<p>I keep hearing that almost all of the early decision admitted students to Dartmouth are all hooked. I am planning on applying to Dartmouth ED and my GPA isn't great (3.88 UW, 4.56 W) and I was hoping the odds were better early and I would have a shot. In addition I am hispanic and should be able to break 2250 on SATs by October. Should I bother?</p>
<p>yes. You’re hispanic, which means you are an underrepresented minority, which IS a hook. If you love Dartmouth, you should apply ED. :)</p>
<p>I know that I’m hispanic, but like its not like my primary language is spanish. It wasn’t even my parents who moved to America. They were born here too. Also, I live in a fairly affluent area, which makes me think that me being hispanic is sort of useless.</p>
<p>…sad truth is, as long as you can mark the hispanic checkbox, I’m pretty sure you are still counted as a URM.</p>
<p>That’s actually pretty comforting for me, but I can see how that is unfair. I mean, I’m hardly different from others who are applying. You think its more about the school showing off a large percentage of URMs? I’d believe you and it is pretty sad.</p>
<p>In the past three years, none of the five or six National Hispanic Scholars at my kids’ high school had hispanic surnames. Most of them are extremely affluent (including a fellow whose white grandparents owned a huge plantation in Cuba). They are all great kids, however, and well deserving of their stellar college admissions. Don’t feel guilty about your past!</p>
<p>Thanks for the support pbr.</p>
<p>Don’t feel guilty about your past–feel guilty about exploiting a hook ostensibly meant for kids who grew up in the barrio speaking Spanish and going to crappy schools. On some other thread there was a kid who was hoping to play the URM card by checking the Hispanic box because he had a parent from SPAIN. Then there are the kids who grew up in well-to-do suburbs who plan to check the Native American box because they are 1/16th Cherokee or something. :rolleyes: </p>
<p>Seriously, if you don’t misrepresent your background and the D admissions people are so foolish that they consider you an URM candidate who has triumphed over adversity, that’s not your fault. It is quite clear that URM candidates from superb schools often get a significant leg up in admissions. I recall looking at the list of Questbridge finalists at one point, and the black kids from Texas had both gone to St. Mark’s, a leading prep school there. Clearly they were not struggling with inner city or poor rural schools–although they certainly may have before entering St. Mark’s.</p>
<p>From what I recall of your ECs and so on, you are a legitimate candidate without URM status so I’d just continue doing what you are doing, pursue your ECs over the summer, write a great essay, and not worry about it.</p>
<p>I’m even more cynical than Consolation. I am not convinced colleges really want a diverse student body as much as they want to represent to the world that they have a diverse student body. If I am correct, then Dartmouth wouldn’t care if the OP is affluent or even that diverse. All they care about is that they can count the OP as being an Hispanic student so that they can tell the world that __% of their class is Hispanic. I say this because if schools really wanted a truly diverse student body, they would work harder at it. It wouldn’t take much to find out if an applicant is diverse or just diverse on paper. It’s always been funny to me that the educated elite in our country are always preaching about the importance of not judging people by the color of their skin, their last name, etc., but then colleges do exactly that.</p>
<p>I know what you mean Old College, and I agree with you only to a degree. My friend got a 2400 on her PSATs and she’s African American, yet she was waitlisted at Harvard and Princeton and accepted to Yale. Based on your hypothesis, for her ethnicity and incredible SAT score alone, shouldn’t she have been accepted to Princeton and Harvard as well. BTW, she took her name off the waiting list at Harvard and Princeton, to go to Yale, so we don’t know if she ever would have gotten in. But still, I think she should have been accepted easily. Oh, in addition she’s co-salutatorian in a class of 551 really competitive students.</p>
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<p>This. This a thousand million trillion gazillion times.</p>
<p>that’s why some people suggest that we not group people according to their race, but their socioeconomic status – since usually, sadly, the socioeconomic status mostly divides right into race anyways. But then colleges can’t use this model – they can’t give a hook just because someone is poor. Also, it’ll probably seriously mess with their financial aid system/make them very un-blind to what’s supposed to be a need-blind procedure.</p>
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<p>I’m sorry to say that I have the strong impression that this is correct.</p>
<p>lifetime, I think you’re right about the financial aid thing. This year I know of 3 kids graduating from my high school headed to Dartmouth next year. I spoke to them and not one of them checked the box for financial aid. I think with the economic crisis, the endowments shrunk and the schools cannot take as many that require financial aid. I think that it really isn’t completely “need-blind”.</p>
<p>lifetime, I agree that socioeconomic status should be the true touchstone, at least in theory. </p>
<p>I think all of us would agree that a poor student is at a terrible disadvantage when it comes to college acceptance. They often cannot afford preperation classes, study manuals, tuturing, etc. Any poor kid who does exceptional in school and/or on the standardized tests is a hero to me and I want them to go to HYSP. </p>
<p>But there are two big problems. Going by socioeconomic status would open the door for more Asian students, and colleges don’t want that. Our neighborhood is a perfect example. We have tons of Hmongs, Vietnamese, Cambodians, etc. whose kids are first generation Asian overachievers. Our neighborhood is not even close to middle class, at least not in Southern California. We also have a lot of Hispanics and blacks nearby who are also below middle class. Unlike these other races, however, the Asians dominate our school academically, even the poor ones. If colleges start basing AA decisions on socioeconomic status, then these kids would get in most colleges. As is, we usually only have 3 or 4 make the HYPS level.</p>
