<p>hpyscm - I didn’t even apply to Columbia because I knew my 2280 SAT and just squeaking into the top 10% of my class weren’t good enough. So please, no entitlement here. I originally came on this thread due to shock that a few friends with almost perfect SAT scores, grades and really outstanding ECs and volunteer work weren’t admitted. I doubt it’s because they weren’t a good fit. Good fit is overrated. 4 yrs ago a URM friend applied to another Ivy that still has ED. He applied at the last minute with no particular affinity for that school and in fact, hadn’t even visited campus. When I asked him why that school over Harvard, he said it had ED and he just wanted the whole process done with. He was accepted with lower SATs than mine (though an excellent GPA). So much for fit.</p>
<p>I assumed since the applicant pool to this college is above average, the topics of discussion on this thread would be above average. If you have the attitude that “a couple of kids” can’t change anything, you probably don’t deserve the privilege of going here.</p>
<p>Agreed… not fair for many Asian students…</p>
<p>Drop it, guys…</p>
<p>You guys are still thinking about college admissions as something it isn’t. Of course you’re going to be disappointed with your new refrigerator if you think it’s supposed to boil eggs.</p>
<p>The obligation, the basic duty, of a university is not to admit a class of students with the strongest stats available. It never was and it’s only this myth that gives any appearance of rationality to anti-AA ranters.</p>
<p>It’s to make a difference in the world by providing an education. If Harvard decides for the class of 2018 that its resources are best used to educate at-risk students instead of Intel winners, that is its decision, and is just as noble. If Columbia decides for the class of 2017, it thinks its resources are best used to educate students from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds rather thsn just one or two, regardless of the relative strength of applicants from these various backgrounds, that is also its right, and is just as noble.</p>
<p>You’ve fit college admissions into your schema of fairness in a way that misrepresents reality. It’s not about having as many 2400s, national-level winners, valedictorians and science whizzes in one four-year period as possible, and it never was. It’s about completing a mission.</p>
<p>The powers that be at nearly every competitive college in the nation thinks that an high-quality university education requires interaction with individuals from a wide variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. They think that there should be a more or less 1 to 1 gender ratio. They think that learning in an environment with a variety of individuals from a variety of demographics helps you learn how to interact with other individuals with these backgrounds. This is completely true, and what makes the American university experience so attractive.</p>
<p>You could disagree, but you’d be wrong. And until you get voted a college president by people entrusted with keeping their universities’ policies in congruence with their missions, your opinion wouldn’t matter. Thankfully.</p>
<p>^I am stealing this whole post and showing it to my name-obsessed classmates. This. is. gold.</p>
<p>I have been reading this thread for a while (ED Dartmouth kid here), and honestly Philotivist is right; you guys should drop this discussion about AA. Prospective Columbia students shouldn’t be so bitter about it, and neither should current Columbia students. You all know better.</p>
<p>Phil-Well said! I really hope you get into Yale SCEA, you are very insightful for your age.</p>
<p>Yes, Philotivist advised dropping the topic, then proceeded to repeat the same points he/she made in an earlier post </p>
<p>And I <em>should</em> make my own decision whether to discuss a complex issue that even this country’s so-called experts can’t agree on.</p>
<p>I’m sorry. >.<</p>
<p>I keep doing that and I feel bad.</p>
<p>^ Well, you do make some very good points, esp. about elite university brands and their mission to be insitutions of social progress. I don’t think this is a bad thing, but I still maintain that while diversity is a desirable and worthy goal, the system as it currently exists needs improvement and maybe even hurts more people than it helps.</p>
<p>And now, I will gracefully bow out of this discussion. Good luck to everybody, wherever they end up.</p>
<p>This convo seems to have morphed into sore losers lamenting the admissions system. Yes, there are flaws and yes you didn’t get in. Get over it and move on.</p>
<p>To the people that are complaining about the discussion that was going on: why don’t you guys move on instead of telling us to? No one is forcing you to read this thread, and it’s not like people are insulting each other with extreme rudeness.</p>
