Does dinging a top scorer to preserve a specific culture of a program constitute discrimination? Or is that private institution allowed to decide its educational culture?
It’s simple to look at graphs of several schools and see that in the far upper right corner (4.0+ gpa and top SAT/ACT score region) there are some red dots for rejection. This is because partly as was described above, Harvard doesn’t want all of the best mathletes to fill up its ranks. It wants some world-class sculptors and maybe a few medieval Danish history buffs, or fire eaters, for all I know.
To look at other examples, would you force an engineering program like Olin’s to take only the top scorers? Never. it would completely change the nature of the program. They want people who can do the academic work, but who are also interested in and capable of doing the collaborative projects that are central to the program.
Or an arty program like, maybe, Sarah Lawrence. A prospective comes along who has 800 math scores and wants to do computer programming at a level the school doesn’t offer: SL should ding that person, no?
Each school would like to choose characteristics that support a program or culture of that school. I attended an undergraduate college that I regularly interview prospective students for. I’ve interviewed top scorers, and amazing students over, like, two decades. Some of the most amazing performers, I knew, just knew, they would be rejected, despite a glowing recommendation on my part. Why? Because they seemed like a better candidate for a peer institution–something about the angle of their POV that was terrific, but not right for the school I interviewed people for. Some may say that’s discrimination – to cull the top performer because she/he doesn’t fit the school’s culture – and maybe it is. Maybe this is what we need to be discussing.
Second the “it is done by numbers alone” when numbers provide a clear distinction.
Beyond the X school doesn’t just want future math professors, I think when people see AIME or similar things they forget how many people qualify nationally. I checked and saw two different numbers for AIME, one 5000 and one more like 15000-20000. In either case, if you rewrite AIME qualified as one of the top 10000 in the country on a national math exam, it helps put it in context. If you are truly a top university, why not take the top 100? This can be replicated for all sorts of things, from sciences through music and other activities. I had a parent complain bitterly to me that his son didn’t get into HYPSM, even though his professed love was math, and he made the AIME, but no comment about where he was on that scale. I kept quiet in person, but the arguments annoy me enough to rant on college confidential!
CSUs calculate an eligibility index of HSGPA * 800 + SATR + SAT_M. Applicants are rank-ordered for their campuses and majors, with provisions based on state and local area residency, for admission. CPSLO is an exception, adding additional points for other characteristics before doing the rank-ordering.
@Dustyfeathers , numbers don’t mean GPA and SAT/ACT alone. You can add any type of numbers you want. For example, in CalPoly’s case as I heard, local residence adds 500 points, captain of soccer team adds another 500, first generation adds another 500, etc. It should be transparent though, no touchy-feely stuff and no hidden agenda.
Harvard, as a private institute, has all the rights to state clearly that “we admit only 15% Asians, so if more than that many Asians are admissible, they’ll compete with each other for admission.” Don’t try to be like “no, there’s no quota, we use holistic review,” and magically year after year got the same admission percentage.
^^ “Harvard, as a private institute, has all the rights to…” but they are private in name only because they take billions of dollars of federal funding.
If Harvard is a private golf club like Trump International then perhaps it can be do whatever…
My understanding is that most of the top universities outside the US admit predominantly on merit, including places like McGill in Canada, Oxford in the UK, Tokyo University in Japan …
@VickiSoCal You keep making my point. UCs can’t discriminate based on race, so based on merit alone, they have a huge percent of Asians. If the ivies didn’t discriminate, they would too.
Harvard is not the UCs. They have a different mission and culture. Harvard will never admit based purely on stats no matter how many high stats Asians cry foul. If you don’t like how Harvard constructs its classes each year, you obviously don’t agree with what they are trying to achieve and it’s probably not a good fit. This Harvard obsession based solely on the name and ranking without any understanding of the institution is not rational, imo.