<p>Another problem is that it is very easy to make your socioeconomic status look worse than it is. My older brother lives in a high brow neighborhood. He owns a business and does very well. However, if you look at his tax returns, his income is very low. He’s not lying, it’s just that the Tax Code allows businesses to deduct expenses, appreciation, etc. that reduce income, making a business look worse off than it is. My brother’s kids will look poor on paper when they apply to college but they are anything but poor.</p>
<p>It looks like when it comes down to it, there are plenty of unfair things going on with college admissions and affirmative action can be played really weirdly. Nothing really that can be done about it…</p>
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<p>In the Amicus Brief submitted by Harvard University, Brown
University, the University Of Chicago, Dartmouth College, Duke University,
The University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale
University in support of the University of Michigan they state:</p>
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</p>
<p>pages 26- 28 of the pdf document states:
**The purpose of a university admissions process is not simply to identify the students who, if admitted, would be likeliest to earn the highest grade-point averages. </p>
<p>Quite apart from the impossibility of reliably making that prediction, pursuit of so narrow a goal would be unlikely to yield a student body that any sensible university would wish to enroll. While amici continue to place the highest priority on academic rigor, they have always sought to enroll a broad cross-section of students who can bring a critical mix of experiences and perspectives into the university community and who can leave it well prepared to serve as future leaders of our society. </p>
<p>**The factors considered in amicis individualized admissions programs are extraordinarily varied, wide-ranging, and notoriously difficult to quantify. Although petitioners and the United States sometimes give the impression that university admissions officers consider just test scores, class rank, and race, little could be more misleading.</p>
<p>Admission factors begin, of course, with the core academic criteria, including not just grades and test scores but teacher recommendations and state, regional, national, and international awards. In some cases, those criteria will be all but decisive, either positively (very rarely) or negatively (more often). In the vast majority of cases, however, they are not themselves decisive, and the process continues. **Admissions officials give special attention to, among others, applicants from economically and/or culturally disadvantaged backgrounds, those with unusual athletic ability, those with special artistic talents, those who would be the first in their families to attend any college, those whose parents are alumni or alumnae, and those who have overcome various identifiable hardships. The committee also extends favorable consideration to applicants who write exceptionally well, to applicants who show a special dedication to public service, and to those who demonstrate unusual promise in a wide variety of fields.</p>
<p>** By the same token, the individualized admissions process means that simply eliminating the consideration of minority race and ethnicity would not significantly increase any given non-minority students odds of gaining admission to an academically selective university.</p>
<p>sybbie, I mean what do you expect them to say? They can’t say we only care if the person checks the box for minorities. These schools have to in some way make it look fair. This may be a negative comment, but I mean they HAVE TO say that whether it be true or not.</p>
<p>I am not going to get into an AA debates however, at the end of the day checking the box is not mandatory, it is totally optional. The Common App specifically states If you wish to be identified with a particular ethnic group, please check all that apply.</p>
<p>You can check other or you can decline to check anything. By virtue of your checking the box, you are stating that you want to be identified with a certain ethnic group and you want your ethnicity to be considered. If that is not the case, or you find the concept of race/ethnicity in the admissions so egregious or unfair, you can simply do not check the box .</p>
<p>sybbie719: How many African Americans and Hispanics do you think refused to identify their ethnicity? What African American or Hispanic would not want their race used for admission purposes? The only group I know of who often fails to self-identify are Asians. I know two dudes who didn’t check the ethnicity box last year, but their surnames were Nguyen and Choi. It’s just a guess, but I doubt not checking the box truly hid the fact that they are Asian. I don’t know why they bothered. Anyway, the argument that applicants do not have to self-identify is pretty weak. </p>
<p>The color of one’s skin matters. We all know that. I just wish colleges would be honest. Instead, we hear explanations that colleges want “a critical mix of experiences and perspectives.” I don’t even know what that means. Since when is an applicant’s “experiences and perspectives” dictated by the color of her skin? If a college really wants “a critical mix of experiences and perspectives” they would give bonus points to someone who is morbidly obese or extremely ugly or inflicted with very bad acne or cursed with a mom who is so certifiably crazy that they won’t leave their homes. Those people have truly diverse experiences and perspectives on life. But these types of experiences and perspectives don’t seem to matter much to colleges. Instead, they seem convinced that one’s skin tone somehow magically gives an applicant an interesting set of experiences and perspectives that will make their campuses bloom. I don’t get it. Personally, I think this policy is driven by the guilt these largely white adcoms feel.</p>