<p>I’ve read a couple of your posts now and you have come off as incredibly imperious as well as ignorant at the same time. You do know under the Constitution we are all to be treated the same regardless of race or ethnicity. You then go on to make the claim that because Columbia and other Ivy league schools are private they do not have to abide by this; these schools receive a large amount of money from the federal government so they do have to abide by this regulation, which is why the Supreme Court took up the Fisher v. University of Texas. If you do not know about the composition of the Supreme Court, Justice Kagan has decided to sit out of the case. Right now there are 4 Justices including Chief Justice Roberts who oppose AA, and the 5th is leaning toward anti-AA as well. Columbia has already tried putting up an argument because they know that if affirmative action is struck down, then they will have to follow the ruling unless they want to be cut off from Federal funds. Second you say for a better future we need AA; how come so many state universities such as Berkeley and Caltech are beating out all the Ivy’s; maybe because they are accepting based on qualification and they have climbed to the top 5 engineering schools while Ivy’s do not boast one top 5 engineering school. Think of a more realistic argument instead of your naive idealogy; I am waiting for AA to get struck down so people like you can learn how against the law of the land it actually was.</p>
<p>Sunny100, I don’t understand why you didn’t apply to Columbia. Your stats were good enough. I don’t understand why so many applicants think they need perfect SATs these days…</p>
<p>insiqht, I’m not sure I understand what the point of your post is. One, calTech and Berkeley are not “beating out all the Ivys”. Engineering, yes because that’s their reputation. None of the Ivy’s other than Cornell and Columbia have that strong of a reputation for engineering, and I would suspect that is by design. Most of the Ivies are well rounded in what they teach, hence their world class reputation. As for your Fisher v University of Texas case, from what I heard of the girl, she was hardly qualified to be accepted into the University, with or without race. She’s definitely not the best student to be filing a lawsuit. She definitely was not entitled to being accepted into the university.</p>
<p>If you want to get rid of AA, fine. There’s no need to attack others as ignorant.</p>
<p>TheBigD - Thanks for your supportive words, but last year’s admit rate was just 7.4%. I’m a white female (2 strikes) from an upper-middle class area of New Jersey (3rd strike), where many kids have better stats than I do and still get denied by the Ivies. My ECs and intangibles are above average but nothing especially distinguished.</p>
<p>But it’s okay, I’m happy with my list which includes several top 30 schools. And who knows, there’s always Columbia for grad school… ;)</p>
<p>Phil does make some pretty good points about how colleges can do whatever they want and if you don’t like it, don’t apply.</p>
<p>Still, that excuse was used in the 50s and 60s when colleges were discriminating against minorities. They were private institutions and they needed to keep up an image, an image that minorities were not a part of. </p>
<p>Now its the same thing. Colleges want to keep up an image, so they discriminate against Asians and whites to have that image. That doesn’t make it any more right. Discrimination based on race is wrong no matter what decade you live in and who is discriminated against.</p>
<p>That’s just rhetoric. There is not one respectable person who seriously thinks anti-URM discriminatory policies are just as evil as affirmative action. Affirmative action’s reasons are legitimate, while its opposite is not.</p>
<p>The “excuse” is not that colleges can do whatever they want. Freely made decisions can be either bad or good. It’s that the decision they make is based in sound educational philosophy and the very institutional goals of the college. </p>
<p>In the end, it’s not “race” that is being discriminated between but personal background. If asians and blacks had the same cultural experience when they applied to college at age 18, they would be on the same footing and equally boring, regardless of skin color.</p>
<p>But for the exact same reason colleges sometimes choose as many different people from every different demographic as possible, blacks, with their unique and often adversarial backgrounds, can be particularly attractive candidates in the area of personal factors.</p>
<p>“I assumed since the applicant pool to this college is above average, the topics of discussion on this thread would be above average. If you have the attitude that “a couple of kids” can’t change anything, you probably don’t deserve the privilege of going here.”</p>
<p>Vivian, </p>
<p>You are very arrogant in your assumption that everyone that attends an “above average” school will make a difference. Even if they did, I doubt every single kid graduating from Columbia will be returning to run the admissions department. Without them doing that, then they have no real influence on something like AA in college admissions. Further, the topic of AA and race is not an “above average” topic. Rather, it is a very base and disgustingly ignorant idea to focus on. By talking about race you are stating that there is a difference between it. If you want to be “above” the population and feel superior to others, go ahead. The only way you can change something like focusing on race is by ignoring the distinction that it causes. And apparently I did deserve to attend Columbia. Reread my original post; you think to highly of yourself if you think you can change the opinions of the world.</p>