<p>Are there any benefits in applying as a minority? I am from Puerto Rico, and I was just wondering, since all the Ivy Leagues universities mention this group, and how they support it.</p>
<p>All Ivy League universities practice affirmative action, so if you put down you're from Puerto Rico, you'll get a slight edge since colleges actively look to enroll more minority students. How much of an edge depends on the individual.</p>
<p>It's a huge edge.</p>
<p>The title of the (second) study is "Opportunity Cost of Admissions Preferences at Elite Universities". </p>
<p>Based on admissions data for 120000 students, and a remarkably predictive regression model derived from that data, the authors surmise that being black has an average admissions effect equivalent to +230 extra SAT points, Hispanic is worth about +185 SAT points, and Asian is roughly equivalent to <em>subtracting</em> 50 points from one's SAT. This is on the old, more difficult and more discerning SAT in the 1980's and 1993-1997.</p>
<p>Added: another quotation from the authors: "the under-represented minority advantage is greatest for African-American and Hispanic applicants whose SAT scores are in the 1200-1300 range, and not for applicants near the lower end of the SAT distribution as some have suggested."</p>
<p>Does anyone know how minority status is defined? People applying directly from Peru are international, not hispanic, for example. What about someone who has permanent US residency (greencard) but still has citizenship from a foreign country such as Peru? Would that person be hispanic or international?</p>
<p>Why do the world hate Asians? We're the only one with minus points... if we go and degenerate into mumbling fools, can we get +2400 on our SAT scores? <em>grumble disgruntledly</em></p>
<p>Well to the OP, only mainland-born Puerto Ricans recieve Affirmative Action benefits. But i'd imagine that being from an exotic place where they might not get as many applicants would probably make you stand out a bit more in the applicant pool. Good Luck.</p>
<p>I hope that you all are aware of the fallacies of that Princeton study. It looks almost EXCLUSIVELY at test scores as the criteria for admissions and it assumes that anyone admitted with lower than the mean test average has been given some type of "bonus points."</p>
<p>There was no such fallacy in the study, nor did they assume that "giving bonus points" is a mechanism of admission. They treat admissions as a black box, find a remarkably accurate model for how the admissions work, and then indicate that in terms of this model, the statistical effect of being black is the same as the effect of adding 230 points to the SAT score.</p>
<p>Here's one for you:</p>
<p>If an American citizen has dual citizenship with another country, say Ireland, is that an advantage in any way?</p>
<p>My point is, it's impossible to find a 'remarkably accurate model for how the admissions work.' Many of the URMs in that study may have gotten in for reasons completely outside of their race, test scores and grades. The study deals entirely with statistics and does not take into consideration any of the intangibles that are so important in the admissions process. Such a fallacy DOES exist. On another thread one of the Admissions Officers expressed dissatisfaction with the study as well.</p>
<p>Of course it's possible to find a remarkably accurate model -- the Princeton authors did just that. </p>
<p>Look, suppose that somebody published a formula for predicting college admissions results that took as input your race, SAT, and astrological sign, crunched these in some arcane fashion with the digits of Pi, and..... the results of this bizarre model turned out to correlate at 98 percent with actual admissions results for a million known applicants. The results of such a model would be quite meaningful, although the mechanism is different from the actual admission process. It's no different from showing your application to the guidance counselor at Philips Exeter and his experience and intuition giving you a 90 percent correct answer; his implicit mental model would take into account both race and SAT, and that's exactly what the Princeton study did explicitly and quantitatively (and successfully).</p>
<p>The complaints of admissions officers about this had nothing to do with the accuracy of the model, but that the study didn't separate negative effect of white versus URM admissions on the admission of Asians. The Princeton model could have answered that question, they just didn't ask it in the paper.</p>
<p>Can anyone provide a link for that paper? Thx</p>
<p>I do not believe any of those models are true. I will give you an example that threw that theory way out. A personal friend of mine, last year:</p>
<p>Valedictorian, Presidential Scholar ( 2 from the state, about 100 for the whole country), National Merit Scholar ( from 1.4 million, one of the 8000 winners ) National Hispanic Scholar, SAT 1580 (the old one, for class of 2010 ) ECs awesome, recs.....just imagine.. Female, hispanic and NOT requiring any financial aid. All this means that H could have had the credit for an URM, on top of that female, interested in the sciences, who was as competitive as the top white student and who was going to pay her way thru college without requiring any aid. The outcome : A deferral on EA to be followed by a Waitlisted...to be followed by..Never heard from H again..
