<p>“I’m out! I only have Asians!”</p>
<p>good stuff.</p>
<p>I’m an Olympic finallist and an economics Nobel Prize winner BUT I ONLY HAVE A 2390!!! DO I HAVE A SHOT??</p>
<p>Hmm, it makes me wonder, since you are not required to report your ethnicity in the application, which Asian applicants would self-report it other than those who have blatantly Asian names. If they have last names like Li, Kim, Park, Ren etc, it would be very easy for admission officers to guess. Who would want to be disadvantaged by affirmative action by voluntarily reporting their ethnicity? I’ve seen a news that some Korean students were expelled from their Ivy league university because they reported they were hispanic in the application.</p>
<p>HateSMUS: It’s not the “tag” of an Asian last name – it’s the fact that they will be evaluated in the “general” pool of applicants. To be frank, the high achieving white girl who has no hooks faces the hardest road.</p>
<p>Read the following about “categories”
[Reed</a> College Admissions Messages essay](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/apply/news_and_articles/admission_messages.html]Reed”>http://www.reed.edu/apply/news_and_articles/admission_messages.html)</p>
<p>Thus the unhooked Asians/white girls and others in the general pool are vying for limited spots among themselves. Slots allocated to other categories (URMs, athletes, music prodigies, science/math whizzes, internationals, etc.) WERE NEVER theirs to begin with. Those were meta-decisions made way before the first app hit the Harvard server. That gifted Asian kid who gets rejected is because another gifted Asian kid/white girl beat him out. The gifted African American kid beats out a less gifted African american kid. The football recruit nudges out the less talented football player. The gifted African american kid doesn’t nudge out the Asian kid, just like the football recruit doesn’t nudge out the Asian kid. Different pools.</p>
<p>T26E4, what do you mean by ‘unhooked’. To what extend can a hook be in your definition?</p>
<p>and your statement that white girl without hook has the hardest road is hard to agree. You need to give me more reasons why white girls have harder road than white males and Asian applicants. I’m sure that admission officers consider ethnicity in general applicant pool since they need to balance the percentage of each ethnicity. I’m an international student, by the way, so I assume this doesn’t directly affect me.</p>
<p>HateSMUS, a “hook” is being a URM, 1st generation college student, athletic recruit, or a development case. That’s it.</p>
<p>^ Or a legacy.
As for the unhooked white girls “problem,” I can see why - more and more girls are applying to college, period. The majority of these girls are white. So if schools want to maintain a balanced student population, a smaller percentage of white girls will be admitted. I looked at Brown’s common data set a few months ago and calculated the overall admissions rates for females and males to be ~7.6% and ~10.5%, respectively. (Interestingly enough, Harvard actually admitted slightly more females than males, so their admissions rates were the same. I’m not sure if that was intentional or not.)</p>
<p>@HateSMUS: Post 228 summarizes why white American girls w/o hooks statistically face the big hurdles in selective college admissions. </p>
<p>Secondary to the difficulties for International applicants, unfortunately for you</p>
<p>Brown’s admission rate for each sex is interesting, but I’m not certain whether such trend extends to other Ivy schools. So I guess it is just merely a phenomenon that large percentage of female applicants are Caucasian?</p>
<p>This article does a decent job at describing the white female dilemma
[Who</a> Got Into the Country?s Top Colleges? - The Daily Beast](<a href=“Who Got Into the Country’s Top Colleges?”>Who Got Into the Country’s Top Colleges?)</p>
<p>Hmm… A friend and I are both Asian males. We were accepted SCEA to H and Y respectively. Neither of us reported our race on our Common App, though it was pretty clear (He has a very standard Chinese last name, and [among other clues] I outright stated my race in my essay, acknowledging that I had declined to self-identify.) We are the only Asian students from our city (not just our suburb, but all the suburbs of our city) to get into HYPSM schools. I can’t help but wonder if declining to report can help Asians, even if their ethnicity is clear from their app…</p>
<p>Then again, it could just be because a lot of our ECs broke the standard mold for Asian males. He is really accomplished with social justice / amnesty stuff and is a social sciences concentrator. I am a science guy, but a lot of my accomplishments have to do with Latin.</p>
<p>Honestly, I think that ^ makes the most sense. In my opinion (which I have formed solely by watching the CC decisions threads, so make of it what you will), admissions officers’ treatment of Asians really varies by their ECs. I’ve seen Asian girls with ~2200 SATs who paint and play piano get accepted to HYP, while the ones with scores of 2300+ and plenty of research and internships are, by and large, turned down. There are the cookie-cutter Asians (USAMO! Siemens! 800 Chinese SAT II! You know who I’m talking about), and then there are the ones who stand out from the rest. As T26 said, each applicant is evaluated in the context of their own pool. It’s the same reason why a first-gen white boy from podunk Oklahoma with the same research experience and internships would almost certainly be admitted.</p>
<p>btw - I really don’t mean to offend anyone at all. Just my anecdotal evidence. Also, @litotes - congratulations on your Yale acceptance! How exciting, and a great way to start off the decision season.</p>
<p>I wonder how much of crapshoot the admission process has for HYPSM for internationals. Last year, there was a Korean senior who got into Princeton while rejected by every top 10 American schools. He had okay GPA, 2370 superscored SAT (took 3 times and got 2270 highest single-sitting), did one research paper and won few regional math contests. I didn’t expect he would get into HYPS level of universities because he lacked ECs that are not related to academics. Does admission process for HYPS involve that much of luck?
