Interesting, @collegemomjam though they’ve always gotten the neighborhood and high school from the app - the HS transcript comes with a HS profile (ours had sat score range, gpa deciles, info about the town with average income etc). Anyone can google a neighborhood’s demographics as well. Sounds like one stop shopping for the info though, which is probably helpful.
Some high schools, I imagine, can’t produce a good profile doc, though, probably the lower income area ones, so this tool may add to that.
I do wonder though about neighborhoods where most kids are wealthy but there are pockets of poor families. Our town - one zip code - has many multi million dollar homes and a small trailer park on the edge of town. Some very modest homes in between, farms as well. They’d need individual info to add to get the full picture, and of course they get much of that from the FA app (but at a need blind school admissions won’t see that). One could argue that the lower income kids in our town still benefit from the overall wealthy school system - 90%+ go to college, lots of APs available, small classes, music and sports are not pay-to-play (like many nearby school systems) and so on.
Harvard themselves don’t think this is likely which is why they set a high PSAT score for regular applicants. For hard numbers, Harvard recruits African Americans with 1100 and the minimum for academic 3 is “mid 600s”. A jump from 1100 to 1300 is unlikely.
I haven’t actually been able to find data on acceptance rate by SAT score. Could you link the graph/data? The academic rating acceptance rates show a minimum threshold rating of 3 and I would think that there is a high correlation between academic rating and SAT score.
Substitute White for Asian and I think you’d see similar results. In fact I suspect black and Hispanic students with that profile are turned away quite a lot as well, unless there is some compelling story (like Diep’s).
@OHMomof2 great points. And I think that’s the issue with any criteria that is used…there are just so many ways to slice it. So like you said, is that poor kid in the rich town hurt or helped by living where he/she lives? Hurt because he/she is being compared to students with access to more resources or helped because he/she had the resources of a great school?
A few years ago I helped a girl kind of in the situation. She was poor. She was the only child and her parents rented an apartment in a town with the best schools in the state. It was legit, they lived there as I was at their home multiple times. There were times I thought she was in over her head and thought the parents made a mistake, that she should have stayed in her lower middle class town where she could have shined.
But without any formal tutoring she ended up getting a decent SAT score (over a 1900 on the old one, nothing under a 600). I think her GPA was around a weighted 3.6, not bad for her town…probably third or fourth decile? She got waitlisted at need aware schools such as Fordham and Loyola Maryland. But…
She got into NYU! And, rightfully so, got all of her need met (almost 60K per year, none of it loans). She is currently a junior there and thriving. She just needed someone to take a chance on her, and NYU did. I still tear up when I think about the happy ending this girl had.
A couple of points from this story.
First of all, yes she was a URM…hispanic. Only daughter of legit legal immigrants from South America.
She actually got into the better school that wasn’t need aware…that topic could be a thread of its own I think.
And was she better off in the higher SES town? Did her parents make the right choice by moving her? I’m going to say yes (even though at first I thought no), but of course, there is no way of knowing how it would have turned out if they stayed in her old town. Would she have been top 10%? Valedictorian? Would she have still gotten that score? Who knows.
Please get the terminology right. Hooks are four specific categories, and those 4 most often apply during the Early Round:
Recruited Athlete (not Diep)
URM (not Diep)
Celebrity (not Diep)
Big donor (not Diep)
Those 4 categories are especially sought during the Early Round, along with a 5th category – true academic super-stars, which does not mean (as an aside, to all) perfect grades + perfect scores. It means
Exceptionally intellectual in both sciences and humanities, compared to other applicants – and recommendations, interviews, transcripts, and essays which reflect that depth of intellect
PLUS
stellar grades and scores,
PLUS
exceptionally accomplished (which includes awards) in more than one long-term extracurricular activity
PLUS
outstanding personal character (integrity, demonstrated natural virtue in the academic environment, etc., as written about in the teacher and guidance counselor recommendations)
PLUS
an essay that reveals/supports desirable personal qualities.
Tips are factors lightly to heavily considered, mostly in the final round. They include low-SES and other factors of “adversity overcome” (read all the Harvard Crimson articles, summaries about that), geography, a particularly needed or desired extracurricular on that college campus, and sometimes academic field of interest.
All that said, you will read and hear about the occasional outlier for almost all colleges, and Diep is probably an example of that.
Asian applicants should not be considered “unhooked other than race.” Race is not a hook for Asian applicants. Minority status is not a hook. Only Under-represented minority status counts. Asians are not under-represented.
