Incidentally, kids don’t know how to handicap any amount of urm-ness. So they just don’t count those kids when talking about who is going where. Those kids are thought to be in entirely separate lanes. The legacy kids are – there is a gradation – some kids are known to be in their own lanes if they have a building with their name on it, and other kids are competing in the general pool with a handicap. And they are stressed whether their handicap is sufficient. So there is a complex zoo :-). And I am told that kids that are not in the top decile have no idea how competitive things are. They would come and ask questions like – where are you going next year, before the application season begins – it is an embarrassing question to answer. The presumption is that the kid being asked can go wherever he/she wants. Kids in the top decile don’t ask each other these questions.
I would expect the women pool will self-select and be stronger (perhaps materially) than the men’s pool at cmu and mit. Women don’t put in random applications. They are less risk taking.
I am not sure what you mean by “most toxic category,” but in my bubble it seems that it is not just “Asian” applicants who face extremely long admission odds at T5 schools, especially if they intend to pursue a highly competitive major. And this at a school with a high percentage of extremely qualified kids and generally excellent admission results.
Again, my observations are different than yours. But perhaps it is just different expectations? IMO if any highly qualified kid ends up at a terrific school that is a good fit, I don’t consider that a “negate surprise” or “slipping through the cracks.” Likewise, if a top student is deferred REA to a “Top 5” then admitted RD, I wouldn’t consider that “unconscionable,” I’d consider it a great success. Arguably, any admission by anyone to a Top 5 school is an “positive surprise.”
Not suggesting that my observations are more valid than yours, but they are certainly different than yours.
In the list of threads in the Chance Me / Match Me! - College Confidential Forums section, applicant characteristics are sometimes mentioned in the thread titles. By far the most common applicant characteristics listed in thread titles are gender and race or ethnicity. Much less common are academic stats (like GPA, rank, and/or test scores), even though some form of academic stats (though not necessarily all types) are generally a lot more important than gender, race, or ethnicity in college admissions if the college is selective at all.
This phenomenon is a rather strong hint that many posters believe that gender, race, and/or ethnicity is more important than achieved academic indicators (stats or otherwise) in college admissions.
We have the capacity to compare because we have a number of kids going to each of the T5 schools every year. So we have both a cross-sectional sense and a sense over a number of years of how each kid compares to other kids that have gone to that particular school. So it is not a theoretical boiler plate statement that a T5 school is hard for everybody. That statement is made within the context of, perhaps 15 kids that have gone to, say, Princeton, or the 10 kids that have gone to either Harvard or Yale over the prior 3-4 years. We are not comparing apples and oranges. We are making tight comparisons. Of course subjectively. So the school community (in that particular decile) has a sense as to who is strong and who is not. And therefore they feel some outcomes are surprising. Then they move on.
As an example, my son has sat in classes and been on projects with people that are as much as three batches senior to him. Several kids have this kind of perspective as to which kids in the senior batch are burntout, who is truly creative and interesting, who got in where, whether an APUSH grade might have a bearing on an MIT admission etc. Kids have nuanced views on these issues.
Some legacy and development beneficiaries may want to keep that fact hidden, because of possible stigma associated with getting admitted by that route.
Neither parent is from that school. We checked out of curiosity
That’s good for them.
I even had a theory at that time (that we can’t test) that the presence of a lot of legacy kids that needed to be taken by the school is actually good for the unhooked kid if the gap between the hooked and the unhooked kids is large. It is embarrassing for the school to take the hooked kid (particularly legacies) and not take the unhooked kid. The unhooked kid ends up getting taken. Of course if the hook is a urm status then the unhooked kid doesn’t get this benefit.
I believe that these effects exist, and I’m not at all surprised at what you are describing. However, you are talking about kids that you know well, and their prospects at T5 schools compared to other kids that you know well.
What I don’t understand is how this would affect the advice that should be given to an unknown Asian identifying student on a Chance Me thread. We don’t have anywhere near the same amount of information about these students.
Nobody can give seriously good advice on an anonymous forum.
A friend asked me this season for some advice, and I know the kid’s package very well, and I find it challenging to give any advice.
