<p>Let me put it this way: A top hispanic student chooses not to attend W&L because it only has 3% hispanic students. On the other hand, W&L only has 3% hispanic students because the top hispanic students choose not to attend.
It is a cycle and the school is doing nothing to change it</p>
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<p>It seems like a “Catch-22”, as I suspect that many of the minorities applying are primarily motivated by the financial aid, yet W&L is a school that highly desires (and prioritizes) students who truly desire to be there as a top school choice, and are not primarily motivated by financial inducement. This is a school that heavily factors demonstrated interest. </p>
<p>I was just picturing what it would be like with an alumni interviewer (who having been a part of the honor code system) looks the candidate in the eye as asks “what is it that primarily attracts you to W&L?”. Does this lead to another Catch-22 whereby the financially motivated candidate deviates from the honor code to offer a different primary motivation (academics, DIII student/athlete, professors, greek life, etc) or do they tell the truth and say it’s the generous financial aid potential otherwise they wouldn’t have even been applying to W&L (honestly), and do they deserve the nod over someone with higher demonstrated interest?</p>
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<p>Another Catch-22 if indeed high qualified URMs are not applying and therefore by definition the stack of applications from URMs is primarily “not high qualified”, leading to a seemingly disproportionate level of denials if W&L seeks to maintain its standards for admissions.</p>
<p>Go blue, if after talking to URM students who did not choose W&L, you still honestly want to know why any URM would choose W&L for reasons other than fin. aid, then I wonder if you have talked to any URM students who DID choose W&L, about why they did so? About their actual experiences on campus? If not, perhaps the admissions office could refer you to diversity- related resources, both human and programmatic. That might yield the information and perspectives you seek.</p>
<p>I have not visited W&L yet so I have not met any urms from there. However, I have a friend at W&L and she said that most of the urms are wealthy and come from private boarding schools, so they fit right into the culture at W&L… I dont think people understand how few minorities are actually on campus! I forget the exact number but i believe in recent years there has been around 10 (not 10%, TEN out of 500) hispanics and blacks each year… Amherst on the other hand is the same size and HALF the class is minorites. see the difference? I dont expect W&L to attract as many urms as amherst, but cmon, ten is a rediculous number.
Imagine how out of place these students would feel?! except for boarding school+wealthy urms, I dont think normal minorities would fit in, and even extra financial aid is not worth a miserable college experience. Also, since W&L is able to offer such great financial aid, the fact that minorities STILL arent enrolling even with no loan financial aid packages is really embarrasing for W&L.
Also, I am not only applying because of FA. Sure its a factor but I would rather pay an extra 5k a year than attend a college and be miserable. Not saying i would be miserable at W&L (havnt visited yet).
I attended a diversity program at Hamilton and met 2 students who got into W&L and crossed it off their list bc of the lack of diversity and the heavy drinking atmosphere… keep in mind Hamilton is less generous with financial aid+ gives loans (average debt 17k) so the students really got a negative perception of W&L if they were willing to pay more AND take out loans rather than attend W&L, pay less,and graduate debt free… this definately says something about the school, especially since Hamilton has lower average sat scores+higher acceptance rate(ie. less prestigious)</p>
<p>Have you called the admissions office yet to get a response regarding your concerns? If so, what did they say?</p>
<p>Go blue. Why would you want to go to W&L if you are so antagonistic? You would be going in with a horrible attitude making it likely you would be miserable. Why not focus your time and effort on schools you like such as Hamilton?</p>
<p>GoBlue, you express so many strident opinions about W&L while apparently not having been there it is almost amusing. Visit and then decide whether you can “tolerate” it. </p>
<p>As for W&L being need blind, while it does have a big endowment there is not enough money in the financial aid section of it to be need blind. The average grant is about $39,000. About 50% of the student body receives grants. At a 4.5% yield (a typical amount for colleges), W&L would have to have about $760 million in financial aid designated endowment alone to fund the $35 million of financial aid funds for the 50% of the students who get money. Its financial aid endowment is in the $400 million to $500 million range, not enough. Much of the endowment helps pay faculty salaries and general operations of the school as well. You should thank the parents who pay the full price. About 40 cents of every tuition dollar they pay funds the financial aid the school’s endowment does not finance. While I don’t agree with that practice it is what it is.</p>
