nothankyou It depends upon the schools you are applying.
Do you mean a public or state school vs. a private school?
Or that it varies from one institution to another?
It varies from one institution to another. You will have to specify which schools you are interested in to get a better answer. For instance as a White student, if your SAT/GPA profile falls in the mid 50% of W&L, being White increases your chances by 350% over being an URM. If you are applying to Harvard, your admission rate will drop compared to URM. If you are applying to Auburn U, then it will have little difference in your admission rate.
If you apply to a school that accepts all students with a minimum GPA/SAT then it will have no difference whether you are White or Black or Hispanic or Asian. It is strictly a numbers game and if you meet the required numbers then you are in.
Be aware for those schools where Race matters as a factor in the admissions process, being in the undisclosed category might also be a disadvantage as well.
epiphany No One has stated that an academic profile doesn’t include other factors. This is the same tired argument I hear from W&L supporters who claimed that they believe Asians were admitted at much lower rates than Whites because Asians must have had weaker LOR, ECs and essay quality. Did any of these people have any data showing this to be true? Of course not.
But when I presented them with the proposition that these people were in effect saying that White applicants to W&L as a whole must have had substantially better LOR, EC and essay quality than Asians as a whole, the W&L supporters claimed that they implied no such thing. If they were not claiming this then why would White admission rate be over 300% greater than those of Asians?
You state “There is a false formula assumed which is that effort = result. The greater the effort, the greater the intellectual product”. This directly counters what others here on CC have been stating that the SAT is coachable to attain results in the top 1%.
Whenever a poster wants to compare the admission rate between ethnicity by SAT, the very next things one hears is that Asians are robots that study the SAT to do well and there is more to an holistic admission policy than great SAT scores. When has anyone utter those words when Blacks or Hispanics are the recipients of such high SAT scores?
Fairness in the admission policy should be treasured, but unfortunately it is not.
If the schools want holistic admissions, then fine. Just make it race-blind. Holistic & race-blind are not mutually exclusive. And URM is not synonymous w poor.
The UC’s have race-blind holistic admission. It works The race-blind admissions hasn’t hurt UCLA or UCB in the prestige & desirability game. Ditto for UMich…
“The race-blind admissions hasn’t hurt UCLA or UCB in the prestige & desirability game.”
Hasn’t hurt one bit in the prestige game. Has hurt considerably in the desirability game in terms of broad appeal, since many private universities, including in CA, are often far more diverse than any UC campus.
@ epiph,
Incorrect. Ucla & ucb actually are near the top of the national rankings for ethnic diversity, and rank above the ivies.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/campus-ethnic-diversity
and since ucla gets 100,000 applicants, it seems not to suffer from lack of desirability.
That report doesn’t break down the percentages of each racial category, making their diversity stats useless.
What is the definition of “diversity”, anyway?
GMT, I will merely tell you that the wide perception is that UC is so heavily Asian (about half) and so (naturally) mostly in-State for undergrads, many high school seniors from CA prefer not to attend UC, and very often do not. That includes both non-Asians and many Asians.
It seems that the 100,000 applicants to UCLA are OK w the state of affairs. Harvard & Stanford combined don’t get as many applications.
epiphany Given you believe that having a school with a large percentage of Asian student body is detrimental to its desirability. Could you tell us at what percentage of White students would result in a similar detriment to a school?
You’d have to ask the STUDENTS (i.e., the APPLICANTS). In case you have not discerned this yet, I am not a student. I merely report what is told to me, and told to me often in my business. Ask them.
Onion poll:
Should Race Be Taken Into Account In College Admissions?
http://www.theonion.com/articles/should-race-be-taken-into-account-in-college-admis,37762/
@ VOR
Since you are obsessed with W&L, have you considered that their admissions policies are that way because they are offering admission to students who may actually attend- in other words yield protection? Perhaps they believe that they are being used as a safety school for high stats Asians and do not think they will actually attend if admitted.
By the way I live in VA and had never heard of W&L until my own children started the college search process.
Dragonfly Why are you so OBSESSED with defending W&L and Yield Protection vs. advocating anti-discrimination and that colleges be fair in their admission policy. We just celebrated MLK Day, by your statement, you would have called Martin Luther King obsessed for wanting equal rights for ALL. No, I am not obsessed with W&L, I am passionate about preventing discriminatory admission policies. W&L just happens to be the poster child of discrimination.
Even if you believe that W&L was protecting their yield, why would W&L accept the highest STAT Asians vs. those in the middle to lower end of its admission profile? Who do you think would be using W&L as a safety Super High Stat Asians or middle to low profile stat Asians?
By my estimates, the average Asian accepted by W&L had an SAT of over 2300 when the average for the school is about 2100. Asians who were in the middle of W&L profile were being rejected at nearly 400% of those White applicants with similar scores.
epiphany So you are a conduit and voice for those people who want to limit Asian enrollment in our colleges without your own opinion on the matter.
It frustrates me to no end when people put an asterisk on someone’s admission to an elite school. You only got in because you are… (Black, Hispanic, Native American, Wealthy, an athlete, a legacy). Stop discounting the work of others.
Haha I post once at about W&L and I am capital letters obsessed with this school. What does that make you?
You are making quite a leap there with MLK.
I would suggest they are accepting the very highest stat Asians because those are the ones being offered the top scholarship and may actually attend while the moderately high stat Asians are very unlikely to attend without that scholarship offer.
For the record- I have no affiliation with W&L. D’13 did not apply because they did not have her major.
CaliCash Would it frustrate you if a Black with 1900 SAT gets admitted to an elite school, would not have been admitted with the same qualifications if she was White or Asian? No one is discounting the work of others, what many of us have issue with is discrimination against one group so that another group gets special treatment. Are you against fair treatment for ALL or are you about whatever treatment gives you an advantage?
Dragonfly Do you have any evidence for your belief that “I would suggest they are accepting the very highest stat Asians because those are the ones being offered the top scholarship and may actually attend while the moderately high stat Asians are very unlikely to attend without that scholarship offer.” Of course you don’t.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to accept lower stat Asians who aren’t going to get accepted to their first choice elite schools if yield protection was really at work here? Or are you saying that W&L is a crappy school that no self-respecting Asian would attend without a huge scholarship?
Doesn’t it bother you that you appear to be an apologist for W&L’s discriminatory admission policy?
I don’t have a horse in this race because I don’t even know what school W&L is, or why anyone would care about is admissions policies. So I googled it. Is it seriously named after General Robert E. Lee? Why would anyone want to go to a school named for him?