3/31/06 The Dartmouth: “Class of 2010 receives decisions,”
    Of the 13,937 applicants to the class of 2010, a record low of only 15.4 percent were offered admission, which surpasses last year's previous record-low admission rate of approximately 17 percent. Of the 2,150 students offered admission this year, 398 were accepted as early decision applicants back in December. 
    One measure of the strength of the applicant pool is in its SAT averages. Of the total applicants, about 2,200 students had received an 800 on either the verbal or math portions of the SAT, more than the total number of students ultimately admitted. 
    Admitted students exhibit a strong minority representation, with 39.5 percent of admits being students of color, up slightly from last year's 38.8 percent. 
    Asian American students made up 17.7 percent of admits and Native Americans 3.6 percent, both up slightly from last year. 
    African American students held about steady at 9.6 percent of admits, as did Latino and multi-racial students at 7.6 and 1.0 percent of acceptances respectively.
    Women dominate the largest ever proportion of admits at 51.4 percent with 62 more females admitted than males.  Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg attributes this increase to the greater growth of applications from women.
    Approximately 147 students, or 6.8 percent of admits, are Dartmouth legacies.

3/30/06 www.dukenews.duke.edu: “Duke Mails Admissions Decisions to More than 19,000 Applicants for the Class Of 2010: Friday’s mailing brings the university’s total offers of admission to 3,778 students, including 470 early decision applicants accepted in December.”
    Durham, N.C. -- Duke University will mail decision letters Friday to 19,358 high school seniors who vied for admission to the Class of 2010 from every state and dozens of nations.
    Friday’s mailing brings the university’s total offers of admission to 3,778 students, including 470 early decision applicants accepted in December. The university expects 1,665 of the accepted students to enroll this fall. The admissions rate of 19 percent is the lowest on record since the university began keeping track of data in the late 1950s.
Christoph Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions.
    One in six applicants with a class rank was ranked first in his or her class. Duke admitted only 42 percent of the 1,548 valedictorians who applied for admission. More than 1,300 of this year’s applicants had SAT scores of 1,550 or above on the math and verbal sections of the test; Duke admitted 59 percent of these students.
    Other records broken this year include the number of African American applicants (2,122), Asians/Asian Americans (4,735) [24.5% of 19,358 applicants]  and Latinos (1,234).  


