Harvard, you have been served

Parent Cafe
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<p>“mathyone yes perfect score applicants are turned away but since there are only a handful of such applicants, these same schools know that these top scorers will not come to their schools even if accepted so they dismiss before they get a chance to lower the schools yield.” Huh? You are saying that a school like Princeton is rejecting top scorers because they think they aren’t going to attend, in order to protect their yield? I don’t have the data on Harvard, not sure if it’s available but please feel free to hunt it down for us. </p>

<p>As far as superscoring goes, yes I know about that. Not a fan, but that’s what they do. And if you’ve looked at much info on SAT scores, it’s clear that the test is not as reproducible as the college board would like. Many of the students who score 800 would not do so upon retaking. So, does it make sense to value 800 much more than any high score? There are lots of kids who do well at math or at reading so they aren’t in the 2400 club but nonetheless have an 800. Anyway I couldn’t figure out what point you were trying to make with all this.</p>

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<p>ThereAreLlamas I agree with most of your post 178. As to your other post about statistics I am not sure I follow. </p>

<p>The general argument made by those who see the that Asians have the highest SAT and GPA stats and claim this discrepancy is not a showing of discrimination always turns to other factors that no one has any knowledge or data. It is always, Asians must be lacking in leadership, ECs, essays, or any number of other factors. However, the data for the non Asians for these same factors are nonexistent. So either one can assume that the Asians are less worthy in these other factors or that they are on par. If Asians are on par then why are Asians have the lowest admit rates at each score/gpa bucket?</p>

<p>mathyone My point is that the actual admit rate of perfect score applicants from a single sitting are probably much higher than is reported because of superscoring. The issue with Harvard is that a perfect scoring Asian American may have a 30-40% admit rate but a perfect scoring Black or Hispanic the score virtually guarantees acceptance. If discovery is done in the litigation, this info will be borne out.</p>

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<p>Some possibilities: 1. The EC’s favored by many Asians may not be filling all the areas Harvard is looking for. They need only so many first violinists for their ensembles. 2. Harvard may be seeking to maintain diversity on a department as well as a school-wide level and Asian interest in some areas is over-represented, this making the competition especially fierce for students interested in those areas. 3. Those students who choose to spend significant amounts of their spare time in SAT prep schools may not be as interesting to admissions officers. They pretty much say this in their presentations. </p>

<p>Those are three reasons I think are plausible yet I don’t see them as discriminatory. With regard to 1 and 2, I think it would be very interesting to see the admissions results broken down by prospective major and significant EC’s. </p>

<p>I think it would also be interesting to compare the SAT scores of white students who major in STEM vs. white students who major in other areas. I think STEM students tend to have slightly higher test scores in general. You see this for instance at Duke, where the engineers not only have higher math scores but also slightly higher verbal scores <a href=“http://admissions.duke.edu/images/uploads/Class2015Profile.pdf”>Apply - Duke Undergraduate Admissions. If most Asian applicants are STEM students, they would be expected to have slightly higher test scores. </p>

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<p>mathyone Thanks for giving a reasoned perspective. 1. Not sure what a favored EC might be but if Harvard is going to denying otherwise worthy applicants it should just state the diverse ECs that it wants so those Asians will take up the trombone vs the violin, get killed playing football vs tennis. 2. If diversity in a department is important than it can do like Cornell and make admissions based upon department. 3. Not sure how this works since rarely does an applicant state that he had to take the SAT prep on weekends, but if that is a concern, require that all applicants to Harvard take the SAT only once and do not superscore. Given the fact that HYPSM all superscore this is probably not a big an issue as the admission officer seem to say.</p>

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<p>

My D’s case agrees with this statistic at UNC.
She was top 1%, 4/400 , 4.0 GPA UW, 5.6 GPA W, 2270 SAT , 3 yr soccer, varsity freshman, president of NHS, Science honor society, volunteer …
rejected by UNC.
She was accepted to UMich, USC, UMaryland, U Minn … good size scholarship at Purdue.</p>

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<p>Mavant: “During medical school interviews, I was always asked some extremely delicate geo-political question designed to trip up my interview. Once admitted, I found out that I was not alone in that the other 16 Asians in my class were also asked ridiculous questions. This was not true of my URM classmates, and admittedly, the sample size was small but all 4 of my URM classmates had no difficult questions and mostly had the “what’s you favorite movie” and “what’s your favorite type of food” questions”</p>

<p>I think this is due to what Bush 43 called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”, and it hurts us in the black community as much as the exalted expectations of Asians hurts them. I want people to have the same expectations of my black son that they do of the white or Asian kids in whatever engineering program he ends up in. He can handle it! I think that, though well-intentioned, AA as it now stands needs to be overhauled. At least personally, I feel it may now threaten to do more harm than good for my people.</p>

