<p>My question is mainly in reference to the belief that, at least domestically, East Asian applicants are at a slight disadvantage in the college admissions game. Does this play at all into international applicants for Asians from countries such as Korea or China?</p>
<p>I do not have supporting evidence but I strongly believe that applicants from some Asian countries are at a disadvantage. Not necessarily because they are Asian, but because there might be too many applicants from those countries. Colleges strive for a more diverse student body and prefer 50 international students from 40 different countries over 50 international students from China and Korea.</p>
<p>That being said, most colleges welcome all (full-paying) international applicants with open arms. This is really only an issue at the very top colleges.</p>
<p>I fully agree with barium about geographical AA - colleges like to be able to say “we have students from X nationalities” and while there’s no hard and fast limit, they may give a slight slide to the Macdeonian. They aren’t going to take a blithering idiot over a Nobel winner, but it’s a tip factor. It so happens that many of the more represented countries, were their students American, will also fall under ORM status :P</p>
<p>Don’t forget Singapore. Way too overrepresented!</p>
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<p>People forget that most of the international students on CC are aiming for the very top colleges =p.</p>
<p>A few questions:</p>
<p>Does anyone have a slight idea about the average acceptance rates for Europeans? I know we always take about the Azians, but what about the Peans?</p>
<p>And at the top schools (Stanford, MIT) that aren’t need-blind for internationals, does full-paying status really give an advantage? I always figured that these schools were rich enough not to have to take some rich idiot over a genius living on a Chinese rice paddy.</p>
<p>Depends on which European country - I imagine the UK will be more competitive than Kosovo.</p>
<p>We have to remember that full-pays at these schools aren’t blithering idiots - they’re still very clever people. So it’s about a very good student versus a slightly better student at a cost of 200K, not the idiot v. genius scenario. And while the school may be rich as a whole, the international financial aid section only gets a certain budget to work with. (I’m excluding ‘development’ candidates from this discussion, but they represent far more than 200K apiece anyway)</p>
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<p>Of course not, they won’t do that (unless that rich idiot has rich parents who are willing to donate say US$10 million). </p>
<p>But they will be asking themselves is it better to fund the genius in China at $50k/year, or fund 2 slightly less brilliant (but still very brilliant - say maybe IMO silver instead gold) UK students at $25k/year to come to Stanford?</p>
<p>Yes, because there are many, many qualified Asian candidates to choose from and colleges want broad international representations so will only accept a few.</p>
<p>As for “rich idiots”, this isn’t a problem because there are many smart, qualified wealthy kids and yes, they have an advantage.</p>
<p>A significant number of international spots also go the the children of the powerful in other countries.</p>
<p>Definitely. I did a speech and research on affirmative action, and acceptance rates that would normally be 20% for a school are often half of less than half of that for asian applicants alone. International students, if we only consider east asian applicants from korea and china (not trying to be ignorant, but I think the number of applicants from singapore or hong kong is a little less than those from korea and china as of right now, feel free to disagree), comprise a smaller portion of those asian applicants. Even boarding schools like Andover which has a little more than a thousand students only accepted three students from Korea this year. I know for a fact that at least 100 people applied for those spots. scary =/</p>
<p>then again affirmative action is beneficial if you live in a place like mongolia and are fairly smart and active.</p>