I think there is the question of which stats - the wide ranging US system has no national high school curriculum and produces many different stats. In most circles I am the one defending the use of stats and not Harvard, but in context. To repeat myself, when international math olympiad (or chemistry or physics or national instrument award winners etc) with good stats across the board get turned down, then capricious is right.
I also think it might be the case that the ratio of Asian undergraduates at top UCs compared to the California college age population might be similar to the ratio of Asian undergrads at Ivies compared to the US college age population.
The UCs don’t use just stats either. The top colleges all want the same thing, both Harvard and Berkeley–the next leaders. But Harvard has a quota for Asians, UCs don’t.
The UCs’ admission policy goals are different from those at Harvard etc. in many ways (beyond anything about race and ethnicity). Extending opportunity for those from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds (1G, LI) is a much more prominent factor for UCs, and it shows in how their admission policies and practices differ from those of Harvard etc… Examples include:
Support from the high school (recommendations, transcripts) not required at application (final transcript is required at matriculation to verify self-reported courses and grades).
SAT subject tests not required (recommended only for specific majors at some campuses).
FAFSA only.
Emphasis on courses/grades/GPA over test scores.
No legacy preference.
The result is that the UCs have a significantly higher percentage of Pell grant students than most other similarly selective universities.
2+ for @itsgettingreal17 above. Harvard is crafting a class and not just choosing individuals. There are probably 18,000 kids a year rejected who were superstars qualified to do the academic work. It only seems like a crapshoot because applicants don’t see the institutional needs and the behind the scenes crafting of the class. Surely the higher stat kid from NJ needs to understands that a kid from Wyoming didn’t take their spot. Rather, the school wants to say it got kids from all 50 states so there are a couple of spots held for the top applicants from that state.
IF you put OP’s stats on any other demographic group, he would be an outstanding candidate good enough for many top schools, but OP was rejected from all top schools he applied to: MIT, Stanford, Caltech, USC, UC Davis, Duke, Dartmouth, Harvard, UChicago, and UPenn.
So it’s not just Harvard, it’s the whole college system. When they hold a higher standard on a specific demographic, it’s unfair to say the least for candidates like OP. We have to treat each person as a unique individual, not lump them together as ‘Asian Male STEM’.
UC can’t apply AA legally, thus OP rightfully got into UCB and UCSD. If UC takes the same approach, which schools can smart asian boys like OP go? So they only deserve to go to second tier schools even though they have perfect test scores and outstanding ECs because they are ASIAN? BTW, California law makers are trying very hard to do so.
The top USNWR ranking type colleges tend to have holistic admission that depend on far more than just stats. The OP’s stats would no doubt be good enough to be academically qualified, but that is different from saying he would be admitted. Such schools also have different policies towards over-represented ethnic groups. For example, the fall enrollment data for Caltech at https://www.registrar.caltech.edu/academics/enrollment suggests the undergrad population is ~47% Asian, while MIT claims to be ~31% Asian (including international from Asia in both). MIT likely focuses more on increased ethnic diversity than Caltech, but there are still many “smart Asian boys” at both colleges. Different colleges also emphasize/demphasize stats to different degrees. There are also plenty of excellent colleges that focus more on stats than HYPSM… Vanderbilt is a good example, although that may fall under your “second tier school” description.
“It only seems like a crapshoot because applicants don’t see the institutional needs and the behind the scenes crafting of the class.”
What do you think this institutional needs are? One for sure is having students from wealthy families. The average income at places like Harvard is $200K, it is essentially a place for upper middle class and upper class students from all fifty states and the countries the international students come from.
“To repeat myself, when international math olympiad (or chemistry or physics or national instrument award winners etc) with good stats across the board get turned down, then capricious is right.”
They definitely have, now is it a lot, I’m not sure, but for sure I can provide a counter example to your generalization. There are Asians that got into MIT and Cal Tech early and did’t get into HYPS, actually to be accurate, I think a few got wait listed but don’t think they got in off the w/l.