<p>Isn't an ORM from a low income family (Let's say sub-$25,000 family income and Asian) more disadvantaged then a middle class URM? </p>
<p>Unless everyone is racist towards the URM's so that their economic superiority is no help and no one is racist towards Asians, how can the latter be more favored by colleges than the former assuming all other aspects of the college application is equal?</p>
<p>Racism was prominent in the past but not anymore. And today, if a person was racist to a black or hispanic, surely, that person is also racist towards Asians. So it's not like Asians don't experience racism. Perhaps and most likely, I have no definite numbers, Asians and URMs experience the same ratio of discrimination (Students of minority ethnic group who've faced racism / Total students of minority ethnic group) but because Asians are a signifcantly smaller group as a whole while African Americans and Hispanics are larger, they recieve more prominent coverage.</p>
<p>That said, shouldn't everyone be given extra help or bonuses based solely on the economic status. And since the average family income or Hispanic and African American applicants is lower than the average East Asian American applicant, solely economically, Hispanics and African Americans still would receive more help assuming the rest of their academic acheivement is on par with that of the Asian applicant.</p>
<p>I agree with Erins dad. But let me try to pass this to you: if you’re applying to selective colleges, your concern won’t be any URMs. Your concerns will be other ORMs and Whites. If you have similar achievement levels as them but come from a disadvantaged background, you’ll be viewed more highly.</p>
<p>Yeah, I agree for the most part. A hispanic girl whose parents make over 250,000 should not have advantage over a white male whose parents barely make 50k.</p>
<p>Not colleges whose financial aid budgets are limited to the point that they are need-aware in admissions, or need-blind but come up short on financial aid packages (financial rejection even if the student is admitted). Public universities may be generous to poor in-state students (which may be implicit in their mission), but unaffordable to poor out-of-state students.</p>
<p>The way it works is that certain “tags” put an applicant in a pool with other like tags and the kids there are evaluated within that framework rather than in the general pool. Alumni, developement, celebrity, athletes, special needs of a college, all have these pools at many highly selective collges. Low income, per se does not, though kids who have overcome challenges are given extra consideration.</p>
<p>If your Asian you should give the courtesy of identifying your self as such? Again, Look at the numbers and do the math. Does every qualified Asian get into Stanford. No they do not, but not because of racism. Qualified people do not get in because of supply and demand. Stanford gets 30K applications. 10K of which are likely qualified. 1800 are admitted, leaving 8200 wondering what it takes. Who knows, but the right answer is not discrmination.</p>
<p>Listen, race plays a factor in college admissions. Contrary to what most people will tell you, income also plays a significant role. I found this on Reddit from an admissions officer’s (presumably from Tufts) point of view: </p>
<p>"Finally, a tough one.</p>
<p>In a completely different way then how you think. First, and this will sound sort of cliche: every single admit we make is an affirmative action. It’s not like there’s a magic list of kids we’re “supposed” to admit and then we take some out and put others in if they are from minorities (which is what I assume you’re asking about). No one is an admit if I can’t find the reasons to advocate for them.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most important non-quantitative reason to advocate for an admit is how you think and (tied to that) how you perceive. A huge piece of that is your life and your background. Too often, diversity is presented as a function of race, and I think that’s idiotic. There’s socioeconomics, religion, geography, rural/urban, sexual orientation, and a whole bunch of other things. There’s politics, ideology, interests, the differences between linear thinking and creativity, emotional vs rational (kirk v Spock). All of this matters because it builds a class that learns from each other as much as it does from a professor.</p>
<p>So race matters. I’m not afraid to say it: we want a racially diverse class, and some groups are significantly underrepresented, so they tend to have higher admit rates. But what we’re doing for race is the same as what we do for a farm kid in a pool dominated bythe suburbs, or the conservative kid who wants to come to a campus filled with liberals."</p>
<p>sosomenza. I never said anything was racist. I’m just saying a class based system is fairer than a race based one.</p>
<p>Of course, not all competitive applicants get into competitive colleges.</p>
<p>Also, I read that, at Harvard, most of the URMs are middle or upper class and very little are actually poor URMs. And yet, they still get “bonus points” over a poor ORM with the same credentials.</p>
<p>“Although many colleges claim to provide a boost to low-income applicants, as they do for minorities, data show that most selective colleges and universities may not. In 2005, William Bowen and his colleagues found that being black or Latino increased one’s chances of admissions by 28 percentage points but that being low-income increased one’s chances not at all. Likewise, Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose of Georgetown University found in 2004 that racial affirmative action tripled the representation of African American and Latino students, compared with admissions from a system based on grades and test scores, but that those in the bottom economic half received no boost.”</p>