11/15/2006 Harvard Crimson: “Fighting for Depth: At Harvard and beyond, superficially positive Asian stereotypes carry harmful—and complex—consequences.”
By Alwa A. Cooper
   Peipei X. Zhang ’08, Asian-American and unrepentant English concentrator, wants you to know that she does not like math. Not science, either, though she’s good at both. Economics is boring, and keeping quiet is overrated. “When I was younger, I was the fuckup. I did my schoolwork, but I played a lot. I wasn’t as studious as every other Asian kid. Like, there’s a lot of shy Asian girls, but I’m not them,” Zhang says, fashionably groomed in a cable-knit sweater and tweed shorts.
    “When I was applying to college, everybody expected me to fail, because I wasn’t fitting into the stereotype of a good Asian child, according to the traditional Asian parents. Among my parents’ friends, no parent told their child, ‘Be like Peipei,’” she says.
    In high school, Zhang excelled academically and participated in a slew of extracurriculars, but it was her outgoing personality that stood out: teachers told her she was “too loud” to be an Asian girl. And yet, Zhang succeeded in winning a spot at Harvard. The Chinese-American community she grew up with in Boston was shocked. “When I got into Harvard, the other parents were like, ‘How the fuck did she get in?’” she says.
    While Zhang and the rest of Harvard’s future Class of 2008 were preparing their college applications, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel L. Golden ’78 was writing a series of articles on the inequalities of admissions practices at top-tier universities that would earn him a Pulitzer Prize. Many of the articles, and the vast majority of Golden’s book—“The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates,” published in September—focus on preferences given to wealthy white students. However, sandwiched between chapters on “A Break for Faculty Brats” and “The Legacy Establishment” lies a section that touches a nerve recently exposed by affirmative action cases at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Michigan: “The New Jews: Asian-Americans Need Not Apply.”
    Much like Jews were before the 1950s, Asian-Americans are “shortchanged relative to their academic performance,” writes Golden. They are held to a higher academic standard in admissions, and are routinely admitted to the highest-level schools at the lowest rates of any ethnic group, including whites. Golden interviewed several current and former admissions officers at these schools to tease out a justification for the numbers. As it turned out, no sweet-talking was required. Official after official went on the record for Golden on the matter. The reasons for the rejections? One Korean student, applying from a top prep school, got pegged at MIT as “yet another textureless math grind.” At Vanderbilt, a former admissions staffer offered that Asians “are very good students, but don’t provide the kind of intellectual environment” that colleges are looking for.
    THE FIRST “MODEL MINORITY”
    On January 7, 1928, six years after Harvard President and acknowledged xenophobe A. Lawrence Lowell, Class of 1877, decided to make it his business to keep Jews out of Harvard, an article called “Trial By Jewry” appeared in The Harvard Crimson. The article was a short news piece—not an editorial—running just 315 words, half of which were devoted to a racist attack on Jews.
    “Individually, by their artistic ability and business acumen the Jews play an important part in American life. But, in their race clannishness, they choose to constitute a distinct body. And as such they are a perfectly legitimate subject for discussion,” the author says. “Race pride is a powerful and admirable force, but it would seem that the Jews could attain the desired friendly unity with the Gentile much sooner if the chord were not struck so loudly and often.” These few damning words sum up the experience of the Jewish student at Harvard, and indeed the Jewish person in America , until the mid-1950s. Jews, many of whom were only first- or second-generation immigrants, if that, were seen as pseudo-American. But due to their growing population and prosperity, it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore their presence.
    As Jewish numbers climbed at the institutions of higher learning that had once been reserved for long-established families of white Protestant descent, anti-Semitism increased. Nevertheless, by the time Lowell took over as Harvard president in 1909, Harvard was more than 20 percent Jewish, according to a recent New Yorker article. Alarmed, President Lowell eventually instituted a quota that cut the population of Jews at Harvard down to 15 percent over his 24-year tenure. To justify its actions, Harvard turned to Jewish stereotypes of “race clannishness” and abilities limited to purely brainy pursuits. The message sent was that Jews as an ethnicity were one-dimensional, presented little benefit to a university but brainpower without personality, and tended to self-segregate. Almost 100 years later, Harvard’s attitudes toward Asian-Americans, another “model minority,” has echoes of its past attitudes towards Jews, both in its admissions and in its approach to University life in general.
    SOUND FAMILIAR?
    At Harvard, Asian-American concern over suspected discrimination in admissions predates Golden’s book. In 1992, an admissions official met with members of the Asian-American Assocation (AAA) to reassure them that, despite reports that Asian-American students consistently had the lowest admit rates of any ethnic group at Harvard while having the highest SAT scores, a quota designed to lower their numbers did not exist. The difference between the rates of admission between Asian and white students was chalked up to preferences for legacy and recruited athletes, two categories that are filled almost entirely by white students. Despite the lower rate of admission—The Crimson reported that for the Class of 1995, Asians were admitted at a 17 percent rate, whites at 19 percent, Hispanics at 20 percent, and black students at 32 percent—the population of Asian students at Harvard has dropped only slightly from a high of a full fifth of the student body in 1992 to about 17.7 percent now. Asians made up 3.6 percent of the national population in the 2000, and that figure is rising, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
    Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73 writes in an e-mail that this discrepancy in representation doesn’t concern the Admissions Office. “A fundamental thing to understand is that we do not think of ‘representativeness’ as a goal of our admissions process. We do not use goals, targets, or quotas in choosing among applicants,” writes McGrath Lewis. “When our proportions of Asian-Americans are larger than their proportion in the country as a whole, that simply indicates how well those who did apply did compared with other applicants in our pool.” As for Golden’s accusations of stereotyping, McGrath Lewis denies it occurs: “It would be incorrect to say that our Committee reviews Asian-American students by criteria different from those we use for other applicants,” she writes. “Nor does our Committee operate on the stereotype that Asian-American students are ‘poorly rounded’. We have too much experience with students of all backgrounds to make that assumption.”
    Golden’s experience, however, suggests otherwise. He writes that Harvard evaluators “ranked Asian American candidates on average below whites in ‘personal qualities,’” and repeatedly described them as “‘quiet/shy, science/math oriented, and hard workers.’” While McGrath Lewis and other high-ranking admissions officials deny the presence of stereotyping, the lower-level staffers responsible for individual applications acknowledge that such practices exist, according to Golden’s book. The reason lies in the language of the stereotype—the Asian student is good at math and science, talented with the piano or violin, quiet, and shy. He or she can be found more often than not in Cabot Science Library until the wee hours of the morning, bent over chemistry or economics textbooks, while other students socialize. Unlike the often explicitly negative labels placed on Latino and black students, on the surface the Asian-American is a ‘model minority.’ Since Asians are doing so well in getting into college and getting jobs, the argument runs, they don’t need the lip-service respect paid to other minorities.
    Several white students at dinner in one of the House dining halls, who asked not to be named, offered their own takes on the stereotype. One said, “Well, they’re science concentrators. They stick together. Socially inept.” Another agreed, “Studious…oh, yeah, asocial, definitely. I mean, that just comes from studying, and not knowing how to talk to people.” A third: “Yeah, I guess I think of them as having broken English.” In other words, the anti-Peipei Zhang.
    Asians concentrating in the humanities or participating in unscholarly pursuits have come to expect surprised reactions from white students. Jeremy S. Lin ’10 is a recruited basketball player, a member of the varsity team. He is also Asian-American. Since matriculating here, he’s discovered that these two facts are difficult for many Harvard students to accept together. “Some people don’t believe that I play basketball,” Lin says. “When people see me, they automatically assume I’m the worst on the team. They ask me if I only play when we’re already winning by a lot, things like that.” Again and again, from scribblings in the margins of college applications to dining hall conversations, the same themes arise—softpedaled by patronizing concessions to perceived skill in the sciences, the accusation is that Asian-Americans do not speak the university’s language, do not contribute to university community, and do not participate in university life. According to many Asian-Americans, the fact that racism directed towards them is rarely direct is no less damaging to the community. Yet, others consider themselves lucky that that’s all it is.
    One Asian student, who lived in a virtually all-white community before coming to Harvard, doesn’t see the problem. “I think because I haven’t had the whole ‘identify with your own color’ thing, sometimes it’s annoying to me when people get really into [Asian-American activism],” the student, who asked not to be named, says. “Racism was a fact of life for me, growing up. When you’re on the playground, and you’re in an argument, sometimes it comes down to you being called a Chink. And that’s terrible, but this stuff is minor. Pick your battles, I guess.”
    HISTORY OF A STEREOTYPE
    Like Jews at the turn of the century, Asians in America and at Harvard often come from immigrant families. Many Asian students cite the experiences of their parents or grandparents, who often fled politically unstable countries for a more secure life in the United States , as a significant factor in decisions about career paths. Lisa S. Pao ’08, an English concentrator and second-generation immigrant, identifies that mentality as a source of the stereotype. “You watch what it means to your parents, to come to another country and work so hard and build a better life—it’s sometimes an unfortunate assumption that having a better future means more money,” Pao says. “And that’s why a lot of the majors that [Asians] who get into college pick are medicine, economics, business.” Zhang’s parents, though they supported her in her choice to study English, weren’t fully comfortable with it until she landed an animation internship last summer at Nickelodeon Studios, proving one could concentrate in the humanities and also eventually get a job.
    Members of many minority groups who, like Zhang, see clichéd portrayals of their own ethnicities doing battle with often exclusively white images of what a typical American should be, often resolve at an early age to define themselves against that stereotype. “One issue that’s often overlooked is the social impact of being seen as a minority. You hear people say ‘When I was growing up, I thought to be Asian was ugly. I didn’t want to be Asian. I wished I was white,’” says AAA Co-President Sanby Lee ’08.
    “I hated being Chinese.” Zhang says. “Now I know it’s part of my heritage, and I don’t have to conform to what’s expected of my ethnicity. I would go to Chinese [language] school, and I was just the oddball.”
    Often, it’s only in high-school, college, or later that Asian-Americans and others are able to create their own conceptions of their ethnicities and how to relate to them. Even then, they can face criticism from others. “If you do something that’s not seen as typically Asian, there’s a tendency for people to treat you as not Asian,” Lee says. Government concentrator Edward Y. Lee ’08 says, “There will be Asian-Americans who will be like, ‘Why are you acting so white?’”
