<p>maybe i'm just being a sore loser... but today i found out that a URM was accepted from my school. That's fine right, i mean at first i thought my stats just weren't as good as hers. But then i find out this girl is barely in the top 15%(# 35 i think, i'm #5 with a waitlist)! Ofcourse rank isn't everything, but we're talkin mid 1000 sat score, few aps, no clubs or leadership positions. how is this right? i mean i know diversity supposedly contributes to the learning community, but i thought that meant accepting diverse "qualified" applicants!. i mean i know that this girl has had no obstacles to overcome in terms of being black. She is very well to do, and is in the same school district (with the same oppurtunities) as i am! this is what makes me question affirmitive action.</p>
<p>UVa has some serious affirmative action. More so than most other schools in the nation.</p>
<p>unfortunately uva is trying to get rid of its southern boy reputation and to do that they bend over backwards for black kids. its a bunch of crap if you ask me - diversity doesn't come from the color of ones skin, it comes from life experiences people have had. what can you do?</p>
<p>Same exact thing with kids at my school. Only 3 were accepted. 1 had some Hispanic heritage (few generations back), and got in with much lower stats than a bunch of us that were waitlisted or rejected.</p>
<p>I'm URM and in-state. I have really good stats, and my SAT score is high enough for me to get in. Many people said that I was shoo-in. But, I'm waitlisted.</p>
<p>i'm half hispanic half asian, and i know my gpa was low with a 3.45 uw and 150/900 class rank at a very competitive public school, but i had great recs and great essays, 2140 on my sat (700m 700cr 740w), had a great classload with 8 total aps, and i was ranked in the top 50 in the nation for debate and had tons of other stuff on my application. honestly, i don't know how i got in; traditionally like 20 or so kids apply from my school. i'm not sure how many applied this year but so far all i've heard of is one other person getting in besides me and she's going to dartmouth. honestly, i'd have to say uva does have some type of aff action though i don't know just how far it goes.</p>
<p>I'm filipino and actually I totally agree. I believe that UVa is trying to eliminate their reputation of being a segregated school. Affirmative action may have had a factor in my OOS acceptance, but my stats would show you that this is an unlikely factor affecting my admittance. And while I plan to attend UVa this fall, I do indeed worry about this segregation. I'm hoping the segregation is more self-segregation (something I don't do) rather than a true ignorance of the white population to other races.</p>
<p>The acceptances at my school were so ridiculous. You have the #3 kid with good stats all-around ACCEPTED ED, me at #5 with virtually the same stats as him waitlisted, white kid # 20 rejected, white kid # 30 rejected, black female #35 ACCEPTED! . so obviously being #30 if you were white warrented a rejection, but if you were black it deserved an admissions offer. Not only that, but she says that next week she has the oppurtunity to win all this scholarship money. but like jags said, what can you do? :-(</p>
<p>Yeah that situation truly sounds unfair.</p>
<p>Hey I got in RD at 4.95w gpa, 1900 sat, and #3 rank over the white valedictorian! </p>
<p>Then again.. I am a double legacy through both my parents as well and my ECs dominate his.</p>
<p>It's not that UVA is trying to get rid of its "southern boy" reputation, it's that every single institution of higher education in this nation deems it a high priority to increase racial diversity. With a few exceptions - schools in states where the supreme court has struck down extreme admissions measures - universities are bending admissions standards and spending large amounts of money to keep underrepresented minorities. UVA has a strong support system in place, as do many of its peers. Part of this is likely do to some sort of larger social awareness on the part of the universities, but a lot of it is likely due to political pressures. If you read articles in college newspapers after spring admissions are finished, they frequently list minority enrollment in the same way that they list SAT scores or average grades. It would seem that it's as much of an "accomplishment" for a university to increase its minority enrollment as it is to increase its SAT scores.</p>
<p>At UVA, it appears that affirmative action benefits are mostly strongly conferred upon blacks, and not so much upon hispanics. I found this link a while back that you might find useful (particularly pages 4, 7 and 8):</p>
