<p>A Concerned Parent:</p>
<p>You CANNOT assert that Indians and Asians are being included in the Affirmative Action quotas. I am a South Asian from Northern California, a region alone not highly represented at Penn (strongly so, but not nearly as high as regions in other states such as IL, NJ, PA, TX, DC, etc). At the Penn Information Session last May, the area was SWARMING with South Asians, who, like me, had SAT's, GPA's off the charts literally suffocating the Admissions representative for info on Penn. Additionally, I visited Delhi this Christmas break, and my cousin is applying RD to Penn. She said that Penn literally sold itself in India, "as if they were going out of fashion." </p>
<p>What's the message here? We are Asians sitting in a pool of extremely OVERQUALIFIED applicants with an OVERWHELMING number of reasons to believe that we, "deserve to be the few selected." But they can only take a certain number of us, and it's really hard.</p>
<p>If I were in your position, yes, I would be bitter, too, and the fact that I did get in may seem like I'm a little less understanding. But here's several things you need to understand about admissions selection criteria:</p>
<p>1). for one thing, choosing underrepresented students does not just to minorities, but to students from regional backgrounds. A student with lower stats applying from a small town in Idaho will surely fare better in the pool than a student with higher stats from Long Island.</p>
<p>2). Those students who are admitted under AA (who REALLY should only fit into one of three categories, african american, hispanic, or native american) generally still have to have solid qualifications in order to be good fits for Penn. If they really sought after kids who COULD NOT handle the academic pressure or could not fit into the environment at Penn, then why would they accept them? Not only would they be a tax on the University's resources, they would be putting the students at a disadvantage.</p>
<p>3). Other non deserving students will take away spots from deserving ones. There will most certainly be kids walking around on Penn campus wearing a Penn sweatshirt they do not deserve to wear, mainly due to their parents extra pocket change that helped fund the new building to their right. </p>
<p>Overall, my point is that the admissions selection is a complete crapshoot, and although sometimes it may be unfair, other times you have to look at it in good faith: perhaps even put some confidence into the belief that Penn and other schools will admit qualified students who not just want to be there, but really fit the profile of the Penn students. Maybe there's some magic formula that they can use to determine that, and alas, we may never know.</p>
<p>So, before you go around attacking minorities on the basis for, "stealing spots from your daughter," keep in mind that there are other considerations that may have played into that final outcome.</p>