How much harder is it to get admitted to a top school as an asian male from the bay area going for cs?
Would it better for some colleges that allow to apply under mechanical/eletrical engineering/statistics?
I donāt think being as Asian male is an anti-hook unless you also happen to be an international needing substantial financial aid. Are you applying to any CUs? There are many superb LACs in this country where just being a male interested in STEM would be a tremendous hook.
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Depends on the school - many, for example, UCs, donāt factor in race. Other states are similar - Georgia for one.
I would worry about where you want to go to school. I would make sure you have reaches, targets, and safeties. But in CS, that you have enough - itās a hard major at most and you have to typically be above the averages.
I would not factor my race into where I apply - unless itās - I donāt want to go somewhere I wouldnāt be comfortable (i.e. for you). But Iād apply where you want to and donāt add unnecessary stress into your life.
Good luck.
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You can check the ethnic diversity for any school to see what percent of the students are Asian. Some are approaching 20%, so it may be an issue there although I donāt know if it is. At a number of top colleges the percent is in single digits so I donāt think they care. I donāt know what you mean by a ātop schoolā, but excluding the service academies, here are the US News top ten engineering schools that do not offer a doctorate and the Asian % of their student body:
6% ā Rose-Hulman
20% - Harvey Mudd
14% - Franklin W. Olin
5% ā Bucknell
13% - Cal Ploy-SLO
13% - Cooper Union
5% ā Milwaukee School of Engineering
21% - Cal Poly-Pomona
6% ā Embrey Riddle-Prescott
5% ā Kettering
8% ā San Diego
Here are the numbers for the top 10 engineering school with PhD:
19% - MIT
18% - Stanford
30% - UC Berkeley
21% - Cal Tech
19% - Carnegie-Mellon
19% - Georgia Tech
16% - Illinois
13% - Michigan
15% - Cornell
8% ā Purdue
20% - Texas
Here are a few more doctoral universities just outside the top 10:
9% ā Virginia Tech
8% ā Texas A&M
7% ā Wisconsin
12% - Columbia
6% ā Penn State
9% ā Minnesota
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Usually those numbers only include US citizens or nationals and not the international students. They also only count students who choose to disclose.
My daughter, who is Chinese, chose too disclose (after a lot of thought). There were a lot of international students (not all Asian) who werenāt included in the numbers the school lists.
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My understanding is that the various Universities of California are prohibited by California law from considering race in admissions. Being a California resident considering how strong the UCās are for CS you should have some excellent options right there.
Some top universities such as Stanford and MIT do not consider your major in deciding on undergraduate admissions. You might as well apply for the major that you want. MIT for example only uses your specified intended major after you are admitted to help them assign you a freshman year faculty advisor.
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I agree with twoinanddoneās point.
Not sure where you pulled these numbers from (donāt use 3rd party sites like USNWR!), but UCBās fall 2021 first year class is 41.1% Asian (Chinese/Filipino/Japanese/Korena/Other/South/Vietnamese). Further, 3.9% declined to state ethnicity, and another 12.8% are Internationalā¦and I expect a not insignificant proportion of those two groups are Asian.
https://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-fall-enrollment-data-new-undergraduates
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Yes, but it doesnāt matter in UCās. Data are a year old but I donāt think that the picture has changed substantially. My point was that there are top schools out there that are not saturated with Asian students. If you want to factor in international Asian students, be my guest.
My point is that the Asian numbers you cited for UCB are significantly understated (30% vs. 41%+ (likely 50% when the international Asians are added in). That makes me concerned the rest of the numbers you cite are incorrect as well.
OP, I encourage you to apply to the major/program they want which sounds like itās CS. Make sure to apply to a handful of target schools, as well as at least one affordable safety. At some top universities being an Asian male will make the hurdle higher in terms of stats and ECs. OTOH, at some top LACs, being an Asian male is desirableā¦Iām not calling it a hook, but still a plus.
Why not apply to some colleges that donāt admit by major or at which your demographic may be under-represented, such as Harvey Mudd, Pomona, Williams, Amherst, Hamilton, Carleton and Grinnell? As a benefit beyond admissions, the overall academic atmospheres at these schools may be richer than at some schools that might be more common targets for CS.
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My numbers for UCB are from UCB. Regardless of which numbers you use, UCB shows up as an outlier. I doubt that schools with lower numbers in the 5-12% range on my list have suddenly jumped into a different realm.
