What is a good new SAT score for a minority (Hispanic) to be considered at the Ivys?
<p>I'd say over 2100.</p>
<p>to be "considered," you'd have to have an equivalent of the Old SAT's 1200, but you're going to have to have a very compelling story if you want to get admitted.</p>
<p>to be "competitive," you're going to need a 1400 (equivalent to zagat's 2100), assuming all your other statistics are in-line.</p>
<p>complete and utter b.s., stop feeding this kid nonsense. He could easily be admitted to a school like Duke with an equilvanet of a 1250. 1350 forget about it, he could get into penn, columbia, and so on. 2100, harvard, yale, princeton probably a shoe in to be quite honest. I heard less than 5 percent of african american/hispanic score above a 1300 on their sats. Some nice company, you might say if your one with above a 1300.</p>
<p>Well, I guess something to ask to the answer of my primary question is, how well do minorities of 1300 scores do in an Ivy League college, generally. I know it all depends (motivation, environment, etc.) and all with all these factors. But generally...?</p>
<p>Typically, URM's do worse than non-URM's at almost every school. However, at grade-inflated Ivies, the discrepancy in graduation rates is not that pronounced. This is not suprising since grade inflation tends to make it harder to separate a great student from a good student. However, at a school with no grade inflation (such as Cornell), the difference in graduation rates is larger.</p>
<p>Yet even if many of them do graduate, they also tend to cluster rather conspicuously near the bottom end of the grading scale. I know that's a harsh statement, and obviously some URM's do extremely well, but the fact is, a conspicuously high percentage of them will tend to cluster at the bottom of the grading scale, whatever that grading scale happens to be. This often times contributes to the social tensions of the campus, as non-URM's can't help but notice that the students who are doing relatively poorly tend to be URM's (again, not all URM's do poorly, but a disproportionate number will), and many (not all, but many) URM students feel academically inadequate because of their mediocre grades.</p>
<p>This is a socioeconomic issue that shows up in race discussions only because of the political aspects. In general, a higher percentage of URM's than non-URM's are not prepared by their high schools to attend extremely selective colleges. Of course, there are the URM's attending prep schools who are going to get into HYPSM more easily because of their race, but the vast majority of URM's are not as well prepared as non-URM's. </p>
<p>For a non-URM in that situation, it is not an issue since they aren't going to be accepted anyway. For URM's, it is an issue. A person who attended a poor high school and got a 4.0 and a 1300/1600 SAT is to be respected. The average SAT score at that person's high school may have been 750/1600. To get a 1300 where the high school's average is 750 is to be respected. Unfortunately, a lot of these students are still not prepared to attend HYPSM where the bulk of non-URM's who were accepted are much better prepared. Imagine coming out of a poor high school and suddenly finding yourself at Yale. You've gone from reading one novel a year, to reading two novels a weekend. There have been a number of studies recently examining the result of throwing unprepared people into that kind of environment and the effect on graduation rates.</p>
<p>This is one thing I do agree with sakky on. I only have the stats for graduation rates not GPA's broken down by race. But from personal observations, I would tend to believe that URM's have lower avg. GPA's than non-URM's.</p>
<p>I also agree with dufus3709. This is why I am not a proponent of the current AA system. I think it would be far more beneficial to improve lower level education (high school, middle school, elementary schools) rather than simply letting in underqualified students because URM's are still going to struggle once they get into college. Obviously, that's easier said than done but just my 2 pennies thrown in.</p>
<p>I'll go back to the OP. Use the 50% SAT range to get some idea of what you need at each school. Legacies, URM's, athletes, development cases, VIP's, and ED applicants generally have statistically lower SAT scores than the general population. For someone who is not in any of the above categories applying RD, they need to be near the top of the 50% SAT range to be a reasonably strong candidate. If the 50% range is 1300-1500, they need to have a 1450 for the school to be a reasonable match. They may be accepted with a lower score, but the school is a reach. For someone in the above categories, you can afford to be at the midpoint or lower end of the 50% range.</p>
