<p>Give the guy a break and wish him luck. It is unbecoming of those of you who worship at the altar of the Academic Performance Cult to begrudge this young man's successful application. Is it possible that adcoms see more to an applicant than grades and test scores? sounds like sour grapes and jealously to me. The whole is greater then the sum of its parts</p>
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It isn't always affirmative action. I know much more qualified applicants grade-wise who have been denied acceptance at Cornell and other Ivies and they were black.
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<p>I don't. You're honestly saying you know people with 1800+ and 3.8+ black students who were denied? That seems unlikely.</p>
<p>Vicissitudes, I do. I know plenty of black students who were rejected from well-esteemed schools. A number of them were qualified. The rest were slightly below the school's average. </p>
<p>There's a lot of resentment on this board towards minorities, blacks especially. I wish some of you could look beyond your resentment and naivety to see that not all blacks and hispanics are simply handed opportunity. Quite of few of them are, but quite of few of them aren't, either. </p>
<p>It's amusing. At this level of the game, do you really think Harvard needs to rely on affirmative action to recruit qualified black and hispanic students? I don't. You may beg to differ. At the most racially diverse elite colleges, blacks, hispanics, and native indians make only about 20% of a class. I'm sure we'd all like to believe that if affirmative action wasn't practiced, that 20% would open up a spot for you at X college or for your friend who was rejected last year or for that star student. * Sounds like the handicap parking analogy to me.</p>
<p>*assuming examples are not urm.</p>
<p>Private_Joker, that was a very well put response. I think some of the posters really need to read your post before contributing to discussions on affirmative action.</p>
<p>I know a person (black) who had a 2. something GPA, 12 something on his SAT (out of 1600 scale), but founded some diverse clubs...his essays were pretty lacking though. highest sat II was 700 in us hist, the rest below.</p>
<p>rejected from upenn, accepted at cornell. not even going to cornell though, he wanted penn. now going to some school in ENgland</p>
<p>What can I say, sarorah. Maybe it's because I'm from MA, which is a highly educated state, but many of the URMs I've met have been at the top of their class. So, I have a different view towards minorities being admitted to top schools. Some of them do work for it, from what I've known. A number of them don't, from I'm understanding here. </p>
<p>It's sad when that happens, especially with guy you mentioned Sarorah. When colleges accept someone below their standards that much, it's a detriment to that person's likelihood of success. For the other guy with a 3.6, there may be more of an argument for.</p>
<p>"I don't. You're honestly saying you know people with 1800+ and 3.8+ black students who were denied? That seems unlikely."</p>
<p>Yes, I do. I hate using anecdotal information, but I know of two african american students who were rejected from Cornell this year with great stats. One I mentioned in the previous post. The other is an African American girl who just graduated from a Catholic High School in Washington, DC. She is a Washington Metro Scholar (indicating that she is one of the top performing black students in DC). She visited Cornell in the fall semester when the Washington Metro Scholars program gave her an all expenses paid trip to visit Cornell. I talked with her, hung out with her while she was there, and told her how I too was a Washington Metro Scholar in my graduating class of 2005. However, in May, she contacted me and told me of her college plans. She told me she was rejected from Cornell. She was accepted to Smith College, and is going there. She was one of the best performing students in her class (not just one of the best black performing students), yet she was still rejected. Though she was a high performing student, the Admissions Officers at Cornell may not have found her to be a good fit.</p>
<p>Yeah, I know what you mean, P_J. It's annoying when someone says "oh he got in cuz he's black", without even thinking about the rest of the application. There are some whites also, with academic standings not as high either, and they get into ivy league schools. </p>
<p>as partly urm, i don't like the system however. I think it would be much more beneficial for someone to get a boost based on their socioeconomic conditions, not the color of the skin. Just because urm's tend to be poor, there are many exceptions. If they're truly disadvantaged, colleges can see that based on their residence, income, public school standing, etc. Assuming that they're disadvanted because they mark black is unfair to other applicants imo. Because there are disadv. asians for example, like many poor refugees from laos, cambodia, etc. see what I mean? if the system was slightly tweaked, i think it'd be fairer for all.</p>
<p>Here is the truth.</p>
<p>Being black, after norming for socio economic background is worth OVER 350 SAT points in the top 25 universities ... Harvard included. I previously posted all of the documentation with resouces, but the post was deleted because it was too sensitive and/or politically correct. </p>
<p>In other words, take two kids from comparable backgrounds. One black the other white. In applying to a top 25 institution, a white kid will need to score 350 points more than tyhe black kid to have an equal chance of being admitted.</p>
<p>Admissions offices from elite colleges couldnt begin to fill their diversity requirements if black applicants were evaluated in the same manner as whites. A regression analysis conducted by Robert Lerner and Althea Nagai on behalf of the Center for Equal Opportunity shows that at most elite schools black applicants are more than 100 times more likely to be admitted than whites with the same GPAs and SATs.</p>
<p>Blacks flunk out of college at a much higher rate than whites. The black students who do graduate still lag far behind white students in academic competency the gap that prevailed upon matriculation largely persists through graduation.</p>
<p>Its from this small, underperforming pool that graduate schools in search of diversity must populate their classrooms with meaningful numbers of black students. The problem is that there arent enough competitive black applicants to go around.</p>
<p>As University of Texas law professor Lino Graglia pointed out a few years ago, the median GPA and LSAT percentile for admittees to the countrys elite law schools were 3.8 and 98 respectively. At the time fewer than 20 black law students in the entire country met those standards. One elite law school, University of Michigan, has about 30 black law students in each entering class. Michigan alone could snap up all of the black students at the median and still have ten seats left to fill.</p>
<p>Blink-</p>
<p>350 points may be a lot, but a 2000 on the SAT still isn't that great for Cornell, especially with a 3.57. Yeah, that's right, even if he had a 350 point boost, he'd still be underqualified. I think we can all agree that something strange, outside of the fact that he is a URM, is going on.</p>
<p>The fact that he's being followed by the Princeton Review may have something to do with it as well.</p>
<p>just because there are a few examples of urm's who don't get in despite decent (for a urm) numbers, does not negate the fact that being a urm is an advantage.</p>
<p>um, hello, everyone knows there is a damn URM advantage.</p>
<p>i don't know who you're talking to, but there are some people in here who seem to be saying that being a urm isn't an advantage.</p>
<p>all i can say is he's going to get raped academically in cornell.</p>
<p>I was just saying it in general, actually.</p>
<p>My mothers coworkers son got into cornell with and 1150 and a 3.6 GPA. He was white.</p>
<p>My sister was number 7 in her class out of 700. She had a 4.25 and 2100+ SAT scores. She did not get into any IVY leagues.</p>
<p>Blink I will assume you are talking out of your gluteous maximus, you have no proof. Present proof and I will assume you are talking out of your mouth.</p>