<p>I suggest that admission decisions be based on the admissions officers judging the applications without knowing the ethnicity of the candidates. This will solve any argument that race does not play in admission decisions.</p>
<p>Some of the posts being made in this discussion are painfully ignorant. The URM/ORM influence on admissions has nothing to do with race diaspora or anything like that. It is an issue of diversity. </p>
<p>Columbia would not admit an undergraduate class of all females, even if that group of women constituted the entirety of the top applicants to the school by an enormous margin. They are building a class which requires a diversity of men and women students; race is treated similarly. That’s the crux of the issue and if you really want to argue against it, Columbia clearly made the right decision in denying you a place in the class of 2017. This is all coming from a white female in a position of social privilege who was rejected to Columbia.</p>
<p>@HateSMUS</p>
<p>You don’t seem to understand the concept of Affirmative Action.</p>
<p>It was never meant to remedy the malady caused by slavery of Africans. The damage has already been done and that will never be able to be repaired by any type of policy.</p>
<p>AA was put in place to stop discrimination before it happens against minorities. It does not give an URM a boost in admissions, it simply prevents the URM from being denied admission on the basis of race.</p>
<p>These selective colleges are not going to pick an “unqualified” URM if their grades and scores show that they cannot handle the academic work during those 4 years. It’s completely unfounded how you say that your Black peer benefited from AA when you don’t seem to recognize his hard work to get his acceptance from Columbia.</p>
<p>i got accepted and im not one of those perfect sat/act score students. im asian (indian) and i have much more to give to columbia than scores. people should just be happy for others. people found out about my result and so many were jealous and being sore losers. like just be a good sport. and their decisions are in my opinion fair and people just need a scapegoat. and i dont mean this to argue or anything. trying to be as nice as possible.</p>
<p>I graduated from an ivy league. The reality is that the bulk of the people scoring below the mean were URMs. The non-URMs in the college that were accepted were glad to have URMs in the class because they brought down the mean.</p>
<p>@iamhopeful1</p>
<p>with that kind of mindset, you appear to be a ■■■■■ or someone who got rejected from an ivy league school</p>
<p>There are plenty of URM’s who are within the mean as well as above it. All these unqualified assumptions about URMs really shows that you don’t know what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>I graduated from Columbia in 1985. All you need to look at are the sat scores and GPAs of a majority of the URMs that are accepted. It will pan out the same way in competition with the other applicants who got in with more stellar stats during exam time in Columbia.</p>
<p>@SpaceDuck @TheBigD</p>
<p>I’ve never blamed less accomplished URM who are accepted to Columbia. Btw the black peer got into Dartmouth, not Columbia. Your argument is full of contradictions. What you said is that AA is to protect previously discriminated URM, especially Black minorities from any kind of discrimination in admission process. In reality, black minorities have much more advantages than other races. If black minorities are rejected due to lack of academic accomplishment compared to other applicants, that’s not discrimination. That’s just natural consequences of competition. I never mention anything about blaming other URM for my rejection and that is merely your uneducated speculation. Also, I never said my black friend didn’t put much effort. He put lot of effort on sports but just not in academics. Your accusation of me as an immature kid crying and blaming others for my rejection was quite funny, in fact, because all I mentioned was that black minorities have much more advantage. I’m an international applicant and I know I’m competing against those from my country. Even if my black friend got admission in Columbia, he has nothing to do with me because he’s American.</p>
<p>Also, when you say ‘qualified’, it doesn’t specify the level of qualification. For example, MIT admission officers say, if an applicant reaches 700 in all subsection, they are considered as a qualified applicant. Of course, they used euphemism and stated they are considered competitive for the admission. However, there will always be black minorities who get in to MIT with less than 2000 SAT every year. In fact, there would be people with less than 1800 SAT. So, are they still considered as academically ‘qualified’? Would the admission officers be full of confidence that they will thrive in MIT academics? I have no intention of accusing them in any negative aspect, but I know they are likely to struggle in their English/ Math class in MIT. Because ‘academic qualification’ is such an obscure and undefined term in admission, it would always be subjective.</p>