<p>If I may digress, to continue the discussion started by norcalguy and dufus3709 regarding the sociopolitical aspects of URM's, the state of high school education in America, and so forth, I would point to the shining historical example of the former Dunbar High School, which used to be called the M Street School, of Washington DC, which taught almost exclusively African-American students during the late 1800's to the 1950's, and produced a tremendous number of extremely successful African-American leaders and pioneers. Note, this was BEFORE the days of affirmative action, and before the Civil Rights movement, when African-Americans still suffered from endemic racism throughout much of the country. Yet, Dunbar High was able to produce graduates who succeeded through simple hard work and discipline. For example, noted African-American jurist Charles Hamilton Houston got into Amherst and then Harvard Law, when not only was there was no such thing as affirmative action, but when the Ivy League law schools were still the playgrounds of male WASPs. Dunbar graduate Benjamin Davis Sr. leveraged his dedication and hard work to fight through institutionalized racism in the military to become the first African-American general in US history, and was instrumental to Truman's order to integrate the military in 1948.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pbs.org/ellingtonsdc/vtSchools.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.pbs.org/ellingtonsdc/vtSchools.htm</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hamilton_Houston%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hamilton_Houston</a>
<a href="http://www.fatherryan.org/blackmilitary/davis_sr.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.fatherryan.org/blackmilitary/davis_sr.htm</a></p>
<p>As stated by Thomas Sowell:</p>
<p>"The first blacks to graduate from West Point and Annapolis also came from this school [Dunbar High]. So did the first black full professor at a major university (Allison Davis at the University of Chicago). So did the first black federal judge, the first black general, the first black Cabinet member, the first black elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction, and the discoverer of a method for storing blood plasma. During World War II, when black military officers were rare, there were more than two dozen graduates of M Street or Dunbar High School holding ranks ranging from major to brigadier general."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html</a></p>
<p>This is not a matter of cherry-picking the best graduates of Dunbar and ignoring the rest. In general, Dunbar students (all of which were African-Americans) were doing quite well - not just compared to other African-Americans, but against people from all races. For example, Sowell found that:</p>
<p>"...this black high school-- from 1870 to 1955 --and found it repeatedly equalling or exceeding national norms on standardized tests"
"Back in 1899, in Washington, D. C., there were four academic public high schools-- one black [Dunbar] and three white. In standardized tests given that year, students in the black high school averaged higher test scores than students in two of the three white high schools."
"...The M Street School at the turn of the century and Dunbar High School at mid-century had less absenteeism and less tardiness than the white high schools in the District of Columbia at those times."
"As of 1916, there were nine black students, from the entire country, attending Amherst College. Six were from the M Street School. During the period from 1918 to 1923, graduates of this school went on to earn 25 degrees from Ivy League colleges, Amherst, Williams, and Wesleyan. Over the period from 1892 to 1954, Amherst admitted 34 graduates of the M Street School and Dunbar. Of these, 74 percent graduated and more than one-fourth of these graduates were Phi Beta Kappas"
"...when the late black educator Horace Mann Bond studied the backgrounds of blacks with Ph.D.s, he discovered that more of them had graduated from M Street-Dunbar than from any other black high school in the country."</p>
<p>Finally, some of you are probably thinking that MStreet/Dunbar must just have been a haven of rich African-Americans, and that accounts for the success of the school. Sowell examines this theory.</p>
<p>"...As of academic year 1892-93, there were 83 known occupations of the parents of the children attending The M Street School. Of these occupations, 51 were laborers and one was a doctor. That doesn't sound very middle class to me.
Over the years, a significant black middle class did develop in Washington and no doubt most of them sent their children to the M Street School or to Dunbar High School, as it was later called. But that is wholly different from saying that most of the children at that school came from middle-class homes.
