In response to the Feb. 13 column, “Admission standards should be regulated”:

I read your article today and I couldn’t help how it completely reeks of racism and ignorance. While I am not personally an international student and have full U.S. citizenship, I would like to speak on behalf of all the international students you targeted in your article, specifically the Chinese students which you make an effort to cite as your only example in the entire article. First of all, it is false that most international students are not required to take the SATs upon admission to U.S. universities. Many students in China spend many hours studying for the SAT’s, and ironically, perform much better than Americans who have spoken English since birth. In addition to SATs, students are required to take an additional test called TOEFL. Were you aware of that? I’m guessing not. Second of all, you listed University of Washington as a school which does not “provide an equal treatment between Chinese and domestic students.” Before making large generalizations, perhaps you should do some more research on admissions policies of universities in the U.S., rather than picking one university out of hundreds and drawing a conclusion from that.

Personally, I think this article was written either because you have nothing worthwhile to say or report about or out of a genuine fear of foreign students. Perhaps instead of focusing on other people and trying to put obstacles in their way so that they do not challenge your own success, you should put some effort into your own self-improvement. Perhaps you scored horribly on the SATs yourself and see that as a major issue in college admissions (maybe one of the reasons you are attending this university, considering the laughable SAT admissions standards here). If you are thinking that you made a huge achievement in scoring high enough on your SATs to be accepted to the UA and this is the reason other people should be “judged by the same standards across the board,” let’s not kid ourselves … As someone who scored in the 99th percentile in the SATs, I can assure you that requiring this test or not is not the determining factor to success in college. Therefore, I suggest you do your research more before publishing over generalizations and essentially crap in newspapers (even the Daily Wildcat) and also maybe re-evaluating your own insecurities or racism.

— Jin Zhang