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<p>As to what you said later, Mavant (“thousands of potential Asian doctors who would have graduated and practiced, were denied admission in favor of “supposedly better/equally qualified” URM candidates which statistics have shown, never graduated to serve their communities”), let’s be fair…some URMs who got in ahead of Asians were more qualified, and some were not. Also, is it really true that URMs NEVER graduate to serve their communities?? Can you support that with evidence?</p>

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<p>@fire123. </p>

<p>Is your daughter instate?</p>

<p>UNC has nearly 70% women on their campus. I’m sure that any out of state woman is climbing an uphill battle, given that UNC can only enroll 18% total OOS. </p>

<p>ETA: I see you are from Houston. It is well known that it is as hard to get into UNC from OOS as it is to get into the ivies. The acceptance rate OOS is very low. </p>

<p>I hope your daughter is happy wherever she is, though!!!</p>

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<p>What the heck is that supposed to even mean? Their communities once they graduate is anywhere they live. </p>

<p>Jeez. People don’t even know how racist they sometimes sound. </p>

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<p>@poetgrl It’s a bit garbled, but I interpret this statement to refer to one of the explicit justifications for AA in medical school, which is to take people from underserved communities and educate them so that they may go back to practice in these same communities. There are a lot of double negatives in the sentence you quoted, but I think zekesima is actually asserting that some URMs do, in fact, go back to serve their own communities. </p>

<p>I’ve never seen any data one way or the other on this, but it would be interesting.</p>

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<p>I realize this. But nobody ever asks anybody else about serving their communities.</p>

<p>So, it’s okay for me, a white woman from a working class, blue collar background to move on out of my “community,” but not for an African American doctor to move out of his/her original “community?” </p>

<p>It’s so racist to think that way, imho. It’s nobody’s business.</p>

<p>Do you think the ONLY benefit to an AA doctor is to AAs? No. It’s to everyone. (Okay, by “YOU” I don’t specifically mean you collegealum. I know you don’t think this.)</p>

<p>What will the benefit be to Sasha and Malia? What is their community? I just don’t really “get” the question.</p>

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<p>The document, from a quick reading, was very short on figures. It read like a mish-mash of various threads on CC, not like a real argument. </p>

<p>There are figures available online about scores and students admitted. As far as I can tell, the picture is consistent with Harvard’s reporting in the last Common Data Set online, <a href=“http://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2011-2012.pdf[/url]”>http://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2011-2012.pdf&lt;/a&gt; that they “consider” (and weight equally):
Academic
Rigor of secondary school record X
C7 Academic GPA X
C7 Standardized test scores X
C7 Application Essay X
C7 Recommendation(s) X</p>

<p>C7 Nonacademic
C7 Interview X
C7 Extracurricular activities X
C7 Talent/ability X
C7 Character/personal qualities X
C7 First generation X
C7 Alumni/ae relation X
C7 Geographical residence X
C7 Racial/ethnic status X
C7 Volunteer work X
C7 Work experience X</p>

<p>Not considered: Class Rank. State Residency. Religious affiliation/commitment. Level of applicant’s interest.</p>

<p>Despite the belief of some people that Asians score more highly than others, as Harvard can make it financially possible for anyone to attend, and has national pull, one must take into account that there are more than enough students scoring over 700 on the SAT from almost every ethnic group to fill Harvard’s freshman class. </p>

<p>Harvard: 1662 matriculates in 2012. 25th percentile for enrolled students lies around 700, 710 on the SAT. </p>

<p>From a rough, late night calculation, roughly this many students of each ethnic group listed scored over 700 on the math and critical reading in 2014 (from <a href=“https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/sat/sat-percentile-ranks-gender-ethnicity-2014.pdf[/url]):”>https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/sat/sat-percentile-ranks-gender-ethnicity-2014.pdf):</a></p>

<p>Asian, 700 or over on CR: top 9% of Asian pool = 18,590
700 or over on Math: top 25% of pool = 51,641</p>

<p>White: on CR: top 6%,= 49,369. on math, top 7%, 57,597
(more than 2.5x as many white students scored over 700 on CR than Asian, more white students scored over 700 on math than Asian students)*</p>

<p>African American, 1% scored over 700 on CR, M = 2,125 (more than Harvard’s freshman class)</p>

<p>Mexican, top 1%, CR & Math = 1,202
Puerto Rican, top 1% = 290
Latin American, Central American, South American or Other Latino, top 2% of pool, CR & Math = 3,024</p>