During the later period, for which I collected data, there were far more children whose mothers were maids than there were whose fathers were doctors. For many years, there was only one academic high school for blacks in the District of Columbia and, as late as 1948, one-third of all black youngsters attending high school in Washington attended Dunbar High School. So this was not a "selective" school in the sense in which we normally use that term..."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html</a></p>
<p>The point of all that is to demonstrate that you can create extremely rigorous high schools that can give its students the tools to succeed. It can be done. Furthermore, URM's who are given the right tools are able to achieve great success without having to resort to AA. Charles Hamilton Houston did just fine for himself in getting into Harvard law before the days of AA. He succeeded through hard work and self-discipline. </p>
<p>I am not going to take a stand on the politically hot topic of AA. However, I think it is important to point out what has and hasn't worked in the past. In particular, I think a lot can be learned from the example of Dunbar High.</p>
<p>collegekid1988 your comments are really getting on my last nerve. you have no idea what you are talking about. a 1250 competitive for duke??? no way. if you actually knew some URM's who applied you would know this is not true at all. I know kids with 1550+ including my cousin who was rejected from every single ivy. I myself with a 32 was waitlisted at penn and rejected from harvard. oh but i guess i was a special case, right?? do me a favor and stay out of things you dont know about. its people like you who ruined my senior year because they cant seem to understand that the blacks who get into their schools are just as talented and qualified as they were.</p>
<p>stanmaster, i girl from my school last year got into Duke with a 1220 SAT score and a 88 average, she got waitlisted/rejected from Northwestern, Cornell, Wash U, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. How i know b/.c in my school we are allowed to see a book that publishes all of the stats of kid where they applied and their acceptances/rejections.</p>
<p>gee, why did she get in, she was a URM --african american, i wonder if that had anything to do w. it. and you want to know something, a lot, and i say, a lot of ppl were furious when she got in. This girl for one thing does not care about school, did not try, if you want to find her at duke, easy, she is always in the smoking section doing drugs. When she came back for alumni thanks giving day, she told us that Duke is mad hard and she didn't feel prepared. However, another dude who actually was deserving to be there was like if you did well at our high school, you were well prepared....Think what you want. URMs with 1200s, yes, 1200s get into Harvard, Yale, Princeton. You seem like an oustanding student, but you are being ignorant to believe that you need the same stats that a white dude does to get into these schools.</p>
<p>the only leeway that minorities get are in their standardized scores. you are being really rude and you have no idea what you are talking about. who cares about this girl in your school. lazy kids get in all the time since this process is not perfect. i want you to please come tell my best friend who got a 1400 why he was rejected from his dream school duke. please tell him he must have been a real idiiot not to get in with those stats. grow up. your points are awful and you have no idea what you are talking about. i take personal offense to your comments. you really need to talk to more minorities because clearly you know nothing about college admissions</p>
<p>stan, we can argue all we want, but your being ignorant. I mean, i work with someone at a local community center, his mom was born in mexico, and his entire family heritage is white from europe. His grandparents spent literally 3 months in mexico, and this dude's mother was born there and moved to the states 2 months later. He put down he was a hispanic on his application. Granted, he is a really smart dude, but he took advantage of a system that is meant to help URMs, which clearly he isn't--he is a privileged white dude living lavishly. He is goin to a top 15 school--and got mad merit money--b/c the college thought he was a URM...</p>
<p>ignorant?? i love all these beautiful examples you give where you dont even know these people or what their applications even looked like. can you please explain to me then why someone on this board with a 1470 was waitlisted at harvard and princeton. why someone on this board with a 1550 was rejected to all the ivys he applied to. why i was waitlisted at upenn. why my cousin was rejected with a 1550 almost everywhere he applied. these people i have all talked to and they all had awesome apps. your examples are awful because you dont even know who these people are. you are just a bitter reject who is not going to HYPSM and the only way to make yourself feel better is by blaming someone. it might as well be the black people, right? since they are so stupid at the top schools. spend a day at stanford and yale and maybe than you will know how qualified these kids really are. until then please keep your unbacked comments to yourself becuase they are based on things you yourself dont even know or understand</p>
<p>what exactly are you trying to argue w. me. </p>
<p>Do URMs statistically have an easier chance of gaining acceptance to top colleges??</p>
<p>your answer: NO
my answer: Yes</p>
<p>A URM with a 1350 has a better chance at Harvard than a white male witha 1550.</p>
<p>your answer: NO
my answer: YES</p>
<p>AA only gives URMs more leniancy with SAT scores, and not with grades.</p>
<p>my answer: no
you: YES</p>
<p>stan, i am a bitter reject of only 1 school on that list which is stanford...which i got rejected at. I knew i had no chance at those other schools, a white male with a 1450 740/750/740 SAT II scores, a high GPA when competing with dudes with 1550+ and amazing hooks. I had the normal Ecs, tennis team captain, model un president...the usual hooks, but nothing sooo special.</p>
<p>Does anyone else feel that GPA and SAT score are over glorified by the cc audience, and rigor of courses with context of the high school and area, extracurricular activities, and essays, amongst other things, are largely ignored?</p>