@collegedad13 “lawsuits are frivolous from groups that are very significantly over represented and don’t believe those less fortunate groups should be given a chance”
I take issue with this statement, the “holistic” approach was adopted during the times when predominantly WASPy Ivies were not happy that too many Jewish students were accepted some decades ago. The “establishment” often uses one group to fight against another one, in the earlier stage it was between WASPs and Jewish kids, now it is between East Asians/Indians and URMs, while the Asian students are represented in TT schools higher than their percentage in the general population, they at least got in for the most part via unhooked good stats/ECs, while this fight/lawsuits took the attention away from the many legacy/development slots taken by high SEC students born with silver spoons.
I want social justice for our college admission process, but I think it is unfair to ask one group of hardworking kids to sacrifice their dreams for another group of well-deserving/hardworking kids. If MIT could get rid of legacy admission, why couldn’t all HYPS+other Ivies?
Its all about choices . And the elites have determined that it is better to be representative of society as a whole then to give most of the slots to groups that got there in large part by an unfair economic advantage.
So @collegedad13, would you be in favor of a system that adjusts for SES, but otherwise holds applicants to the same standards?
@writermom2018 @blossom The question came up about how many ‘qualified’ applicants there are to the top schools. In 2016 Princeton said: “Of the applicants, 12,297 had a 4.0 grade point average, and 12,327 had scores of 2,100 or higher on the three sections of the SAT.” And over at MIT they received 9000+ applicants with 750+ SAT Math (of which they admitted 10%) and another 2430 had SAT math 700-740 (of which they accepted 3%). Only 1000 total applicants had < 650 math SAT. (The other SAT & ACT data is in the link below.)
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2016/03/31/princeton-offers-admission-646-percent-class-2020-applicants
http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats
@LadyMeowMeow Not obnoxious. Being Asian is not as much a hook at an ivy as it might be in a top LAC. That’s a fact. They are looking for diversity.
Getting into top schools is similar to people who become billionaires. They will probably be very rich people under any circumstances, but luck definitely played a part in how rich they became. If my kid didn’t get into Stanford REA, it’s not as if we would have been devastated or too sad because he had choices between top UCs and nearly free ($12k per year after merit scholarships) education at Univ of South Carolina Honors. Although we are taking a calculated risk by sending our kid to Stanford on full pay, we are well aware it’s no guarantee to success. I personally thought it would be good for our CA kid to learn about the Southern culture but ultimately it was our kid’s choice. If my kid really was serious about Univ of South Carolina, I might have wrote to their admissions that my kid got into Stanford but could they offer more money to sweeten their offer.
LOL. @Rivet2000 MIT when my son applied definitely cared more about outside activities than other engineering schools when my son applied. (They fired the head of admissions that spring and may have swung the pendulum the other way in the meantime.) He was deferred from EA and then rejected. At the time about 25% of the EA deferrals were accepted, so I think he had the goods for MIT, but how many computer nerds can they take. He ended up very happy at CMU-SCS - I think perhaps it was a better fit. He’s in his dream job now, so no complaints about how it all turned out.
I don’t know how you are supposed to define luck or crap shoot. If your kid has done everything right - and that includes doing something beyond the curriculum good grades and good scores - your kid has a chance at a top college, even without the obvious hooks. But students should look beyond HYPMSC and the rest of the Ivies because it’s obvious from the numbers that there isn’t room for everyone in their freshman classes. Some “deserving” kids are going to miss out. Maybe their teachers letters weren’t well written, maybe their essays just didn’t get read by the right Admissions Officer. You’ll never know. But a smart kid will bloom where they are planted.
My nephew got rejected from MIT and had to “make do” with Rice. He flourished there. Ended up as a Goldwater Scholar and just got his PhD from MIT.
@megan12 IMO Asian and white males from relatively wealthy background without hooks have hardest time getting into top schools. These kids are being not wise if they don’t apply to some good safeties where they will get in with merit money. In fact, smartest kids from my kid’s high school are going to: John Hopkins with merit money, Rice, CalTech, UT Austin with full scholarship and Berkeley. These are schools that top 3% GPA wise kids went. My Stanford bound kid not in this group GPA wise.
@megan12 Yes, ivies are looking to create diverse classes of students, and to do so they choose from different pools of qualified applicants with different backgrounds. It so happens that they get a large number of applications from highly qualified Asians – highly qualified, at least, by measurable criteria – so they do not need to provide an “admissions bump” for that group. Just the opposite: it’s not only “not as much” a hook at the ivies as elsewhere, it is often considered an “anti-hook.”