You certainly can’t tell them where to apply because that is a function of their risk appetite – not your risk appetite. I told him the EA/ED decision is the hardest decision he will make, and it is really his kid’s decision – not even his own decision.
Even the choice for EA between Princeton and Harvard depends to a small degree on whether he is an NJ resident or a MA resident, among other things, if you are trying to split hair.
And you really need to know how the school places kids in the targets and safeties for the candidate’s gpa, test score, gender and urm status to answer this reasonably
The thread title (as of this writing, since it can be changed) is
“Chance my son - Asian Male Senior, Computer”
rather than something like
“Chance my son - 4.0 GPA, 1480 SAT, NMSF, Computer”
Of course, there are lots of threads titled similarly. This type of thing is probably a self-reinforcing phenomenon resulting in the general belief that gender and race are more important than indicators of academic achievement.
Yes I would think so. Before posting, users likely browse similar threads and use similar formatting. Therefore race and gender continue to be prominently mentioned.
The school to which I refer also has pretty decent matriculations.
While I agree that “kids have nuanced views” I am not sure they are the most reliable source in these situations for what I assume are obvious reasons, so none of my observations depend upon their subjective evaluation of who among their schoolmates might be a “burnout” or "truly creative and interesting.” Nor do I guesstimate about who is hooked and who isn’t. Rather I am basing my observation on actual admission/matriculation results.
For example, for one recent graduating class I was able to ascertain the chosen college for over 90% of the students who graduated with honors, a bit over 40% of whom would be considered “Asian” by the standards posted above. (Total sample size > 50).
Of these “Asian” students, over 1/2 enrolled at one of the schools usually considered Top 5 (SHYMP). The rest are also attending excellent schools (Penn, Cal Tech, Chicago, UCB, etc.)
For the sake of comparison, of the non “Asian” honors students, about 20% enrolled at one of those 5 “Top” schools, and the others are attending other a wider variety of excellent schools.
It is possible that some kids in both categories could have had a hook in addition to being stellar academically. Overall, though, there doesn’t seem to be a thumb on the scale in favor of the non Asian students at the top of the class. If anything, if enrollment in a Top 5 is the only goal (for many of these kids it’s not), then the “Asian” students seemed to have fared significantly better in terms of their final result, but I suspect that at least part of this discrepancy may have had something to do with self selection and/or relative qualification within this sample.
I am not suggesting that this school is representative of schools everywhere in terms of results, nor do I know if the results are even representative further down the class ranking, but the top of the class results surprised me, and they don’t seem to fit with what seems to be becoming the conventional wisdom regarding admissions.
I would agree with other posters that there seems to be some gaslighting going on. There are some undeniable facts. At the time Harvard was sued, its Asian percentage had been remarkably constant and suggested a cap similar to the earlier cap on Jewish enrollment. The lawsuit revealed that Asians were rated lower for their personalities in the aggregate than Whites by Harvard interviewers. This is the thumb on the scale. Mysteriously, the Asian percentage at Harvard has been floating upward ever since they were sued.
Without commenting on state universities, it is extremely unlikely that other Ivies’ (or similar privates like Stanford, Duke) admissions practices are dissimilar to Harvard’s.
In the words of the original poster, are we sure that all schools automatically disadvantage applicants in every case? No. Are we absolutely sure that Asians are automatically held to a higher standard? No. But that is is a standard of proof higher than “beyond a reasonable doubt” and highly unrealistic. I think it would be more respectful to listen to the opinions of those affected and admit that there may be some truth to them.
Remember that each school is an individual actor and must act independently. Even within the Ivy League, each university cannot coordinate with the other schools on most things (e.g., agreements to admit, financial aid, etc).
AFAIK, the Harvard data came from discovery in litigation and wasn’t publicly known until then. It would likely raise serious antitrust issues if the “top schools” were marching in lockstep on racial/ethnic factors with Harvard. That’s statistically unlikely.
I guess my point is that what Harvard did is specific to Harvard. It would raise serious issues if any other school had similar numbers to Harvard, suggesting either coordination or sharing of non-public/commercially sensitive information. I doubt any university would want to take that risk, although the Ivies have had significant brushes with the antitrust laws.
My ultimate point in this post is strictly limited to using Harvard as a proxy for what other schools do/are doing.