<p>I would also suggest that the sooner you move beyond being fixated on racial differences and become more focused on the ‘human factor’ the more successful and happier you will be from my experience.</p>
<p>“There is no higher level of demonstrated interest than applying early decision.”</p>
<p>There are outliers, such as the “My parent donated a science building” level of demonstrated interest.</p>
<p>goblue’s contentions deserve consideration independent of his/her age, but what this thread lacks in evidence beyond statistical extrapolation is allowing much mutual naysaying and no conclusive end in sight.</p>
<p>General77
W&L has an endowment of $1.6Billion so it has the money to go need blind given that less than half receive financial aid. I also assume that the half that do receive aid can pay a substantial amount of their education costs. W&L should be need blind like many of the top schools.</p>
<p>Polarbear</p>
<p>The purpose of this thread is to discuss the low URM population at W&L. None of us can provide conclusive end because we do not control the data, only W&L can because it has all the information including how the decision making process works there. </p>
<p>Goblue provided statistical information that tends to show that something is not quite right with the admissions process. Whites are admitted at nearly 4 times that of URMs and that includes Asian applicants. Goblue’s contention is that Asians tend to outperform all ethnicity in GPA and SAT/ACT so given that Asians are also admitted at rate similar to other URMs the admissions process is baffling.</p>
<p>Here is a profile of an Asian American female that was not accepted for admission by W&L last year. Given that only 29 of 319 Asian American females were accepted last year, this profile makes one wonder what is going on at admissions.</p>
<p>"I was wait-listed, but I’m fine about that. I had:
SAT: 2210 (CR 720, M 780, W 710)
Rank: 3/411
Essays: Good
Recommendations: Amazing
Interview: Good
Extracurricular: A lot of things, but I don’t feel like typing them all out… ask me if you want to know
State of Residence: Ohio
Other Accepted/Wait-listed: Accepted- Northwestern, Case Western, Wellesley, Miami (Oxford), Ohio State University, UCLA Wait-listed- Rice</p>
<p>Honestly, I was kind of surprised about being wait-listed. I demonstrated a lot of interest in the school and asked for an interview. I felt I was a reasonably strong candidate."</p>
<p>She looks like an excellent applicant but she was not accepted.</p>
<p>rlpak. You are simply wrong about the endowment at Washington and Lee. It is closer to $1 billion than $1.6 billion. They have between $400 million and $500 million of that designated for financial aid endowment. The endowment there also includes money held in Trust by others for the school’s benefit. That amount is about $350 million, all in the stock of one company. The university, if it managed those funds, would get about $16 million of yield per year from those funds. It receives, at the trusts discretion, more like $9 million. Again, it would take about $750 million of financial aid endowment to fund a need blind admissions process. They are short by about $200 million. There was also this little thing called a major Recession a few years ago from which we have not fully recovered. Schools have to plan long term and assume market drops along the way.</p>
<p>The acceptance ratios are a bit strange but again, many of these kids have higher tier schools in mind and go there. </p>
<p>The one you reference was strong on paper if those #'s were accurate. She was declined at Rice but they have an abundance of Asian students so it is probably tougher there. The W&L admissions office is a mystery.</p>
<p>“W&L has an endowment of $1.6Billion so it has the money to go need blind given that less than half receive financial aid.”</p>
<p>What is the data and calculation to support this conclusion?</p>
<p>Who cares… if a university’s acceptance rates aren’t up to your standards then don’t apply to it. Honestly don’t you have anything better to do then complain about Washington and Lee? I visited there and wake forest… the number of urms didn’t seem “off” at all. Perhaps you could spend this time finding other colleges that are a better match for you…</p>
<p>^The data do make W&L look suspicious that they may be trying to keep minority enrollment low. You are trying to attack someone who’s concerned about racist practice, even though the data aren’t exactly smoking gun. Very classy.</p>
<p>Sorry about the typo. It should have stated $1.3 Billion.</p>
<p>Here is the endowment values </p>
<p>[List</a> of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment]List”>List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>1prettykitty</p>
