<p>I thought it played a large part whether you are black, white, yellow, or green :)...What do you think? Do you think this process is wrong?</p>
<p>URM status in some instances is the equivalent of a 200-300 bump up on the SAT. So, big deal or not?</p>
<p>there is no way to numerically express the advantage because top SAT scores don’t always get into Penn. Think of it this way instead:</p>
<p>The school has niches it needs to fill for a well-rounded community. There may be lots of rich, white kids who have great academics, but there aren’t as many kids with the same academic credentials who come from Black/Hispanic communities. </p>
<p>So think of it this way: if you’re a smart URM from a wealthy, white suburb, you’re an automatic in. No test score ++ can convey this advantage. If you’re a URM who struggled through school, you’re toast despite having a 2400 (with the +300/400).</p>
<p>It plays a huge role. In many instances, it will enable one to enter an ivy without having “top” scores or outstanding ECs. Lol…some kids at my school went on the HYPS results threads and managed to successfully guess whether the admitted student was white/ORM or a URM with like a 95% accuracy (they messed up on like 2 students from the Harvard results thread).</p>
<p>I think schools want to be well rounded and fill areas where they’re lacking. Diversity has become sort of a golden word now and days and colleges really tend to brag about it if it’s there. I think when a school is lacking in certain area they select more people from that group. I think that doesn’t just apply to race. I know Penn is supposedly going to have a part of the application where you can list your sexual orientation, so I suppose they want to make the school more LGBT friendly. Some say that schools accept more women if they’re an engineering or tech major because they want to add more diversity to the program.
Do I think it’s wrong? Not necessarily. By the way Affirmative Action doesn’t even hold that much legal weight as it once did. It’s the schools who are choosing to add more minorities to their programs. The thing that is wrong to me is that it is automatically assumed that minorities are not as qualified or as deserving to be at top-ranked schools because people believe, “Oh he just got in cause he’s Black” or “He’s probably just here cause of sports”. People don’t assume that the black kid or Hispanic kid could have worked their asses off just like everyone else. I’m applying to Penn in the fall (I’m black btw) and I know that if I get in (hopefully) that it was because I am qualified to be there and I was a strong applicant. My race might sway them a bit but that doesn’t mean that was the only factor in getting me in. Keep in mind that the schools like Penn want students to excel and be successful. It doesn’t look good on them when they have a high percentage of students dropping out or having low GPAs. They want to pick applicants they know will succeed in their institution. Regardless of race.</p>
<p>It can be a pretty big factor. There’s a girl at my high school who isn’t a legacy, isn’t in the top 10% of the class, and has a 24 on the ACT and she still got into Columbia</p>
<p>GPA is on a bellcurve; they don’t care. And no, they don’t care about a person’s success at the institution. I know some examples that would point quite to the contrary.</p>
<p>lomgstreet - </p>
<p>Can I ask what state you are located in, & also is the student you speak of black, hispanic, or something else? </p>
<p>just curious.</p>
<p>Sorry about that, I thought I posted all of that info. It’s in Oklahoma and she is native american; I know this is sort of a drastic scenario, but even with ethnic and geographic diversity going for her, she still seems rather unqualified.</p>
<p>Do you wonder, that if race gives one such a huge advantage in admissions, why is there not a higher percentage of minorities at top schools such as those in the ivy league? From the census, it is projected that African Americans make up around 14% of the U.S. population. Why is it then that African Americans make up only 8.6% of the class of 2013 at Penn and 7.3% at Princeton? Although there is believed to be affirmative action at many of these schools, there are still many minority groups that remain underrepresented. This is just something to think about since there is no simple answer.</p>
<p>@Poeme:</p>
<p>I assume you are aware that the poverty rate of blacks is much higher. The fact that they make up even 8-9% means there are lots of positive discrimination going on. If college applications were purely merit based, most of the top schools would be 90% Asian, while only 1-2% black and latino.</p>
