(This is continued from the UC thread on test-optional admissions, but it is more relevant here and could perhaps help prospective African American candidates.)
Maybe. In effect, this concedes that the initiative is targeting low scoring students, which makes sense. I do think it would help on URM as well. For instance, UC is only 4% black, the lowest percentage by far as compared with its peers. The Ivies are 9% black on average (ranging from about 6% through 14%), and so are peers like Vandy, Duke, Stanford, Rice, Northwestern and JHU (ranging from 6% through 13%).
About 1200 black students enter the Ivies each year, and if you add those other peer schools about 1000 more, for a total of 2200 black students, approximately.
Test score requirements in all those other schools apparently do not serve as barriers to applications from the demographic, and most of these schools have similar 25-75 stats, with some exceptions mostly in the second group.
Let’s assume 50% submit ACT scores - that’s 1100 kids. But there are only about 500 black kids in the ACT pool who score 32 or above in a given year*, and 32 is at the UC 25th percentile. I’ll say that it is impossible to increase that 4% (the lowest among its peers by far) without reaching deep into lower scores. Remember we are only talking about 14 schools. What about all the other great schools that the top black applicants might choose? There simply are not enough high scorers to increase URM diversity (a stated goal) in a meaningful way - at least to the lower 6% band - without moving those 25-75 numbers. Now add in other targeted groups who are likely to score poorly, and those numbers might move appreciably. As 25-75 is 8% or so of the USNWR ranking which UC is known to game, my theory is at least worth some consideration.
Anyway, no one knows for certain, but for black applicants reading this, I would suggest that the above numbers imply that **test prep** is probably the **single best strategy** for increasing the odds of tippy top admission. Knowledge is power. There are only roughly 30 black kids who score 35 or above in the entire applicant pool: be one of them!
- All ACT data from Table 2.1, p.12 here: https://web.archive.org/web/20141222152409/https://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2013/pdf/profile/AfricanAmerican.pdf