I am URM, as is one of my friends at university who is applying to transfer, and we had a disagreement the other day about how beneficial this may or may not be on elite transfer applications.
She argues that, as a half South American (Argentinian), her odds of success at transferring to extremely selective Ivy Leauges and equivalent schools are practically tripled. She has no cultural/ethnic community involvement, is very affluent (paying for college out of pocket, isn’t applying for financial aid) and isn’t planning on writing any essays about her heritage. She thinks that the college just want another URM to increase their diversity numbers regardless of the other factors.
I on the other hand, think this URM designation won’t do her or I much, if anything at all, because at the level of HYPSM etc., the quantity of qualified URM’s and the VERY VERY few transfer spots make it not a huge consideration unless Mexican/Puerto Rican, and clearly disadvantaged and engaged in their ethnic community. Even then, it’s nowhere close to a guarantee.
So who is right? And is the answer any different from the same situation for freshman admissions?
Well, the admission rate at P from HYPSM for all demographics of transfers is the same: zero.
You are probably closer than she is in saying that URM matters less than most people think it means at most schools, though there is obviously variation by school.
I hate to say it, but your friend is probably right to an extent. Many - if not most - URM students at Ivy League schools and equivalent institutions are wealthy, just like the majority of the non-URM students. Most of these students are there because they boost diversity numbers, and not because the schools believe they’ll somehow help underprivileged applicants by admitting the privileged.
Colleges won’t consider a wealthy Argentinian URM any more or less URM than a disadvantaged Mexican/Puerto Rican URM. Both are Hispanic in the eyes of admissions officers, and that’s that.
I don’t know what role - if any - affirmative action plays in the transfer admissions process. Maybe being Hispanic does triple your friend’s odds at Ivy Leagues or equivalent schools. Maybe it doubles them. Maybe it doesn’t make any difference. However, these schools accept so few transfer applicants* that it really doesn’t matter. When you triple the average transfer applicant’s odds (about 1% at most of these schools), the result is the same to all intents and purposes.
*Cornell is the exception in this regard, but your friend sounds like she’d consider Cornell one step above a community college.
Stanford has a 1-4% transfer rate…so perhaps she goes from 1 to 3%?
It doesn’t really matter…if she has a very good GPA and has good recommendations she should go for it and see what happens.
My first hand experience makes this a sample size of one, but I can tell you that it doesn’t tip the balance at the Ivy’s. Among other things, she won’t be considered Hispanic. More to the point, HYPS are not desperate for diversity- they have plenty of URM’s to choose from, so they can choose the ones that they want.
On the other hand, you need to not get so bent out of shape about somebody who is confident that they can work the system, or you’ll drive yourself mad. Let it go.
That makes sense! @collegemom3717 I’m not bent out of shape, simply curious. She’s a close friend, and we were just talking about this over coffee the other day and I wanted to know what CC would think of it.
Or…because they are qualified applicants just like everyone else at the university? (Or because race is a lot more complex than that and it is completely possible for someone to be socioeconomically privileged but racially disadvantaged? What does “cultural/ethnic community involvement” mean anyway? Even if I lived in a completely white town in a white adopted family with no black cultural touch points, I’d still be black. Your friend is still Argentinian even if she doesn’t sing folk songs and go back to South America every summer.)
This doesn’t have the ring of truth to it. Economic disadvantage, first-generation college student status and other factors are also taken into consideration at many colleges. I mean, by simple definition, a poor Mexican applicant is more of an underrepresented minority than a rich Argentinean applicant.
Quantifying how much minority status means in the admissions process is kind of meaningless, because at top schools there’s no quantitative formula to admissions. It’s holistic. Regardless of whether your Argentinian friend gets admitted or not, there’s no way to confirm the veracity of her statements. Even admissions officers couldn’t because admissions doesn’t really work like that.
I favor the idea of redressing historical wrongs and helping those who remain indigent due to such wrongs. The number of hurdles college put in place for lower-income applicants - ensuring their URM applicants hail mostly from the upper 5% or 10% of earners - leads me to question whether colleges care more about helping to reduce disparities, or merely the appearance thereof.
As for your second point, I’m not stating that low-income applicants don’t get a boost. However, that’s separate from URM status. My point is that universities aren’t in the business of deciding that a wealthy Argentinian isn’t a “proper Hispanic” and a poor, first-generation Mexican is. Both are Hispanic in the eyes of a college - the former simply doesn’t have the added boost of being low-income or first-gen.