<p>Maybe they omitted the figures because the figures wouldn’t support the argument, such as it was (not). </p>

<p>It seems likely that 700 is rather an important line to cross; 25% of the class submit scores beneath that level, though, so it’s not impossible to be admitted. It does not seem to me, though, that Harvard gives massive bonus points to getting one or two more questions right on any section of the SAT. If I had to guess, I’d say the interview and the recommendations are probably more important than we know.</p>

<hr>

<ul>
<li>Interestingly enough, in 2012, Harvard enrolled 740 white students, and 286 Asian, non-hispanic students.
740/286 = 2.58.</li>
</ul>

<p>49,369/18,590 = 2.65. Hmmm. That’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think? I mean, that would be the pattern you’d expect if the really important SAT section were the CR section. </p>

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<p>Hey Periwinkle, they are not considered equally, at least the CDS doesn’t say that nor does any ex Ivy adcom who wrote a book. It’s fairly consistent that grades and scores are about 70-85 pct of the total weight. So kids, if you are reading this thread, focus on getting high GPAs and scores. That’s what people with actual experience (ex Ivy adcoms) say. </p>

<p>Edit: Hey, am I reading this right?! 9 pct of Asian kids score more than 700 in CR while only 6 pct of White kids do? </p>

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<p>The CDS gives four categories: Very Important, Important, Considered, and Not Considered. Introductory description of the table: “Relative Importance of each of the following academic and nonacademic factors in first-time, first-year, degree seeking (freshman) admissions decisions.” Nothing is marked Very Important, nor Important.</p>

<p>In the CDS (which you click on the link for in my post), the Harvard people who filled out that form checked “Considered” for each and every one, except the “not considered” entries. </p>

<p>So, in my argot, that means weighting equally. Of course, they’re only submitting the data to the federal government, right? So no doubt a book written by an ex Ivy adcom (can you cite its title?) would be more accurate. /sarc.</p>

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<p>Wow…I guess my attempt at sarcasm here was unsuccessful :wink: </p>

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<p>A much larger white pool took the SAT last year. </p>

<p>206,564 Asian, Asian American, or Pacific Islander
822,821 White</p>

<p>I would assume this includes international students, as the SAT data table does not specify "US student population. </p>

<p>I have no idea how they account for students who don’t fit neatly into categories.</p>

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<p>That’s fine but I haven’t seen a single ex-Ivy adcom say that they are all equally weighted and in fact I have seen just the reverse. I have a general tendency to believe people with actual experience over those reading tea leaves.</p>

<p>Of course, I will be happy to change my opinion if you can quote a few ex-Ivy adcoms that agree that academics has less than 10 pct weight, as equal weighting would indicate.</p>

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<p>

“Underserved community” generally equates to rural communities or heavily URM inner city communities. I think someone white coming from a rural community would get a boost, especially if they stated that they planned to go to that community. Presumably someone white from an inner city should get the same boost. The people who originally used the argument of affirmative action as a way of improving care in underserved communities are just using race as a proxy for socioeconomic class. Your examples of Sasha and Malia demonstrate how clumsy these assumptions can be, Regardless, this spurs opponents of affirmative action to ask the question, “If a certain subset of people were admitted partly because they were likely to practice in underserved communities, then did they actually end up practicing there?” If everybody ends up living in Manhattan, then whatever tip factor is associated with the apparent likelihood of practicing in underserved communities should be removed. </p>

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<p>Zekesima: “let’s be fair…some URMs who got in ahead of Asians were more qualified, and some were not. Also, is it really true that URMs NEVER graduate to serve their communities?? Can you support that with evidence?”</p>

<p>That is my point…if you don’t graduate, you can’t serve any community. I have acknowledged that my own class sample size was small but medical school class size has always been small (typically between 80-130 students per class at most schools). Class sizes are small enough that everyone knows everyone else and when even one student fails out, it is not a secret. To my knowledge, no Asian student has ever failed out of my medical school. The overall fail-out rate is indeed very small and is typically 1-2% most years. Nearly all of them have been URMs at my school. It must be stated that my school gives multiple chances and assigns tutors when needed. It makes me believe that those who fail out never really were well qualified in the first place. </p>

<p>poetgrl: “I realize this. But nobody ever asks anybody else about serving their communities.”</p>

<p>Actually, this is one of the FIRST questions asked of residents during interviews. Asian residents are blatantly asked if they are willing to serve underrepresented or urban areas and are often asked to sign declarations of intent. </p>

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<p>What are the percentages for the ACT, @Periwinkle? </p>