<p>It is important because discrimination is not a good thing. W&L is an excellent school and its philosophy and treatment of its students is special. The issue of URM admission rates is a dark mark that needs to be corrected. I applied to the school because of all the positives. I knew of the demographics but I always assumed that it was because URMs applied in small numbers but Goblue provided information that the URMs applied in large numbers but were being admitted at a fraction of Caucasians. That was a rude awakening and was disappointing since I found out about W&L because they recruited me.</p>
<p>If the numbers were reversed how would that make any of you feel about the admissions process. If URMs accepted at 35% and Caucasians at 9%. Would you question it? Or would you do as many here on this thread advise those who want this discussion, not to apply?</p>
<p>If unqualified students apply and get rejected, that is to be expected. But if qualified URMs are being rejected like the one in my prior post, it has me scratching my head…</p>
<p>
There are over thousand colleges in the US. There are probably more than enough qualified Asians for them to over-represent in all of the top-20 schools. Yes, Asians are under represented at certain schools but those schools are generally outside the top-25 and lower. </p>
<p>Given that Asian applicant pools don’t seem to be weaker at other peer colleges, it seems unlikely that the Asian applicant pool is somehow weaker, let alone significantly, than the Caucasian pool for W&L. Put it in another way: why would significantly larger fraction of Asian applicants have W&L as their high reach? Well known among Asian populace? No. Well known for diversity? No. There’s really no plausible reason. In fact, the low yield suggests the Asian admits were probably stronger with more and better options and they turned down W&L at much higher rates. </p>
<p>For me, the more plausible explanation is yield protection; perhaps Asian applicants have a much more difficult time to convince the adcom that they would accept the offer from W&L. It’s still racist in a way since it’s still race based but it’s less problematic than when the adcom simply “dislike” Asians.</p>
<p>For those that are wavering, I suggest you look elsewhere because you will probably never get anything conclusive to be completely at peace or satisfied. Whatever the ideal you have about W&L in your head is probably not unique; the 93-95% sophomore retention rates seem to indicate it’s a good place but not a magic place when some other peers have retention rate of 97% or above. If you worry about this issue, you are probably too self-aware to not notice, say, you are the only Asian in the classroom or in your major, etc. anyway.</p>
<p>Sam Lee</p>
<p>I agree with much of what you stated. My biggest concern was not the actual number of URMs at W&L, but the URM admission rate. I always believed that W&L admitted URMs at about the same rate as Caucasians, but that has not been the case. The 4 to 1 admission rate of Caucasians vs. URMs is what has me concerned. I cannot find any other school with such a disparity. </p>
<p>Does anyone know of any other school that has such a lopsided rate of admission between Caucasians and URMs? </p>
<p>HBCU where there is a huge African American population, the rate of admissions between blacks and other ethnicity is about the same. This is the single most troubling thing about W&L.</p>
<p>Obviously there is something going on if this girl got into Northwestern and not W&L, and i’m sure this happens to many other qualified asian applicants.
This girl should have been a shoe-in, 1500 SAT+Top 1% rank+ Good ECs+DIVERSITY+DEMONSTRATED INTEREST! She should have been competitive for a johnson and yet got waitlisted from W&L.
People tout how W&L cares so much about demonstrated interest and use that as a reason for the low minority acceptance rate, well this girl interviewed and visited… and she didn’t get in… and obviously there was nothing else glaringly wrong with her application if she got into northwestern (which would have been significantly harder for her since it has a TWENTY PERCENT ASIAN student body). Yet W&L waitlisted her. Anyone have a guess why?? The argument of “the admissions office felt she would not accept her offer of admission” is invalid because she visited and interviewed, thus the school has no reason to think she would not attend.
Now im wondering what kind of stats minorities need to be accepted?? Obviously there is an issue if they are accepting white students with 1390s (the average sat at W&L) and waitlisting asians with 1500s and top 1% rank. This is pretty much affirmative action for white people… the only schools where this would be acceptable is a school like harvard or NORTHWESTERN(where that girl was STILL accepted), where asian populations are at 20%, but asian admissions discrimination at a school with 2% asians is ridiculous, and I see no other possible explanation rather than the school trying to keep its asian population low.</p>
<p>“Obviously there is something going on if this girl got into Northwestern and not W&L”</p>
<p>Did the schools get the same essays?</p>
<p>W&L only has optional supplements, neither of which are in depth essays (One is 'describe an extracurricular activity, the other is “why did you apply”) Its almost impossible to screw those up.
Plus her common app essay was good enough for Northwestern so I see no reason why it would negatively affect her at W&L.</p>