<p>^they would definitely not be 90% Asian. More like 35%ish</p>
<p>You’re right, I went a bit overboard with the numbers. I really shouldn’t be using numbers I can’t back up.</p>
<p>a girl from my school was not even in the 20%, had a 30 ACT and barely any ECs at my school. Oh yeah, she’s also just plain stupid and did badly first semester senior year, but she was black and got into Yale, Brown and UPenn.</p>
<p>So, I would have to say race plays a huge part in college admissions.</p>
<p>The reason there remains such a comparatively low % of African-Americans at schools is because of cross-admittance.</p>
<p>Take one African American student I know. I’m not sure of his scores, but my guess is that they’re high as he’s Valedictorian of his class and could speak French (as a non-native speaker) at about 1 million MPH. Say he got a 2250 on his SAT–its just a guess by me–and took a pretty difficult courseload. He didn’t strike me as a kid who wouldn’t have gotten in (to Yale, where I met him) if he was white. However, if he was white, its more likely he would have gotten into maybe one or two of HYPS, along some mix of 2/3 of Columbia, Brown, and Penn, as opposed to his current situation, in which he got into all of them.</p>
<p>I got the feeling from meeting kids at various Admitted Student Days that because there are so many fewer Black/Native American/Hispanic students who apply, the top ones will get into the top Colleges pretty much no matter what–as opposed to white or asian applicants, who tend to get into one or two if they’re qualified.</p>
<p>So maybe 15% of all admitted students are Black, but by the time cross-admittance hits the top of the class for Black students, it gets reduced down to 8%.</p>
<p>^ here, here</p>
<p>Tops schools do apply affirmative action to URMs, and they are accepted with statistics lower than that required of ORMs. No one debates this point. However, schools still require a minimum standard. They desperately do not want the URMs at their schools to fail, so they are careful to admit only those URMs whom they think will succeed. Regretably, there are very few URMs who meet this standard; this fact coupled with the cross-admit factor noted above results in the low numbers of URMs at top schools.</p>
<p>An African-American in our school was admitted to every school to which she applied, and she settled on Stanford. Although she was not even in the top 25% of our class, she had, by far, the most success. But personally I am happy for her. No Asian in our school has been accepted by Stanford in four years (and we’ve had dozen of 2300+, top 1% apply) and it’s nice to finally see one of us go there. </p>
<p>For the record, Stanford admits more URMs than Asians. The last time I looked, a Stanford entering class was about 25% Asian and 28% URM, so they do a better job than most in diversifying their campus.</p>
<p>This is exactly why I dislike affrimative action, and I am an African American man. I happen to be orginally from Africa, and my parents took our education very seriously. They were both highly educated. As a result, me and my siblings did exceptionally well in school, on the SAT, and other standardized tests. But whenever someone meets me (I attend an Ivy institution), they assume I am less intelligent and was accepted only because of the color of my skin. This assumption will follow me into my profession as well. Although affirmative action may help some people of color, it is a burden for many others.</p>
<p>As an aside, I encourage you to avoid assume every person of color you meet at top schools is less bright than you. It is a very hurtful assumption.</p>
<p>^^^^
I believe that is why Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court dislikes affirmative action too. Jw…wat did u get on the SAT?</p>
<p>“But whenever someone meets me (I attend an Ivy institution), they assume I am less intelligent and was accepted only because of the color of my skin. This assumption will follow me into my profession as well.”</p>
<p>PLEASE, stop worrying about what random white folks think of your abilities. It will eat you up with worry to no good effect. You will be admitted to college or hired for a job beause someone thinks you can do the work. As such, care about what your professors think or what your boss thinks. And ONLY them. Let the rest think what they want. The only opionions that count are the teachers’and the boss’s. </p>
<p>Successfull people of any ethnicity do not make their way by worrying about what strangers think of them.</p>
<p>And consider this: What do you think that those same people who think you were admitted to an Ivy or hired because you were black would have thought about you BEFORE afirmative action?</p>