    The views of those like the prejudiced admissions staffers Golden interviewed are always at risk of becoming the identity that minority groups embrace for themselves, making them even more harmful. The luxury of exploring one’s academic and extracurricular interests without worrying if they contribute to the marginalization of one’s community is a privilege that non-minorities take for granted, and that many Asian-American students feel they don’t yet have.
    “The hardest thing for me was realizing that [my concentration] is a stereotype. I didn’t know until I was in my late teens, and that was difficult,” says Molecular and Cellular Biology concentrator Alisa T. Zhang ’08. She is typical of Asian students concentrating in sciences, who are aware of the stereotype and struggle to resist being limited by it. The externally positive nature of the Asian stereotype—So good at math! So skilled in the lab!—becomes a burden when it circumscribes the role Asians play at Harvard, and it is difficult to escape when so many students, for a variety of reasons, feel they have to sheepishly admit to being part of it.
    These students are also confronted with pressure from older members of the Asian community to “Americanize.” “I do think the need to assimilate is bigger in the Asian community [than among other minorities],” says Sanby Lee, who is also a Crimson editor. “But I think that surface conception of self-segregation ignores other factors.”
    BREAKING FREE
    Edward Lee, vice-chair of the Undergraduate Council Finance Committee, co-founder of the Asian-American Political Initiative, and aspiring politician, has made it his mission to encourage Asian-Americans at Harvard and across the country to speak up and join American political dialogue in more concentrated ways. “Throughout history, Asians would rather stay silent than stick out,” he says. They want their children to be the cream of the mainstream. I think [taking the safe route] is more of a hazard than it is beneficial.”
    Asian Americans feature relatively little in the UC, and even less so in national politics. Often, Asians and the American majority feel mutual discomfort with the weaving of Asians into the political and social fabric, and that discomfornt manifests itself in a reluctance for either side to get involved in the public sphere. An unfortunate consequence is that Asians then continue to be marginalized. “There’s not even an idea that Asian-American history is part of our history,” says Sanby Lee. “We’ve brought this up with faculty before, and the gist of it was that they don’t see a need for [an Asian-American studies department] because there’s already East Asian studies. It’s a lack of awareness of the issue that just makes it very difficult.” The culture of silence on both sides of the issue is what allows, among other things, college administrators to tell a Wall Street Journal reporter that Asians all look the same on paper without fear of retaliation.
   The goal of unity, however, is further compromised by the fact that the sheer number of cultures amassed under the label of “Asian” makes it difficult to achieve the kind of homogenous front implied by the names of groups like AAA. When people use the word Asian, much of the time they mean East Asian, and usually specifically Chinese. East Asians, meaning those with Chinese, North and South Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese ancestry, make up a majority of the Asians at Harvard. Often, Southeast Asians—the region variably composed of India , Vietnam , Thailand , and several other countries—are lumped in with East Asians on ethnic surveys. In the smaller-scale world of college admissions, the Common Application, used by over 300 colleges, splits applicants of Asian heritage not into categories of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent but into “Asians” and “Asian-Americans”. Southeast Asian-Americans with heritage from countries like Vietnam and Laos have some of the country’s lowest high-school graduation rates, but in applications are indistinguishable from their East Asian counterparts, who are generally much more socioeconomically and educationally advantaged. Efforts to reduce the numbers of Asians in colleges, mostly directed toward East Asians, end up penalizing Southeast Asians, Golden writes in the book. Beyond the Southeast Asian/East Asian divide, there are historical factions within the groups. Until only a few generations ago, Japan and China were bitter enemies (see sidebar); now, they’ve been bound together in a designation that, while useful for political reasons, is somewhat meaningless in other, important cultural ways.
    As far as making a stronger Asian-American voice heard on campus, to the extent that it can be done when an entire continent is lumped together under one term, Sanby Lee recognizes the challenge: “I definitely think that it comes up again and again in not wanting to be politically involved, that stereotype of being very apathetic, passive, not wanting to stand out.”
    LOOKING AHEAD
    Asian-Americans occupy a unique position on Harvard’s campus, represented in pure numbers at as much as four times their national presence yet barely acknowledged in the administrative and political life of the university. If the community’s tag as the “new Jews” holds up, in fifty years Asian students could have an even more considerable stake in higher education. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jews, who still comprise less than two percent of the American population, comprised one third of the Ivy League in 2000—an astronomical amount, and one now readily accepted by admissions administrators, who no longer force Jewish applicants to do battle against a stereotype designed to prevent them from succeeding. In the Ivies of the future, Asian students will make up increasing numbers of alumni applicants—a highly courted demographic to top schools. They may eventually enjoy the same prize Jewish students have won; first, to gain a seat at the table without adhering to American stereotypes, and then, to use that power to redefine the conception of what it is to be American. But a major roadblock to Asian-American empowerment is that same old stereotype, imposed upon them by society and internalized by the community, that can polarize its members when it should unite them to reject it. But as the community expands its historical conventions to include a new tradition of speaking up when necessary to defend its places at Harvard and in America , Asian Americans are slowly but surely putting strength behind their numbers.

