Elizabeth Hart is now the Santa Monica, Pasadena, San Fernando Valley, Pomona, Long Beach, San Bernadino, Riverside, and San Joaquin Valley, CA regional admission officer. I am also aware that she is Brown University’s Director of Minority Recruitment. Does anyone have the statistics of how many Caucasian students from public high schools have been admitted from her area. It seems that from the last few years I have only seen minority students from our area public schools accepted.
This is such a specific question that I really, really doubt that you’ll find any actual statistics. About 43% of the school overall is white, and the admissions rate is around 8.5%. So if the student in question has stats within range and is unhooked, their chance is probably around that or lower.
Hard to say but the cards are not in your favor. Whenever someone is given a task within a larger organization they tend to focus on their task in order to look good to their boss. When 72% of graduating high school students are caucasion but only 43% of their students are caucasion they may need an admission officer in charge of majority recruitment.
What can you control?
- your grades
- your test scores
- your extra curriculars
- your internships
- your leadership
Finish in the top 10% of your class and you have a 5x better chance at Brown than if you were outside the top 10%.
Score a 750 or higher on each part of the SAT and bump your chance - just looking at scores - by about a third if you scored in the low 700s…
Be the best candidate you can be. Demonstrate interest. Everything else is out of your control.
It also depends on your public HS. If you come from a public HS in an affluent area near a large city it helps. Public HS’s in urban and rural areas have more difficulty getting their students accepted into top private universities.
I doubt that Brown makes public the info that you seek. I know that alumni who interview have to sign a confidentiality agreement before we can interview students – even if I lived in your area and had access to that info as an interview, I am not allowed to make that public (not even to my spouse, according to the agreement).
Is it hard for Caucasian students from public HS to get into Brown? Yes. Is it hard for students from public HS to get into Brown? Yes. It’s hard for almost anyone to get into Brown (exceptions being applicants like the recruited quarterback).
One mistake people make is seeing stats from a few years and assuming a trend. You know about the last few years. Perhaps for the 10 years before that there were plenty of Caucasian students accepted to Brown, and perhaps next year there will be too. OTOH, perhaps this year a bunch of Caucasian students will get in, and what you won’t know is whether it’s because their grandparent promised Brown $100 million or they are a recruited soccer player or they wrote a published novel or they overcame incredible adversity to be valedictorian.
Just follow ClarinetDad’s advice.
Second the advice on considering each individual year, rather than a trend. Specifically because the demographic of any group varies year to year. This year, domestic White students account for 55% of the Class of 2019 (not the 43%), and that number is not perfect for multiple reasons in describing the circumstances at Brown.
If you’re interested, apply.
For what it’s worth, one of my son’s friends, an unhooked white kid from a public HS, was accepted to Brown. He was a strong applicant, but not val or sal.
My son just began this fall and meets your criteria although from a different area. What he noted after a short while on campus, and he may be right, is many of the students have a specific talent that makes them stand out - whether it be music, technology etc. I also remember a Duke admissions counselor saying that the schools don’t necessarily want well rounded students, but well rounded classes. My own guess is it’s a lot of luck but more than public vs. private and race, the applicant needs to have something that makes them stand out in such a competitive pool.
Yes, they take angulated students that have excelled in something and put them together to build a well rounded class. The exception is the well rounded student that turns everything they touch into gold.