<p>It is amusing that people try to deny the fact that Asians are discriminated against in college admissions (I am not Asian, by the way).</p>
<p>People claim that Asians aren’t discriminated against because the proportion of Asians at top colleges is higher than the proportion of Asians in the population as a whole. But Asians, as a whole, have much higher standardized test scores and grades than other races/ethnicities, so this is expected. The fact stands that an Asian applicant must score much higher on their SATs and must be much more involved in extracurriculars than applicants from any other race/ethnicity (including whites).</p>
<p>I have a friend who is/was an admissions counselor at a very coveted university. He said that the admissions officers are “bored” by most applicants. And high scoring Asian kids are considered “boring,” just like white lower-middle-class valedictorians from suburban “flyover” states.</p>
<p>I know several students with outstanding credentials who were denied Columbia ED. One had her heart set on Columbia since middle school and actively pursued a spot in the class of 2017. She is crushed, as I know many others are. But that’s life and they will move on.</p>
<p>Were these students not admitted due to subpar essays or not being an ideal fit? Possibly, but they are also from two or three groups over-represented in college admissions. </p>
<p>Ethnic-influenced admissions aka diversity is most certainly a double-edged sword. For anybody who wants to explore the topic further, there are several interesting threads here on CC including this one:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/african-american-students/1083191-affirmative-action-unfair-advantage-deserved-provision.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/african-american-students/1083191-affirmative-action-unfair-advantage-deserved-provision.html</a></p>
<p>@foxfoxfox</p>
<p>I can’t agree more with your statement. Some people just don’t want to admit the fact and some URM who are privileged with such are also busy defending. Although I’m Asian, I agree with giving more advantage for URM, or otherwise, Ivy+ would be full of Asians and some caucasians. But that’s only for the sake of diversity and some opportunity for URMs. Because I support such policy even though I’m the discriminated one, I don’t try to argue how unfair it is. However, I do want people to know that URM have much more advantages in admission, especially for those who deny it’s presence. That’s nothing different from the U.S government denying the cause and effect between fuel combustion and global warming. And the argument that URM should be privileged for all the bads their ancestors had is, in a vile term, garbage. It’s a zero-sum game. When one’s privileged, other’s discriminated. When improving welfare of the poor, rich have to pay more tax. The past cannot justify the discrimination of the present. Also, Asians have nothing to do with black minorities. White americans played the major role in discriminating against black people.</p>
<p>i’d like to point out that the percentages of Asians in ivies are high because more Asians apply than any other race. This is because they do have the high test scores and ecs. Thus, Asians have to compete against each other to make it into that supposedly “high” percentage of Asians in ivies. It is definitely more difficult for Asians to get accepted.</p>
<p>HateSMUS</p>
<p>Please tell me where black applicants get a major boost in admissions. If they truly were, we would be seeing freshman class composition with 15% or more of African-Americans instead of ~10% at selective colleges.</p>
<p>Where did I ever say that you were crying and being immature? Now you’re just putting words in my mouth.</p>
<p>You haven’t proven and won’t be able to prove that blacks and other minorities have a huge advantage in college admissions. You’re asserting that this “privilege” minorities have trumps everything else in the college admissions process, but the fact is minorities still get deferred and rejected.</p>
<p>Please link to the MIT page where it says 700+ is qualified. You don’t know what “qualified” means to the adcoms, and it’s not your place to deem that some arbitrary number such as 700+ will get you in. Here you are also stressing that International applicants need 2300+ to get into top schools in the US. Funny thing is there are internationals who get in with lesser stats. Why? Because instead of focusing on their test scores, their application shines in other places.</p>
<p>You’re just not competitive enough in the international pool, regardless of how high your SAT score is. Seeing as you keep worrying about it hints you don’t have much to offer Columbia in the first place.</p>
<p>I’m done arguing about AA when you don’t even understand its concept. Good luck to you in the rest of your admissions.</p>
