<p>A friend and I recently spoke with a Harvard admissions officer and we asked if they had any quotas. She very bluntly stated that if Harvard didnt have quotas, 80% of the school would be Asian. Being African American( both of us) we then asked if and how the admissions process is different for minorities. To put it in perspective, she said that about 70% of the whites and asains that get rejected would be accepted if they were a urm. I was wondering what you guys think of this? Have any of you heard anything similar?</p>
<p>That's gotta suck for the Asians and Whites. </p>
<p>I don't think its fair... but what can we honestly do? This issue has been talked about for yeeears. Although I'm Asian, I've come to accept that college acceptance isn't fair. I saw a similar article about William and Mary and its quotas, and that's my number 1. It surely wasn't as extreme as Harvards 70%.</p>
<p>Oh well, you win some, you lose some.</p>
<p>I smell a troll. I have a great deal of trouble believing that anyone in the Harvard admissions office said anything like "if Harvard didn't have quotas, 80% of the school would be Asian". </p>
<p>(A) There's no reasonable factual predicate for that. Test scores and grades wouldn't do it, and test scores and grades aren't everything that Harvard values.</p>
<p>(B) I can almost guarantee that no adult in the admissions office would have used the word "quota" to characterize anything they do. "Quota" is a very negative word in that world. The OP's post is like claiming that a U.S. military spokesperson characterized what the Army does as "murder".</p>
<p>Actually my interviewer (not an admissions officer though) said something a little similar. </p>
<p>At my Yale interview, he acknowledged the fact that as African American males, our odds are much better in the admissions process- naturally far above the normal 10% or so. He mentioned that over the past twenty years, he has interviewed about 100 kids. Only 4 of them have been black males, and all four have gotten in. It is also very common for interview clubs to match you with an interviewer who is of your demographic, so I think that not very many blacks from my region even really apply. (My only evidence of this is my having a black interviewer for Harvard, Yale, and Duke... Princeton is tomorrow and I sterotypically presume that Janelle is black name.)</p>
<p>As I looked over all of the reports from Yale SCEA (which I know doesn't really mean anything statistically), 3 (all) black females were deferred and 3 (all) black males were accepted and no blacks were rejected.</p>
<p>Do I think this means that there are quotas of any kind? No.
Do I think the admissions process is less competitive and less selective for African Americans? Absolutely. None of these black males had SATs above a 2250, but I commonly see others' being criticized for having "low" scores that are above 2000.</p>
<p>I find it hard to believe a person employed by the admissions office at Harvard would say what the OP quoted. Statements such as that could lead to lawsuits, so I doubt if an admin officer would be so blunt. An alumni interviewer...maybe.</p>
<p>Your admissions officer, who was likely a representative and not an officer, was flat out wrong. </p>
<p>Harvard accepts about 15% of african american applicants at most, likely closer to 10%. or 5-10% more often then the overall rate for all applicants. </p>
<p>[url=<a href="http://www.jbhe.com/firstyearenrolls.html%5DJBHE%5B/url">http://www.jbhe.com/firstyearenrolls.html]JBHE[/url</a>] (note that Harvard itself, is not listed, but compare it to Wash U, which is in the awkward position of being obscure, lacking in black applicants by nature, and being left with the students that HYPSM+ivies didn't take, meaning its black acceptance rate is likely at least 5% higher than Harvard's. Wash U's rate is 17% for black applicants vs 10% for all applicants)</p>
<p>Many admissions "representatives" do absolutely no work in reading applications and have no real association with the admissions office outside of PR. So be weary of what they say. The fact that she answered in the affirmative about quotas proves that.</p>
<p>
[quote]
she said that about 70% of the whites and asains that get rejected would be accepted if they were a urm.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This right here shows that he/she was no more informed then you were. The problem isn't that there are NO urms qualified to go to Harvard, it is that they are scarce. Of those scarce urms, Harvard gets first pick, as shown by their 65% black yield. </p>
<p>On a personal note, I've noticed by your posts, supereagle, that you have become increasingly doubtful and focused on your ethnicity as the sole criterion your admission to top schools. Have people been making you insecure because of your test scores?</p>
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<p>do you mean a random guy on the street? </p>
<p>i too find it hard to believe that someone said to you "if Harvard didnt have quotas, 80% of the school would be Asian." that is one funny bastard.</p>
<p>I call blarney unless you are willing to name that admission officer.</p>
<p>Guys, although I agree that the admissions officer in question was probably exaggerating a bit, supereagle is a reliable source (accepted to either Stanford or Yale SCEA, I can't remember which). Plus, we all know that these statements have a nugget of truth in them. Sure, the admissions rate for AA males is only 10% higher (which is actually a significant difference if you think about it), but I have a question at the risk of sounding racist:</p>
<p>Are the remaining 83% of rejected AA male applicants as quantifiably "qualified" as the 90-95% rejected Asians?</p>
<p>just a thought.</p>
<p>supereagle is a reliable source because he/she claims he/she was accepted SCEA to Yale or Stanford? I don't think so!</p>
<p>I can't imagine any admissions officer using the word quota. They'll dance around it. And in fact they don't have quotas per se, they just make sure they have the nice well rounded class they are looking for...</p>
<p>@AA advocates:</p>
<p>I'm not against private universities having their own criteria for admission....</p>
<p>But let's not pretend that skin color is the end all metric for diversity of thought (which is what academic institutions go for....)</p>
<p>I would rather have completely race/gender blind admissions where background neutral personal statements (and several of them, collected over the course of the applications process) and transcripts were collected.</p>
<p>I guarantee you could find everyone on the political/social spectrum....and not compromise one candidate because his 'race' (which is a LAUGHABLE concept that amounts to rehashed old world physiognomy) performs 'too well' or 'not well enough' on some arbitrary axis of value.</p>
<p>Eff Affirmative Action....EFF IT.</p>
<p>I agree, they are very careful on how they phrase racial / legacy aspects of admissions. They are very indirect and dishonest on how much of an advantage each provides, just look at the Harvard Admissions Q and A on there website.</p>
<p>"The application process is the same for all candidates. Among a group of similarly distinguished applicants, the daughters and sons of College alumni/ae may receive an additional look."</p>
<p>If they get an "additional look", then the application would not be the same for all candidates. Flip Floppers.</p>
<p>^ I second that. I chuckled when I read that sentence in the brochure. Just man up and tell the truth, Harvard: "IF YOUR DADDY DONATES A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR, YOU'RE IN."</p>
<p>lol</p>
<p>
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"Are the remaining 83% of rejected AA male applicants as quantifiably "qualified" as the 90-95% rejected Asians?"
