<p>Inside education has published research from a Harvard prof explaining how admissiions committees work and what they value most. Is anyone surprised that the largest factor is ethnic and minority status? The research confirms that your ethnicity trumps everything else. Further, the study observes that applicants are rarely judged against each other. Rather, applicants are segregated into buckets of applicants with similar properties and then compared to one another within the bucket. This explains the common anomaly on CC where students with great stats are rejected vs. others who don't have good records. The fact is that all the great stat kids were pooled separately from the URMs and never compared. The article makes the astonishing claim that bucketizing students for admissions purposes is expressly unconstitutional from actual decisions make by the Supreme Court. Yet, colleges defy this mandate. Great article that demystifies (but sadly confirms) all you hate about the admissions process.</p>
<p>That makes sense to bucket type of students in order to yield the right overall class. I assume if they are looking for a certain type of student and several fit the bill, then you would select from that group for the best one. For instance if they have several Olympic level candidates, they would pick one or two that fits best in their overall make up of classes.</p>
<p>With my DD we are looking at colleges that she will potentially fit a need. There was a great book I read a few years ago that went into detail on how you need to understand each college and potential areas you fit best within. When my son went through this last year, we changed his major by school based on acceptance rates. It worked well for him since frankly at 17 he didn’t know if he wanted to be in business or engineering. </p>
<p>Hopefully everything will work out next year during the application season.</p>
<p>“Great article that demystifies (but sadly confirms) all you hate about the admissions process.”</p>
<p>Maybe I’ve been on the inside too long (I’m an HYP recruiter/interviewer +20 years). I understand the vagaries of the process and how it can be perceived by the general population. The article didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.</p>
<p>But if I may: should this process engender “hate”? I would say: “What’s the alternative?” Like the quoted dean said: it’s a zero sum game. Add more slots for one sub-group, take them away from another. Isn’t it an institutional perogative to have these soft-quotas?</p>
<p>And I’ve got skin in the game too. My Ivy-potential HS freshman daughter is an ORM and my school has only small legacy preference. I’m acutely aware of the extreme likelihood of her being rejected by my alma mater once it’s her time. But I’m fully aware and accepting of the evaluation process. I still support it.</p>
<p>The knee jerk reaction to this article is to think “Ooh, bad, bad, bad. Schools are selecting on the basis of non-academic criteria.” Unfortunately without more in-depth information all this tells us is how the initial sort is made, not how the eventual class will look.</p>
<p>Let’s take two universities, both of whom would like to see an academically talented and diverse class.</p>
<p>University1 makes the first cut based on academics. They cull anyone with a GPA below 3.5 then secondarily pull the applications from URM candidates as well those from other special groups such as athletes and development admit. </p>
<p>University2 first sorts by special status, making special piles for URMs, athletes, development admits, etc. They then rank those in the piles by GPA.</p>
<p>Both University1 and University2 then look at their piles and admit the top 50 URMs. What results is an identical pool of admitted URM students. Taking the point further, what if University1 (the “academic cut” school) admits the top 100 URMs, all students with a 3.7 or better, while University2 (the “diversity cut” school) admits only the top 50, all students with a 3.8 or better?</p>
<p>“This explains the common anomaly on CC where students with great stats are rejected vs. others who don’t have good records.”</p>
<p>Well, you know, so what. It’s not like someone who failed out of HS got in instead of a 4.0/2400 applicant. Every single one of the students admitted meets that particular institution’s minimum requirements. If they did not meet those requirements, they would not get in. Period. </p>
<p>If you want “selective” institutions to admit everyone who meets their minimum standards, then start lobbying that HYPSM and any others that you “hate” just now be required to expand the size of their entering classes. Controlling class size is what drives the number rejected.</p>
<p>While this practice may raise legal questions when used to consider minority students’ race and ethnicity, it is identical to the approach used for many other groups, Rubin said. Nonminority students may be the biggest beneficiary of this approach, she said, especially at colleges that don’t have enough aid money to admit all students without regard for financial need.</p>
<p>“I think that happens most often not for minority students but for students who can pay full tuition,” Rubin said. After a college has used its allocated aid budget, it compares the merits of students who can afford to pay all expenses, and they are not competing against the full pool. “That’s what’s happening,” she said.</p>
<p>Saugus, you are from CA? Then surely you know that UC admissions are not allowed to be based on ethnicity by law (Proposition 209, which was upheld by the federal court of appeals). So do not despair! I spent a miserable freshman year at Harvard and transferred to Berkelely - and loved it. If you have what it takes, then go for Berkeley - they don’t care what ethnicity you are, as long as you have the top scores and mojo!!</p>
<p>This article tells me nothing I didn’t already know, and nothing I object to or am saddened by. College admissions is a complex process where the geographic region you come from, your sex, and your ethnicity (as well as your academic interests, to an extent) determine the applicant pool you will be sorted into and measured against. Many colleges do this presorting because they go into the admissions process with an idea of the balance between the sexes/different ethnicities/academic majors/states and countries/etc. that they want their incoming class to strike. I see nothing wrong with that, and am continually amazed by people who a. have no idea what “holistic admissions” means until they read an article about it, treating it as breaking news, and b. interpret this process in terms of other people stealing their spots at certain schools, as if those spots were ever theirs to begin with.</p>
<p>What I take notice of, however, is your assumption that “all the great stat kids” and “the URMs” are two separate groups that exist within the same classification system, which is simply not true.</p>
<p>I think it only hurts some of the lower-end applicants, really. If you’re really not as qualified and intellectually mature, then you won’t do as well in a first-tier school.</p>
<p>Ghostt – While you may not have a problem with it, many people do (myself included). It was news to me when I found out about it because most people don’t pay much attention to the college admissions process until their kids are juniors. My guess is that if you took a poll on this, you would probably get at least 70% who would not approve of the ‘holistic admissions system’. Americans don’t really like quota systems, and that is what this is.</p>