Hi all. Fairly good news Friday on SAT’s : 1450 on first shot without prep. My D23 will prep after soccer season and retake but 1500 probably is not unrealistic. 4.68 gpa, 2 varsity sports, 4 APs down by end of Junior year. I think she is in reasonably good shape, but the competition is fierce.
I stumbled onto a thread about Diversity Fly ins recently and figured I would seek your help as my daughter is 50% Mexican.
Do these still exist?
Timing of the visits?
Timing or details on application process?
Competitive schools where this provides a real advantage?
And one additional question and forgive the directness and the fact that the the question is incredibly hard to answer and controversial…
If an Ivy League or elite LAC has an average SAT of X, how strictly does that apply to Hispanic applicants? Maybe put differently, is their a certain point boost to SAT for Hispanic applicants?
I am just trying to keep my daughters expectations realistic.
It really depends on the breakdown of the student population of that university. In some schools, Latino/Latina/Hispanic students are ORM (over-represented) so it won’t really help if you are applying to those (in those cases, it might work against you). Which schools are your daughter looking at?
Regarding standardized testing, the average SAT of each university applies to students of ALL ethnicities/backgrounds, and minorities do not have an advantage in terms of test score ‘requirements’ (no ‘point boost’ either).
Colleges that consider ethnicity in admissions are generally not transparent about how or how much it matters.
Best would be to make reach / match / likely / safety assessments without considering ethnicity. That way, surprises in admissions results are more likely to be pleasant ones rather than unpleasant ones.
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I know a student who applied to these and attended one - via Zoom. He is a senior and completed one about 2 weeks ago…
Schools evaluate students based on where they are coming from. If you are the top student in a not great inner city school and don’t have a wow SAT score, I think you might get a break. At some schools, that would be recognized as a failure of the environment rather than a reflection of the student. If you are applying from a stronger school, the expectation is different.
The tippy toppest schools do not compromise on scores for anyone because they have so many good applications that they don’t need to. You can look at the Questbridge thread, for example, to see what kids coming from lower income families have achieved. They knock it out of the park.
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NJEngineerDad is a heavy weight in all of the posts I read! Thanks for responding.
She received National Hispanic Recognition Program last month based on her PSAT scores from her sophomore year- which was a nice surprise - we didn’t even know what it was.
She plans to study some type of engineering or go into a science and maybe pursue medicine. Very tough to pin down.
Budget is full freight at an Ivy. We have been saving aggresively since she has been a baby and the market has done well over that period of time. So we are very fortunate there. That said, if Med school is a possibility, would not mind a discount on undergrad.
She took the Oct SAT and did a 1450.
Redid the PSAT this weekend in order to see if she can get National Merit of some sort.
Yes, they do still exist and you need to look on the websites of schools of interest to find what programming they offer and the dates. I recall some schools offered diversity fly in voucher to cover the cost of their flight if kids wanted to do a tour, and then other schools have scheduled programming for a weekend or week day programs. Some schools send marketing to NHRP’s in their marketing so keep an eye out.
If you scour these forums you will find students who participated in some of these programs and they reported hearing during the events directly from staff that there was an advantage when it came to admissions.
IMHO it offers an advantage- to some. What I mean is that they get to take an additional look at a kid. They have to write an essay, submit grades and a resume to get into the diversity fly in. Ultimately they want to admit kids that will be successful at their school. Some of these fly ins have acceptance rates that are as low as the school admission rate or in some cases lower.
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LI → Low Income I’m assuming
oh oops, i thought that they were mentioning LI (low-income) in demographics or smth haha