Now...what is that ??? It tells you it is just total crapshoot!!!!!!!</p>
<p>Moviebuff: you've just given me a glimmer of hope... maybe Harvard's not Asian-phobic afterall <em>goes off and celebrate with a gallon of ice cream</em></p>
<p>The example of rejected Latina super-applicant doesn't discredit the models, which are statistical (not deterministic or claimed to be such) and an average across several elite schools (not just Harvard which is at the extreme, where SATs are least determinative due to the narrower range). Neither Harvard nor the other Ivy League schools automatically grant special treatment to every Hispanic applicant; that this one didn't need any financial aid may indicate that she was not considered as disadvantaged by her minority status, or may have been a privileged immigrant suburbanite rather than a success story from the ghetto.</p>
<p>Correct Siserune. Moviebuff, there are always exceptions to the rule.</p>
<p>However, I think that lately the SATs have less of an effect on admission than before as it's gotten much more easier to pander to the hollywood activist types. So, an SAT study might no longer be so statistically correct.</p>
<p>I understand your point. But this is not about SATs. This is about a super applicant who also happens to be hispanic, an URM. These schools brag about their percentages of URMs, females etc. They do not brag about how many ghetto students they admit. Do you really believe that these schools are not interested in taking students who are able to pay their way thru? Think of it: less financial aid, more possibilities of future donations to raise their endowment, etc. The number of those admitted because they have some compelling life experience overcoming adversity and also have mediocre academic credentials is miniscule and certainly does not form part of any possible model.</p>
<p>The Princeton study, as quoted above, states that the racial factor is most decisive for URM applicants with SATs around 1200-1300, not at the top of the range. That is about what one would expect, more or less: a would-be Deny who gets a minority Admit is likely to be below, but within "SAT bonus" range, of the lower half of the non-URM admitted candidates. </p>
<p>As to your friend's case, a few points.</p>
<p>Ability to pay does not affect admissions at the top few schools. Their endowments have grown to the point that the dominant financial considerations are investments and donations, not the differential tuition to be had by favoring applicants who don't need financial aid. Some schools are eliminating student loans because they can afford to. </p>
<p>Your friend's academic credentials don't sound necessarily overwhelming: valedictorian, with SAT scores placing her in the top 2000 to 4000 nationwide (in 2006, over 2100 students scored as high as she did [1580 math+verbal] and twice that number scored within 20 points of her). There is also a Presidential Scholarship, but it's not clear what that means in admissions terms. If her family has been speaking native English for two generations and is well-to-do, that may not lend itself to special admission status as a Hispanic to begin with. It would not surprise me if most or all other Ivy League schools would reject her as well (i.e. either she obviously clears all hurdles for admission at most such schools, or she is obviously an OK but middling applicant on careful examination). What top schools did she get into and which was she rejected from?</p>
<p>siserune, why do you think it is that the URMs who benefit most come from the 1200-1300 range? </p>
<p>I know that SAT scores tend to be correlated with income. So is it because the URMs in the 1200-1300 range might be more disadvantaged/overcame more difficulties etc. than their higher scoring counterparts?</p>
<p>I'm just really thrown off by Moviebuff's anecdote. My school sends about 15 kids to Ivies a year and the majority are wealthy or well off URMs with achievements close to or slightly below that of the hispanic girl mentioned earlier.</p>