<p>On principle I kept my race/ethnicity unspecified. I simply did not want it to help or harm my chances. If they looked harder they might have figured out my race but I hope they respected my choice to keep it undisclosed. While my ethnicity means a lot about who I am and may even have accurately suggested my experiences, I wanted to confront admissions with what I worked hard for and not what fate gave me.</p>
<p>i'm not so sure that uva treated me personally more as an aff action admit than any other school. although interestingly enough, every school i was admitted at is a state school:</p>
<p>uf
penn state business school honors
william and mary
michigan-ann arbor (with 20k scholarship)
uva</p>
<p>and i was waitlisted at cornell's school of industrial and labor relations, which is one of their state funded schools. so yeah, i guess aff action does play a part.</p>
<p>I saw this happen with W & M and UVA but not with UR -- I guess because it is private?</p>
<p>I totally agree that universities should look more at situations than race, and adopt a financial based affirmative action. However, what infuriates me more is the abuse of the affirmative action I recently saw at my school. A girl who is about tenth in my class applied to Princeton with decent grades and a few extracurriculars as a Native American. The thing is----she's only like 1/32 Native American, and she was admitted. Now I'm not saying she wouldn't have gotten in if she hadn't "cheated," but what angers me is the flagrant abuse of an already shaky system. What's up with that?</p>
<p>rockstrong, it's already been established that affirmative action more strongly benefits middle and upper class underrepresented minorities, blacks who recently came to the US from the caribbean or west africa and people of mixed race, like the person you mentioned. Whether or not this is a flaw in the system is debatable. Proponents of affirmative action, such as those in the admissions office, seek racial diversity. Do they get it? Yes.</p>
<p>I'm 1/8 Mexican and did NOT state so -- now, I kind of wish ...</p>
<p>As far as diversity is concerned, I am the poster child for the U.N. Eleven years going to school with 30% foreigners, best friend is black, one month in Montreal at an International Camp (I was the only American), 2 summers living in Central America. I have friends in Japan, Germany, Costa Rica, Guatemala, U.K., Austria and Italy. I love diversity but now I am going to go to a college where the minorities segregate themselves. Bummer.</p>
<p>worldshopper, most universities are like that, to some extent. Don't think for a minute that going to NYU, Harvard, Howard, or UCLA would be any different. And while there is self segregation here, there is no strict "caste" system where people don't mix. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances of other races, ethnicities, interests, backgrounds, etc - and so do most minorities. At the end of the day, though, you should be friends with someone because of who that person is. You don't need to constantly go around tooting your horn about how "diverse" you are or acting like some kind of fruitcake english professor. Most important personal qualities come across regardless of race, nationality, etc.</p>
<p>Hey Cav -- didn't mean to come across that way. I agree, personal qualities are No. 1. I just enjoy being around and learning from people who have different cultural backgrounds than myself. Add to that, different life experiences, interests, etc.</p>
<p>actually, i've noticed that minorities also close themselves off from other races too. being half hispanic half korean, speaking neither spanish nor korean, having a laid back attitude, being well liked, and having lots of white friends has gotten me a lot of cr@p from hispanics and asians. i look completely asian, so hispanics write me off right there. i don't speak korean, i don't dress or act like a stereotypical asian kid, i definitely don't have their ridiculous mindset towards college (and i get into as good if not better schools than they do), and it ****es a lot of them off. almost all my friends are white; i can count my hispanic and asian friends on 2 hands. but i do notice that racial groups cling to each other and are often quick to judge even people from their own race. often times white people will try to be nice to minority kids, but i've often seen the minority kid just ignore it and pass.</p>
<p>i bet the hispanics and asians are getting even more p!ssed at me right now because i'm defending whitey haha but i keeps it real. it's what i've seen my entire life.</p>
<p>and for the record i wrote one of my uva application essays on this topic of me getting hated on by minorities haha</p>