@writermom2018 Every applicant is offered an alumni interview for Penn. They are assigned out based on geography to minimize travel. That said, Skype is acceptable for the interviews.
@websensation I think white females have a harder time than males at many top schools. Looking at the common data sets, there are more female applicants, and the admit rate for females can be several points below males.
As for Asians, agree at Ivies, Stanford, Duke etc. they can be at a disadvantage, but there are some highly ranked lacs that would love to have more Asian applicants.
In the article posted in 324 from Princeton, the Dean of Admissions states that they could have filled five to six classes with well prepared, resilient and inspiring students. That says it all: there are many more kids that would be an asset at Princeton than there are seats. Of course there is SOME degree of randomness in the choosing among these well qualified and inspiring applicants.
I think the question of “randomness” comes down to the reproducibility of the results. Unfortunately this cannot be tested in college admissions–at least, it probably cannot be tested for reasons of student confidentiality, time, and money. But, with reference to post #332 by mom2and, if exactly the same group of students were selected (out of the 5 to 6 classes worth of great students) in a re-run of the admissions “experiment,” with changes in the order of reading and changes in the readers and admissions committee members who took the lead on each of the files, then I would say that it is not random.
I think that a number of the same students would be selected, many of the same students would be rejected, and then some students would be in one time and out the other. For the last group, the admissions are operationally random, despite the fact that there would no doubt be reasons for their admission or rejection each time.
If you think that exactly the same students would be selected every time in this experiment (which can only be run as a “thought” experiment to the best of my knowledge), I would be interested to know why you think so.
@wisteria100 Yes agree, although not at MIT and STEM majors. There is no doubt in my mind that in STEM related majors, Asian and white males from relatively rich (?) background without hooks have the hardest time getting in. I tried to get my kid interested in Pomona or Claremont McKenna and went to visit but he said their campus was smaller than his high school. I thought he would like a small supportive environment (like a little town) but he told me he wants to be in a bigger place with more people. But I would strongly encourage all Asian students with great stats to apply to Honors Colleges because you can go to college for almost free and even if you are not crazy about attending it, it’s a great safety school in that you will almost certainly end up not regretting going there for undergraduate: I mean it gets the job done and you are treated as a little bit more special and you have an option of interacting with other non-Honors kids. I think many Asian students or their parents don’t know about Honors Colleges. Frankly, I rather go to Honors Colleges for almost free than colleges ranked top 30 to 100 on full pay because to me the difference in the prestige and what not is not all that big. Where I would have some internal struggle is choosing between what I think is a top 5 college vs. a good Honors College for almost free.
Actually at many - especially elite LACs but also many elite Us - it’s harder for women than men. Of any race.
Tech schools are the opposite.
So, just another factor in the “dumb luck” category in the OP.
An Asian student who is a killer LAX goalie has a better shot, this is true - such a student bypasses the normal admissions process via athletic recruitment.
Orchestra directors do not have that same pull. Arguably they should.
I think Asian women applicants also have the highest stats at least on standardized tests, so competing against each other, the bar is higher for admission for those seats at elite colleges, not saying there is a quota or anything.
But there is a “soft quota” for men and women. The elite colleges want a near-equal number of men and women, and some seem to relax standards as necessary to get there.
A bit of data from recent CDS:
Brown University: 19,518 women applicants vs. 12872 men
Yale University: 16919 women vs. 14526 men
University of Wisconsin-Madison: 18019 women vs. 17596 men
Amherst College: 5160 women vs 4125 men
U. Southern California: 28,934 women vs 25,346 men
Northwestern: 18,310 women vs. 16,790 men
IPEDS provides options for sorting CDS numbers across thousands of colleges. For example, among colleges with a 75th ACT composite of 33+, the ones with the highest/lowest female/male acceptance rate are:
Highest Female/Male Acceptance Rate
- Caltech – 3.0 (15% Female, 5% Male)
- Olin – 2.71 (19% Female, 7% Male)
- Harvey Mudd – 2.22 (20% Female, 9% Male)
- MIT – 2.17 (13% Female, 6% Male)
- CMU – 1.76 (30% Female, 17% Male)
*. Barnard & Wellesley (0% Male)
Highest Male/Female Acceptance Rate
- Vassar – 1.65 (38% Male, 23% Female)
- Pomona – 1.5 (12% Male, 8% Female)
- Tufts – 1.42 (17% Male, 12% Female)
- Brown – 1.38 (11% Male, 8% Female)
- Swarthmore – 1.36 (15% Male, 11% Female)