Again, my point was for the OP, that if he is concerned about anti-Asian bias in Admissions Offices, he can shop around and find schools where conditions are more favorable for his application. You are welcome to publish revised numbers to help the OP get a more accurate and updated picture of the admissions landscape.
CS is often more competitive for admission. If it is at the college in question, it is likely to require another admission process (high college GPA and/or competitive admission) to change into it after enrolling. This can also be the case if the college only admits undeclared.
I.e. your anti hook is wanting to do the CS major.
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Race is a strong factor in admissions, especially with STEM. Look into the 3-2 programs at liberal arts colleges. These can be a back-door into engineering/STEM programs.
Consideration of race / ethnicity varies from none to significant, depending on the college. Blanket statements like the above will be inaccurate for many colleges.
Relatively few students who start 3+2 programs transfer to the ā2ā school, since the extra cost, uncertain financial aid, and transfer admission barriers could all stand in the way. In addition, many who chose a small LAC for the small intimate environment may not want to transfer away from their friends into a bigger university that the ā2ā schools often are.
Since the OP was interested mostly in CS, doing a 3+2 would not be needed if they were interested in LACs, since many have CS majors (although care should be taken to check how extensive their upper level CS offerings are).
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The OP expressed a preference for the study of computer science. Note that some of the schools you listed do not offer a CS major.
If you had paid attention, the OP referred to ātop collegesā. And for top colleges, race is a big factor in admissions, especially so for candidates like the OP. Weāre not talking about community colleges or less selective colleges here.
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For UC admissions, this is the site that I use for the best UC info (Fall 2020):
For Cal (Berkeley), 41.52% is the enrolled % for Asians, plus any from the pool of Internationals and Unknown, as @Mwfan1921 mentioned. You can plug in any UC campus and % is given when you scroll over the number.
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You have to explain what you mean. Iām not getting it. How is being Asian a big factor in admissions?
I wonder if this might be a ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā question, and note many of the responses quickly went to āraceā, and Iām not sure either the implication in OPs question, nor the answers, are justified or appropriate.
FWIW, I think the economist for Harvard in the SFFA case pointed out that the admissions rates to Harvard for Asians from your region was higher than what a model might have suggested (worth double-checking), so Iām not certain it is accurate to suggest that being āAsianā is somehow a disadvantage as you imply, or āanti hook,ā given where you are applying from, and for a school like Harvard.
That having been said, given your location it is likely that you are in a very competitive subset of people applying to top colleges from that area - males (gender association with CS) from the Bay Area (regional association with CS intent) seeking to major in CS. By ācompetitiveā I mean ālikely to have many other people who have high academic scores and demonstrated interest in the field.ā Iām not sure there is a practical difference between CS and āelectrical engineeringā in terms of the profile of applicant.
I also suspect that many of these candidates, regardless of race, will ālook alikeā - meaning nothing to do with culture or race, but that they have a tendency to focus their ECs on things like āmath clubā or ālab internshipā or ārobotics,ā maybe arenāt as likely to be Class President or multiple-team-sport Captain, and so if you present a similar profile of activities, it will be even harder to āstand out.ā Any relative advantage might be derived from having a different kid of story (hardship/first gen), or say a completely different kind of EC interest (lead in your school musicals? winner in Young Arts competition? anything less typically correlated to engineering applicants generally, etc.).
If your profile (again, not race) looks like so many othersā¦ then it becomes very difficult to stand out. There are colleges that are more likely to value this more narrow set of interests and activities, perhaps an MIT or Carnegie Mellon (both fabulous schools), vs those who are seeking to have a student body profile that is not as heavily skewed towards engineering/applied sciences (including Harvard or even Princeton).
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To give an idea of how much of an anti-hook being an intended CS major can be, consider a university in the bay area that is popular with Asian students and CS majors, San Jose State University. Its last year admission thresholds are listed at Freshmen Impaction Results | Admissions . The numbers are basically GPA * 800, where GPA has some minor weighting (typically at most +0.3 to +0.4), but with some bonus points (e.g. equivalent of +0.25 GPA for local area applicants, +0.05 for a few other categories). (For engineering majors, there are additional points for math GPA, so the numbers are not directly comparable.)
For CS frosh admission to SJSU, applicants needed a score of 3400, equivalent to a GPA of 4.25. For comparison, note that many other majors required only a score of 2000, equivalent to a GPA of 2.5.
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