<p>@HateSMUS</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with affirmative action either. I think diversity is important, and there is a strong argument for the continuation of race-based affirmative action.</p>
<p>But it is totally disingenuous to say that Asians don’t have it harder, and URMs easier, in the college admissions process (using whites, the ‘majority group,’ as a reference category). And it is somewhat troubling to me that economic diversity isn’t prized as much as ethnic diversity. </p>
<p>If the goal of affirmative action is to ensure equal (or as equal as possible) representation of different ethnicities in the incoming class, then admitting an upper-middle-class URM over an impoverished Asian applicant is valid. If the goal is to correct for past and current injustices and create “equal opportunities,” then it does not seem valid.</p>
<p>Again, I have no problem with affirmative action, but it is insulting to high-achieving Asian applicants to claim that there isn’t a bias against them in the admissions process.</p>
<p>Asians are the most discriminated against in college admissions. Essentially, they are punished for being such high achievers. </p>
<p>"And it is somewhat troubling to me that economic diversity isn’t prized as much as ethnic diversity. "</p>
<p>I couldn’t agree more.</p>
<p>Also, there are people here trying to have a civil discussion about a complex issue. Why the name-calling and derogatory comments toward those who have different opinions? Isn’t that the essence of diversity, after all?</p>
<p>I agree with you HateSMUS. </p>
<p>College admissions should be a meritocracy, with each person given an equal footing. No one should have an advantage that they did not earn on their own. That’s what college admissions are supposed to be: merit based, without any preferences or quotas. To the “best” person should go the spoils, not to someone who was accepted as a way to make up for “past discrimination.”</p>
<p>In the UK, they call AA “positive discrimination.” I think that is a much more accurate way of putting it. We are discriminating against more qualified applicants to support others in the name of “diversity” and “building a class.”</p>
<p>@soostressed: That’s easy to say as an accepted student. I’d like to see how fair you’d considered admissions if you were rejected.</p>
<p>And yes, I was rejected. That’s not the problem though. If it was perfectly meritocratic, and I wasn’t good enough to be accepted, that is fine with me. I wasn’t good enough, so I’m not accepted. Done. But the fact that I might be “good enough” and am still rejected because someone else who wasn’t go in because of AA? That frustrates me. </p>
<p>And I’ll predict answers to my post:
“I see why you didn’t get in.”
“You don’t understand anything at all.”
“Take your arrogance somewhere else.”
“You’re just butthurt cause you’re rejected.”
“[Insert condescending tone and false statistics here]”</p>
<p>Try to be a little less predictable CC.</p>
<p>Freshman class composition means, as others already have pointed out, nothing to the advantage/disadvantage. Since there are much more Asians applying to top schools with higher grade, it’s obvious that there would be more Asians than Blacks. If there were 100 Asians applying to Harvard and 20 Blacks applying to Harvard, what do you think the composition would be? I can’t find the MIT reference because I randomly found while surfing the web but here’s something.
[Required</a> Documents | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/apply/transfer/documents]Required”>Transfer deadlines & requirements | MIT Admissions)
I don’t really mind you stalking my posts and trying to figure out any weakness in my logic, which shows you are lacking reasoning and desperately searching for any comeback. Did I stress the importance of getting 2300+ in this thread? I posted that lot of internationals have a solid ground in Ivy+ admission with 2300+ SAT. Sure, there are internationals with less than 2300 SAT who got into Ivy+ but they are minorities. Now, you have revealed your personality and lack of respect. How do you know I’m just not competitive enough in the international pool? You haven’t read my resume, essay nor you have no idea what I’m capable of. Your statement of ‘You’re just not competitive enough in the international pool, regardless of how high your SAT score is’ is not only very offensive but also showing how uneducated you are by making such generalization.</p>
<p>It’s really amusing to watch how only SpaceDuck is struggling to defend his opinion. Use logic and reasoning rather than offensive words and generalization.</p>
<p>I really suggest you guys stop arguing about AA. The majority have shown here that they do not understand the concept of AA, so it’s pointless continuing on with this debate.</p>
<p>Deal with your decisions from Columbia and move on to the RD round.</p>
<p>Good luck to you all.</p>