5/11/06 Harvard Gazette: “The Class of 2010 Reaps 80 Percent Yield,”  Asian-American students will comprise 19.2 percent of the Class of 2010, compared with 18.5 percent last year. African-American students will comprise 9.3 percent of the class (9.3 percent last year), Latino students 8.8 percent (7.3 percent last year) and Native Americans 1.2 percent (0.9 percent last year).

4/6/06 Harvard Gazette- College Class of 2010 is the most diverse in Harvard history
    Asian Americans increased their numbers slightly compared to last year, comprising 17.7 percent of the admitted students.  A record 51.8 percent of those admitted are women, compared to 49.5 percent last year. Records were also set for Latinos (9.8 percent), Native Americans (1.4 percent), and African Americans (tying last year's record of 10.5 percent).
    By standard measures of academic talent, including test scores and academic performance in school, this year's applicant pool reflects the remarkable level of excellence typical of recent years. For example, nearly 2,600 scored a perfect 800 on their SAT verbal test; 2,700 scored 800 on the SAT math; and nearly 3,000 were valedictorians of their high school classes. 
    A total of 2,109 (9.3 percent) students were admitted from an applicant pool of 22,753 (just shy of last year's record of 22,796).  

3/31/06 Harvard Crimson: “Class of '10 Set To Break Records for Numbers of Latinos, Women: Admissions dean attributes increasing diversity to success of financial aid initiative,”
    Harvard has admitted more Latino students to next year’s freshman class than ever before in school history. Of the current high school seniors who received thick envelopes from Harvard, a record 9.8 percent are Latino, up from 8.2 percent last year.
    The composition of the Class of 2010 reflects another nationwide demographic trend as well—women now outnumber men among Harvard’s admitted students, just as they do at undergraduate institutions across the country.  According to Harvard officials, a record 51.8 percent of admitted students are female, up from 49.5 percent last year.  Nationwide, more than 56 percent of undergraduates are female.
    The percentage of African-Americans in the admitted freshman class remained constant at 10.5 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage of Asian-Americans rose to 17.7 percent, still a full percentage point below the Class of 1998’s mark.
    The admissions office said in February that more African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans applied for admission this year than in 2005.  In addition, a record 51.6 percent of this year's pool was female. Today's announcement indicates that the acceptance rate for females this year was slightly higher than it was for male applicants.
    The admissions office also accepted more low-income students than last year, even though the number of low-income applicants to Harvard did not rise. The College received 2,353 fee-waiver requests this year, precisely the same number as it did last year—an indication that the number of freshmen from low-income backgrounds next year would remain roughly the same. 
    Harvard’s acceptance rate will also rise this spring from the record low of 9.2 percent set last year. This year, 22,753 students applied to the College, and 2,109—or 9.3 percent—have been admitted. That percentage is likely to increase slightly after the College takes in more applicants off the waiting list.


