Representation of Asians in business schools

Question

I was just came across a breakdown of the Minorities at Darden, and it had something like 5% asian. As an asian myself, I am wondering if Asians are underrepresented in MBA programs. Any light on this topic would be appreciated.

kidderek · Answer

Asians are definitely not underrepresented in bschools. However, there are quite a few schools where Asians are underrepresented.

riverripper · Answer

At most events there is a large percentage of Asian and Indian applicants. They definitely are not underrepresented from what I have seen.

89nk · Answer

What is considered underrepresented? I mean 5% is not a lot. I am guessing that if it's over a certain %, then your either over or under?

Who consist of the other 95% of the class?

billyjeans · Answer

if you compare it to the % in engineering, yeah!
hehe

89nk · Answer

The public school I went to was heavily focused on engineering; however, there were only 3 Asians in my engineering field during my 4 years there. I am sure it was due to the location, but the grad program was mostly internationals.

togafoot · Answer

which has a higher percentage? Indians, Asians or caucasians?

jingy77 · Answer

I would go for Caucasians, then Indians, then asians. Just a guess. I was recently going through the facebook class of '10 for NYU, and man were there a lot of minorities. The whole class was full of asians! I could not believe it. The funny thing is, the facebook class of '09 had much fewer asians. I don't know what to expect.

TheBBB1982 · Answer

What is the reason behind it?

mlchang616 · Answer

Maybe less asians created facebook profiles in '09 than in '10.

hcb · Answer

How about being an Asian woman? Now that's almost like being a double minority in b-schools

!

snkrhed · Answer

does being asian hinder you when applying to bschool?

iambroke · Answer

no I don't think so

AlexMBAApply · Answer

"Minorities who are Asian" and "Asian" isn't the same thing -- the former refers to Asian-Americans, the latter refers to international (non-American) students from Asia. Also, the percentages reported by b-schools are defined differently depending on the school. For some, the "percentage of minorities" are reported as a percentage of the *entire* student body (US+international), whereas for other schools it's reported as a percentage of the Americans.

In any case, Darden may have less Asian-Americans than other schools (depending on whether that 5% is a 5% of the entire student body or just a percentage of the US students - if it's the former, they're not underrepresented; if it's the latter, they are underrepresented), but a good chunk (if not the majority) of the international students are from Asia, just like most b-schools.

Representation of Asians in business schools

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