Asian-American groups are blasting Ivy League admissions, alleging that the current approach unfairly keeps aspiring students from the country’s most elite institutions.
The organizations are pressuring the U.S. Department of Education to probe universities, including Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth, for capping the number of Asian students despite a higher number of viable candidates applying for positions.
The complaint was filed Monday by the Asian-American Coalition for Education, which includes over 100 groups. It states that Asian-Americans are prevented from attending the programs and there’s a “just-for-Asians admissions standard.” Moreover, it claims that admissions counselors “often treat Asian-American applicants as a monolithic block rather than as individuals, and denigrate these applicants as lacking in creativity/critical thinking and leadership skills/risk taking.”
“We want to tell Ivy League schools and other colleges: Asian American communities are going to continue our fight, until you totally stop your unlawful discrimination against our children,” YuKong Zhao, the president of the Asian-American Coalition for Education, said in a statement emailed to Fortune.
Yale said that it selects students from a pool of over 30,000 for admission. “Most applicants have a level of accomplishment that suggests they would be capable of doing Yale work,” according to Thomas Conroy, Yale’s press secretary, in a statement to Fortune.
He added, “In conducting a holistic review, applicants are not disadvantaged in the admissions process on the basis of race or national origin.”
The news comes about a year after a complaint was filed against Harvard, which the Department of Education ultimately dismissed. Then, 64 organizations came together in an effort to allege the Ivy League university discriminated in its admissions, reported the Wall Street Journal.
“Many studies have indicated that Harvard University has been engaged in systemic and continuous discrimination against Asian-Americans during its very subjective ‘Holistic’ college admissions process,” the complaint said at the time.
Fortune has reached out to the U.S. Department of Education, Brown, and Dartmouth for comment and will will update this story if we hear back.