When looking at brilliant peer Asian international students who got 2300+SAT, won international awards, did research from my country, I’m often deprived of hopes. I know they had special extensive SAT classes, Olympiad classes and other resources in their home, but it doesn’t justify my less competitive application. I only have 2200+ SAT with decent GPA, did several internships, volunteer, and teaching. The only thing different is that I went through an unconventional experience that taught me lessons with insights. I wrote it in my essay which I think is unique (either in good way or bad way) so I just wish luck to be on my side.</p>
<p>I think that the applicant pools of all upper echelon universities are thick with qualified applicants. However, of that majority of qualified kiddos, there are different tiers. </p>
<p>The most tippy-top tier, with kids who are fantastically unique and/or have impacted the world in a really large-scale way and/or are nationally acclaimed scientists-to-be, athletes, entrepreneurs, or artists, is ridiculously sought after. I guess they’re the closest things to shoo-ins. That thin tier is tiny, I believe. These kids are easy to accept.</p>
<p>Then, I think at the bottom of the qualified pile, there are really generic smart kids with generic NHS positions and generic essays about a generic person. I think that that these kids are easy to cut out. </p>
<p>Then, there’s the middle, where I think the majority of us fall. Obviously, there are way too many middle kiddos to accept everywhere. I think, that in this middle qualified tier, where there are some fantastic students and people, it is partially based on luck. Partially based on what type of student body blank university wants to build that year…
If you happen to fit into their puzzle, then that’s fantastic. If you don’t get accepted, that doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t belong at blank university, just that you didn’t fit into their admit puzzle that particular year. </p>
<p>Because of that ^, I think that’s why it’s sometimes confusing to see people accepted with similar credentials (or sometimes, on paper, worse credentials) as those that are rejected. Ya know?</p>
<p>@Aery, I really like the way you put that. I’m certainly in the middle tier; I’ve accepted it. It’s really difficult when you’re just not the piece they’re looking for - I watched my sister receive ten rejection letters two years in a row - but eventually, you find your place. I’m pretty much at peace with the whole process by this point. Whatever will be, will be, and we will all be more than okay.</p>
<p>I was a HS senior many years ago w/no real intention to apply to Ivy type schools. I had an early notification from a great public (UofMich) and I was all set. Late in the application season, I was encouraged to apply to what nowadays are called “reaches” as well as some other schools similar to UofM. I did and found myself in the extremely fortunate situation of having no rejections and all acceptances come April that year.</p>
<p>In hindsight and what I’ve witnessed anecdotally in my role as an interviewer/recruiter since, I think that once GPA/test score are screened and deemed acceptable, the most crucial evaluation moment occurs when the essays and rec letters are read. Here is the applicant’s first and only window to humanize themselves to the first gatekeeper – the first reader, usually the regional admissions rep. What phrase? What anecdote? What unique feature? What rises to the surface that leads the reader to nod his/her head and to place your folder in the good pile?</p>
<p>This is the brass ring, I’m convinced. Is your story going to be the one that simmers in the reader’s mind as she gets lazily strolls to get a cup of coffee? At lunch that day, is your story the one he shares with his co-worker? </p>
<p>In reading 34K apps, 2K get the eventual offer. Approx one out of 17. In 20+ years of interviews for my Ivy alma mater, I’ve probably sat in front of 200+ kids – the bulk of them extraordinary in anyone’s eyes. But only a handful were offered admission and I can honestly say only one (a kid from last year), did I predict beforehand.</p>
<p>My story? Immigrant kid (Chinese) in a very urban school district who chased everything I could academically, worked in restaurants, but rose to be a top student leader in a predominantly African American HS. No monster SATs (I had about the 30th percentile of admitted students in fact), no Science awards. Not val/sal. But a unique story and a mature and expansive essay. Random? Certainly. Did my interviewers predict I’d be accepted? Probably not. S’okay.</p>
<p>Luck is in the beholder’s eyes. With that, good luck, folks.</p>
<p>T26E4, wow. Thanks for the insight. Much appreciated!</p>
<p>^calico - the admissions office physically prints out every piece of paper from your file and creates a folder for you. I think their portal probably reflects when they have all your materials filed and ready.</p>