12/15/05 Harvard University Gazzette:
”Early Admission numbers return to past levels,”
    Just over 800 students were admitted to Harvard College 's Class of 2010 under the Early Action program this week (Dec. 14-15), the smallest number since the Class of 1999. While the exact numbers were not available by press time as the Admissions Committee finished its final deliberations, it appears that there will be 80 or so fewer admitted compared with last year's 892 for the Class of 2009.
    African-American students will once again comprise nearly 9 percent of admits. Asian Americans increased from 17.9 percent to more than 20 percent, Latinos increased from 6.2 percent to 6.6 percent, and Native Americans from 0.7 percent to almost 1 percent.

4/13/06 Middlebury press release: “Middlebury’s class of 2010 selected from an all-time high of 6,200 applicants,”
    Middlebury , VT. ― This year, an unprecedented 6,200 students applied for about 560 places in Middlebury College ’s class of 2010.
   Of those who applied, 24 percent were admitted:
   335 students of color, including 154 Asian Americans [2.5% of applicants]; 110 Hispanic Americans, a 10 percent increase over last year; 60 African Americans, a 20 percent increase; and 11 Native Americans  

1/7/07:

D. Joe,

    We release enrollment data because we want to send a very clear message that we have a diverse student body. That it [sic] an important educational objective for us and we want to make sure the diversity of our student body is widely known. For most purposes, it is enough to know that 37% of the entering class were minority students, without further breakdown.
    When there's a reason to break down enrollment numbers by racial or
ethnic group we're happy to do that. This reflects our class. 
    We don't break down application and acceptance data because we don't
want anyone to mistakenly believe that we make admission decisions in categories. No matter how carefully we say this, when those data are presented publicly they are misconstrued. We don't admit by category and we don't want to release data in a way that suggests we do. 

Regards,
Cass Cliatt
Media Relations Manager
Princeton University
609.258.6108
ccliatt@princeton.edu 

-----Original Message-----
From: D Joe [mailto:donwjoe@yahoo.com] 
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2007 5:41 PM
To: ccliatt@Princeton.EDU
Subject: Fwd: 11/14/06 InsideHigherEd- New Challenge to Affirmative
Action

Dear Ms. Cliatt,

In a Nov. 14, 2006 article in Inside Higher Ed, you said Princeton does not release information on admit rates by specific ethnic and racial groups. "Cliatt said that to date, there has not been much interest in those figures, but that Princeton might reconsider - if there is more interest and it appears that releasing those numbers would be "in the public interest." So far, she said, "the public hasn't told us they want the breakdown.""
    As a member of the public, I request release of information on admit rates by specific ethnic and racial groups. I asked for this info from 1992 - 2001, but Princeton declined to release it. 
    If Princeton refuses to release this information, what is it hiding?

- Don W. Joe
Asian American Politics
www.asianam.org

4/3/06 DailyPennsylvanian.com: “Admit rate hits all-time low mark: Acceptance rate for Class of '10 down 3.1 percentage points from 2005; minority acceptances up,” 
By Meagan Steiner
    A record low of 17.7 percent of applicants have been accepted into Penn's Class of 2010.
    The University accepted 3,622 out of 20,479 applicants -- 13.8 percent of regular-decision applicants and 28 percent of early-decision applicants.
    Overall, this marks a 3.1 percentage-point decrease from last year's acceptance rate.
    The proportion of admitted students from minority groups surged to 44.4 percent of acceptances from 39.2 percent last year. Black and African-American students represent 11.1 percent, up from 9.4 percent, and Latino students make up 9 percent, up from 7.1 percent, while 18 Native Americans were accepted, one more than last year.
    Asians comprise 23.8 percent of the accepted pool, two students fewer than last year.
    Legacies represented 10.8 percent of the total. About 6 or 7 percent of those admitted are athletes, in accordance with Ivy League restrictions.
    The admissions office does not collect data on economic diversity.  


