<p>
</p>
<p>I think, HYPSM and all the Ivies combined, take in about 1,400 Black students each year. I believe about half are high stat kids (700) and well qualified. The remaining 700 are probably the 2020 from poor schools. I doubt there is room for the 2020 Exeter.</p>
<p>Any stats about how many African Americans achieve perfect scores in various sections of the SAT?</p>
<p>
But there’s also Amherst, Williams and the other selective LACs, Duke, Stanford, Rice, honors programs at flagships, schools with lots of merit money, and more. They all want a “critical mass” of URM students. And my impression is pretty well borne out by the results threads I’ve read over several years here on CC. That 2020 from Execter might not get into Harvard, but I’d be stupified if he didn’t get into multiple Ivies. It’s as simple as supply and demand. (There’s another thread right now in which a student is asking if scores in the 1800s are enough for black students to get into Cornell, and multiple people are saying that it is.)</p>
<p>Justice Roberts yesterday asked the attorney for UTexas “what is the critical mass” of URMs for that university. THe attorney did not directly answer. It was a stupid question because if answered with a number, it would have been illegal since numerical quotas are not allowed. Also, there is no critcal mass in most cases. URMs are put in a special pool and applicants are assessed there in without the constraints that are there in the regular pool. If 25 applicants look like good picks for the school, they will be taken. If it’s 20, then so it would be. The selective schools often say that there are at least two very good classes that can be selected from the applicants each year without making much difference. So by not having the direct comparison in place, the admissions process is easier for flagged groups where the onus is to accept rather than to cull. For higly selective collegees, it’s really a culling expedition to go through all of those applications.</p>
<p>The figure I have been told is about 40% acceptance in those URM flagged pools at highly selective schools with the truly unacceptable candidates not counted. So with scores in the midrange, that is what the end result usually is. That jives with some numbers I checked a number of years ago when I had access to application and acceptances of a group of kids.</p>
<p>I suggest that we all continue to focus in this thread on facts and numbers, and not on opinions of whether any of this is good or bad. (I think we’ve done that so far.)</p>
<p>cptofthehouse, I have to think that the selective schools balance how many (more or less) of a particular category of student they’d like to have against what compromises in qualifications they’d have to make to get that number. Thus, for example, while the Ivies would like to have great football players, they are limited in how many they can take with lower stats (in this case, the limits are formalized). I think it’s probably the same for URMs, legacies, and other groups as well, although the lines are probably more fluid.</p>
<p>For certain sports or sports, in general,there may be fixed number limits as quotas are not forbidden by law. Interestingly enough the reported percentage of acceptance for recruited athletes in the same set of schools is in excess of 50%. As a group they have the largest accept rate insuch settings.</p>
<p>Well, if athletes are actively recruited, it stands to reason that most of them will ultimately be admitted. I think when they aren’t (at least at places like the Ivies), it’s probably because the coach wasn’t able to get admissions to go for the low stats.</p>
<p>Athletes are definitely a different category from URMs. For these applicants, the school has actually invested resources (coach’s time, official visits, recruiting trips, etc.) in their applications. It is surprising that the admission rate for recruited athletes does not approach 100% - except of course that coaches apparently like to push the envelope on who will be accepted.</p>
<p>40% acceptance for URMs sounds awfully attractive when compared to 5-10% for the entire applicant pool.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>7th graders take the SAT on a routine basis now???</p>
<p>The overall median on the SAT math is 510 or 520, while 420 is the 20th percentile and 320 is the 4th percentile. However, most of the SAT takers are in 11th or 12th grade, not 7th grade.</p>
<p>The reason a lot of 7th graders take the SAT is for admission to summer programs like CTY and TIP.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If we agree that there were a total of about 2,000 well qualified Black students, 700 of whom went to HYPSM, this would leave 1300 to 1400 well qualified Blacks for the other schools, right? By the way, Stanford is the S in HYPSM, so it is already included in the 700.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus the average SAT Math score for 7th and 8th graders is between 450 and 500:</p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
<p>In my son’s case his performance takes him from the bottom 7% (320) to the top 5%-10% (690) from 2008 to 2011. Now, in 2012 expecting 750+ in senior year will place him in the top 1%. My point is, schools make a difference.</p>
<p>URMs could be in the athletic pools, and though, yes, technically “most” recruited athletes get in the school f choice, that most is more like half at the most selective school, which is danged good, but no slam dunk. A URM athlete is better off in the athletic pool most of the time.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t pay much attention to the average SAT for 7th graders. It’s a highly self-selected group.</p>
<p>
But don’t assume that HYPSM can get the best of the group in terms of stats. (And not to quibble too much, but Stanford isn’t an Ivy.)</p>
<p>And if you want some feel for this, look at the results threads for the most selective schools here on CC, and see the results URMs get.</p>
<p>A presumed 40% acceptance rate is a bit off</p>
<p>[JBHE</a> Annual Survey: Black First-Year Students at the Nation’s Leading Research Universities : The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education](<a href=“http://www.jbhe.com/2011/12/jbhe-annual-survey-black-first-year-students-at-the-nations-leading-research-universities/]JBHE”>JBHE Annual Survey: Black First-Year Students at the Nation’s Leading Research Universities : The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education)</p>
<p>[The</a> JBHE Annual Survey: Black First-Year Students at the Nation’s Leading Liberal Arts Colleges : The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education](<a href=“http://www.jbhe.com/2011/11/the-jbhe-annual-survey-black-first-year-students-at-the-nations-leading-liberal-arts-colleges/]The”>The JBHE Annual Survey: Black First-Year Students at the Nation’s Leading Liberal Arts Colleges : The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree with you completly, although, no more self selecting than the group that takes the SAT Math II. By the way, my point is that a school that cannot produce a single kid in a class of 450 to be state recognized or nationally recognized is teaching something very different than the school that is loaded with recognized kids.Would you agree?</p>
<p>I have no idea. I do think that the holistic approach is there. There was an interesting article (think the NYT) that said that the majority of minorities who were admitted to Ivies were the mirrors of the non-minority admissions, i.e., come from wealthy families, have had SAT prep, have college counselors etc…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>As another poster noted, the pool of 7th graders taking the SAT is not equivalent to the pool of 11th and 12th graders taking the SAT four or five years later. The number of students taking the SAT in 7th grade appears to be only about 20,000 per year, which is 1.2% of the 1,647,123 students who took the SAT in 2011.</p>
<p>Assuming that only prodigies and near-prodigies bother with the SAT in 7th grade, being in the bottom 7% of the top 1.2% is still far above average.</p>
<p>re post 75, reeinaz, thanks for the stats with great info.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The number is about 70,000 a year and includes students from only 16 states. It is very comparable to the number of kids who take the SAT Math II. </p>
<p>[History</a> | Duke TIP](<a href=“http://www.tip.duke.edu/node/12]History”>http://www.tip.duke.edu/node/12)</p>
<p>It is very comparable to the number of kids who take the SAT Math II. My point was to point out that none of the students at his school were state recognized, let alone nationally recognized.</p>