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think any of us on here could answer that question. Either way it wouldn't matter those would be the people that did not get in, I think people would be much more interested in those who actually got in.</p>
<p>I also agree that racial discrimination is prevalent in college admissions. Skin color does not imply diversity (as collegehopeful intelligently pointed out). I would bet many of the Black/Hispanic applicants come from decent socioeconomic backgrounds similar to other applicants. So basically colleges label Blacks/Hispanics as more diverse because of the skin color (racist? I think so). There are several truly diverse white and Asian who do not get into Harvard because of racial profiling. So why are underqualified minorities taking their spots even though they are of similar backrounds as the white/asian students? The whole system is backwards and reverse discrimination is prevalent. The only minorities that seem to benefit from this "diversity" loophole are the major ones - Hispanics and African Americans (NAs being the only exception). For example, I would consider Arabs more diverse than Blacks/ Hispanics since they follow a completely different culture and most follow a different religion. You might say Middle Easterners are over represented in colleges; however, the Middle East is comprised of multiple ethnicities, races, religions, cultures, and ideologies (hence the problems). I am a Lebanese Christian who has been through the political upheavels of the country firsthand (such as the 2006 summer war). If you can find some other applicant that is more diverse than me, PM me. Yet, I am placed, as well as other Middle Easterners, in the same group as terrorists and Radical Islam followers; and then Arabs, as a collective group, are placed in the White category of the admissions process. To me, that is a deliberate move discriminating against Middle Easterns as a whole by decreasing their chances of admissions in the minority-advantaging college system. In conclusion, I do not believe I should be advantaged because I am "Lebanese", but because I have gone through experiences which no other applicant can relate to. I spend the summer in a country which is culturally different than the US. I also speak on behalf of all other minority races hurt by this profiling. For example, visualize a applicant who is from Bangladesh. I assume their race will be processed as Asian even though that applicant comes from a country with little representation in American colleges (just an example, I do not know for certain). Totally absurd. IN CONCLUSION the adcoms should stop using the term "diversity" as a loophole to admit "URMs" and come clean about the discrimination present in college admissions. Better yet, get rid of the ethnicity section of the college app. (Disclaimer: I actually benefit in a way from the system because I put myself down as "other- Lebanese"; Even though I benefit from this system, I hold true to my opinions against AA and the "Diversity Loophole". Therefore, dont try to play the race card on me since I am indeed a minority who has experienced racial discrimination first hand! To those of you who find me a hypocrite for using the system I preach against; rest assured because I deserve to inform the adcoms of my culturally diverse upbringing. I also apoligize if I offended anyone. I have a lot of respect for anyone who truly escapes a poor socioeconomic upbringing to make it into an Ivy (even with less than average stats) because that is a greater accomplishment in itself then getting average stats in a decent upbringing, and I will admit that some URMs are significatly diverse due to a different cultural upbringing)</p>
<p>Stop complaining, it is an economizing problem. Simply demand pull inflation for minorities, whereas there is an oversupply of asians. It is as simple as that. Calm down.</p>
<p>Not completely. What they try to avoid is the total disaster like this:</p>
<p>I'm still interested in the source of this information. It sounds entirely made up.</p>
<p>waitn: I am confident that you will get strong diversity consideration from elite colleges. (I have known students from similar backgrounds who have been very successful in this regard.) Only African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans are reported in the Common Data Set, but a college like Harvard goes well beyond that in its consideration of diversity. And it's not all "skin color", either; socioeconomic background is in the mix, too. I suspect that they don't overengineer their admissions in this respect, but that their goal is to have diversity within various minority groups as well as among them.</p>
<p>I wish i was a international juggler or circus person... id get in cuz of AA for that reason... but,since i didnt, it sucks being brown-asian in my case lol</p>