1/25/06 DailyPennsylvanian.com: “Applications up 8 percent from last year: Major increases seen among blacks, Latinos, West Coast residents,” 
By Meagan Steiner
    More than 20,300 students have applied regular decision to the Class of 2010.
    Penn fared particularly well among many racial minority groups. Applications from black students increased 17 percent from last year to 1,441, and the number of Latino applicants rose 12 percent to 1,201 -- both record figures. A 15 percent increase brought the number of Asian applicants to 6,432.  [Asian applicants represent 31.7% of the regular decision applicant pool.]  Applications from Native American students increased slightly to 74. Women represent 49 percent of the applicant pool.
    The regular decision applicants averaged a score of 671 in Critical Reading, 675 in Writing and 704 in Math. Their average SAT II score is 713, and the average class ranking is in the 96th percentile.

4/18/06 Yale Daily News: “AASA accuses publications of racism: Group sends letter to Admissions Office about allegedly offensive content in Rumpus, Herald,"
by Cullen MacBeth
    Members of the Asian American Students Alliance sent a letter to Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel on Saturday expressing concern regarding allegedly racist content in the most recent issues of the Yale Herald and the Rumpus humor magazine.
    AASA members registered offense regarding articles in the April issue of the Rumpus portraying Asian women as promiscuous and Asian men as emasculate, as well as a cartoon in last Friday's Herald suggesting that students might vote against Yale College Council presidential candidate Emery Choi '07 because he is Asian, AASA co-coordinator Priya Prasad '08 said. Prasad, who is also the treasurer-elect of the YCC, said the letter was deemed necessary in light of the impression such pieces could give potential students during Bulldog Days this week.
    "We sent it to Dean Brenzel because we thought it was particularly alarming that the Rumpus issue was the prefrosh issue," she said. "If I had picked up this issue when I was a prefrosh, I probably would have thought twice about coming to Yale. I think it undermines a lot of the diversity recruitment."
    Prasad said the article in the Rumpus -- which ran under the headline "Me Love You Long Time" -- was hurtful and promoted misleading stereotypes.
    "We don't expect everybody to be offended by everything, [and] some of things my peers are offended by I'm not really offended by," Prasad said. "We just feel that because it's so prevalent, something is wrong with the climate on campus."
    Rumpus co-Editor in Chief Sam Heller '08, who spoke with Prasad this weekend, said he thinks AASA's response was overblown.
    "We weren't necessarily [politically correct] about it, but I think that you have to have a sense of humor," he said. "You shouldn't take it so seriously. We're not trying to tear down the Asian community here."
    Although a decision about whether to publish an apology or a retraction will be left to the incoming Rumpus editorial board, Heller said he stands by his decision to print the article. He said Rumpus did not intend to target Asians as a racial group and that the publication could have just as easily focused on other stereotypes about groups on campus, such as what he called the "insularity" of the Afro-American Cultural Center.
    The Herald cartoon features two students talking about which candidate they will vote for in the YCC presidential runoff between Choi and Larry Wise '08. To one of the student's remarks that "it doesn't matter, 'cause YCC doesn't do jack s--," the other responds by asking, "And plus, isn't Emery Asian?"
    Herald Editor in Chief Tamara Micner '07 said the cartoon was not intended to be racist; it was merely meant to raise awareness of some of the characteristics students take into account when voting in YCC elections, she said.
    "I think the comic was provocative with a point behind it," she said. "The comic was parodying the absurd choices that students sometimes make when they're voting in the YCC elections. … I can understand the comic can be viewed as racist, but it's really supposed to parody racist thoughts that people have."
    But Prasad said that regardless of the way views like those in the cartoon are presented, she thinks they are offensive and insensitive.
    "I think that's a very common view people have -- that 'we're not espousing these values, we are pointing out their existence' -- but I don't think it comes off like that," Prasad said.
    Although she said she understands some students' reaction to the comic, Micner said she was not expecting such a strong response and that several Asian students on the Herald staff told her before she decided to publish it that they did not find it offensive.
    "I would reconsider publishing it again because we don't want to alienate people," Micner said. "We don't want to hurt people, certainly."
    The letter AASA sent to Brenzel also complained about a January issue of the Herald advertising the Asian American Film Festival with the headline "If You Have Yellow Fever" and the description "Where can you find the largest gatherings of Lees, Wangs, and Kims on campus this weekend? For once, the answer isn't 'at the library.'"
    Prasad said AASA has arranged a meeting with Yale College Dean Peter Salovey and Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg Thursday to discuss Yale's continued funding of the two publications in light of the content in question.