My daughter applied to the diversity fly-in program at a bunch of different LACs. She knew going into it that she was a long shot, since her diversity is that she’s half-Asian. Asians are already often not considered URMs, and since she’s half Caucasian and not low income, she mostly expected not to get in but thought it was worth a try. (Not here to discuss the merits of whether she should have applied or not. I’ve had that discussion elsewhere on the site, and she ultimately decided to go ahead and apply.)
It appears from her experience that there are 4 types of possible results, from best to worst:
- Acceptance
- Rejected, but application fee waived + chance to speak 1:1 with admissions officer
- Rejected, but application fee waived
- Rejected
My daughter didn’t get any 1s, but she got a handful of 2s and 3s, with the rest 4s. The emails accompanying the 2s and 3s emphasized that they only give these waivers to a small subset of candidates whom they couldn’t accept to the fly-in program. I’m not sure how literally to take that. Does anyone know?
The other really curious thing about it was that the 2s and 3s were from the highest ranked/hardest to get into schools, whereas she was outright rejected by schools that statistically would be easier to get into. Not sure what to make of that.
Anyway, kind of curious…