians all into one and rejected them because of it. I don’t blame them for not agreeing with affirmative action.

I went to an Ivy with a relatively less Asian population so I made a bunch of asian and non Asian friends by default. I didn’t get into a bunch of schools that I think I would have if I were an underrepresented minority (Stanford, MIT, etc) but I don’t feel like it was necessarily detrimental because I think I still would’ve gotten to where I am now (even if I got into a “better” school). Also I was nice to be around other minorities who were genuinely passionate about other things whereas many other Asians (like myself) cared too much about corporate and/or med/law school. It was just nice to see different paths.

I would ask you to think about your assumptions about Asians. As others have pointed out, state schools are a completely different, more “cutthroat” culture by design. But if relatively more Asians were at your school, why do you assume they would not expand their horizons the way you did, if given the same opportunity to an elite education? Especially because elite schools often open paths that are, honestly, not open for people from larger, less prestigious schools. Schools are of course going to continue to admit a student body balanced across interests in STEM, social sciences, humanities, etc... why do you assume there isn’t a diversity of Asian students like that? This stereotype may have been true once, but look at say, national winners of scholastic art & writing awards. There are a lot of Asians now, in a way that was not true 15-20 years ago.

For decades, Ivies had a cap on how many Jewish students they would enroll because there started to be “too many.” That was removed in the 1950s. Do people think having “too many” Jewish students compared to their proportion in the general population has negatively impacted the experience? Or have Jewish students influenced the schools just as much as the schools have influenced them, and now top Jewish students have a wider array of opportunities?

If we are interested in social justice/mobility through access to elite education, why is there not similar fervor to ban legacy considerations, or athletic admissions for esoteric sports like sailing, lacrosse, and crew that are generally only accessible to an overwhelmingly white, wealthy, prep school crowd? (I understand and support the revenue and school spirit-generating reasons for more egalitarian spectator sports like football or basketball.)

I understand why others have this dismissive stereotype of Asians (too many of them, all the same, all STEM nerds with low social and verbal skills) but we don’t have to buy into it ourselves, and certainly not as a static truth that can never change.

And when I talk with my friends to went to schools without affirmative action who are asian, it seems like they focused more on academics vs “the experience” of college...but obviously I am biased.

Your mileage may vary depending on the activities you participated in college, but a lot of the Ivy League still has a pretty sizable Asian population (perhaps a little less at Brown/Dartmouth) compared to other schools on the east coast

When I got into UCI all the Asians I knew average sat 1500+. My Hispanic friends averaged 1300 and got into Berkeley and UCLA. Hispanic friends use to joke they were so happy they weren’t asian. Hell I joked with them that is rougher to get into UC system as an asian. All our gpa were about 3.8+ and we did everything together as a class so all same AP extra curricular etc. even without AA it’s hard to get into certain schools as an asian.

Note: every single one of us were immigrants that still had the fob accent and knew nothing of the American testing system or that test prep existed, for context my search engine at the time was Yahoo. I graduated class of 03.

Don’t speak for others. And AA is inherently a racist thing.

The other aspect is that UCs are just more academic focused. Easier to get in, harder to get out. Ivy’s for the most part are hard to get in, pretty easy to get out

There are slots that are withheld at Ivy League schools for the children of alumni and the children of those who make large donations as well.

My struggle with AA is because it is sold in as a way to promote diversity by helping those who have been otherwise shut out from the post secondary system in the US, but it seems to neglect the fact that Asians Americans fall in this bucket too because of your skin color and grades, which is a discriminatory act towards Asian Americans.
I think some forget that most Asian Americans choose the UC schools because of the financial aid they can get, and they cannot afford to go to college otherwise.

Just because there is no affirmative action at UCs doesn't mean the admission committee ignores diversity for admits. The impacts of affirmative action on different races is a much bigger conversation than an anecdotal experience of experiencing diversity as an asian american at a ivy so I'd encourage not to conflate those two as a "cause and effect."

My experience at UC Berkeley exposed me to so many experiences with diversity across racial, social, generational, political lines than an ivy ever could given the sheer number of undergraduates with different backgrounds.

At an ivy, you probably get a very small sample size of what a lot of people consider diversity within a student body with a high proportion of recruits, legacy, wealthy students.