It seems to me that the court case should compare unhooked Asian students to unhooked white students applying in the same fields. If there is no difference — case closed.
AI is calculated based on a combination of Converted GPA (class rank was often used in lawsuit period), SAT/ACT score, and subject test scores. It is essentially a measure of stats, without considering holistic criteria.
Median pay for a police officer in Caledonia, MI is about $60k, which is about the median household income in the US. I guess that is “low-income” by Harvard standards (and it is in the range where one gets maximum financial aid at Harvard), where most students get no financial aid grants or scholarships. Probably from a large family if he got reduced-price lunch.
@makemesmart thanks for sharing that article. I have so many thoughts after reading it…mainly, I feel badly that these kids have to feel like they don’t deserve to be there. And the point about the case shedding light on more than just AA being the issue, for example, legacies having 5X as much of a chance of getting in…I’m glad the students realize it’s more than just AA. I don’t know these kids at all, but I have a feeling they are all pretty special or they wouldn’t be there.
I have a great friend who is a Harvard grad and her daughter (white) is brilliant. She was top 5% of a top high school in our state, 35 ACT, amazing EC’s…she didn’t even bother having her apply (nor did she apply to Columbia where she had legacy from her dad). She was sure she wouldn’t get in. And she was even STEM. And the mom did interviews and said none of the kids she ever interviewed, and most of them were great candidates that certainly could have handled it, got in. Not one.
Southeast Asian-Americans are. All are underrepresented in colleges period and certainly elite colleges. The common app asks what country in Asia the family is from - it’s not just an “Asian checkbox”.
Elimination any consideration of race will likely harm those groups.
Moreover, H considers the opportunities the student had just as it does for those of all races - is this a privileged kid whose achievements should be viewed in the light of availability of good schools and tutors and high family income, or is this a kid who had to fight for everything s/he’d gained and learned? I’d expect expectations to be higher for the former group, as they would for a rich kid from Westchester vs a poor Appalachian kid.
Has anyone considered what eliminating race from consideration would look like, how it would actually work in practice?
If an essay “gives away” the race of the applicant, does it get removed from the file? Sections of teacher recommendations pertaining to learning English or whatever get blacked out? ECs that make clear that a student speaks more than one language at home - such as tutoring ESL students or leading the Bollywood dance group - get stricken from the app? How about parent’s names, or if the parent’s alma mater is in China or is an HBCU? Take that section out or trust adcoms to ignore the clues?
Often a kid’s race/ethnicity is woven through the app, way beyond any checkbox. Removing any consideration could mean seriously limiting the ability of kids to fully present who they are, what they have achieved and in what context.
This is a good thing? How would YOU make it work without stripping everything out of the app that isn’t a number?
(Or, of course,the athlete/legacy/donor status - because that’s not on the table for elimination here so that stays. )
If you eliminate race then I agree @OHMomof2 that everything else that isn’t a number should be on the chopping block as well, if we are really trying to be “fair”.
definitely sounds like she only got in because of affirmative action. A non-URM with those stats has a very low chance of admission. The only people I know who got into NYU with similar stats are accomplished theater kids.
As far as I know, underrepresented Asian groups only get a boost if they completely dedicate their application and essay to their race and upbringing like Diep. And even then, it seems to be more of a poverty/disadvantaged boost than a racial boost like what middle/upper middle class blacks and latinos receive. Otherwise, they’re treated like East Asians and discriminated against.
It makes sense from an incentives perspective: universities present demographic statistics in aggregated form (unless they’ve gone full Asian like Berkeley and UCLA). Underrepresented Asians just add to the “Asian” column, which is a nono for the tolerant and inclusive universities.
In theory, the admissions office can instruct its readers that race/ethnicity should not be a factor even when revealed in essays or whatever. However (a) some readers may have (not necessarily conscious) biases that go against such instructions, or (b) race/ethnicity may be an integral part of something that is supposed to be considered (e.g. if overcoming obstacles is considered a positive factor, what if the obstacle described in an essay or recommendation was racial discrimination against the applicant trying to get into more advanced or honors courses?).
Also, even if a college does not use race/ethnicity, people often believe that it does anyway.
Of course, if the college also eliminates legacy preference, parents’ alma maters would not be needed. However, Harvard and many other schools may feel that they “need” legacy preference for various reasons (belief that it attracts donations, getting more non-FA students, avoiding having the white population drop too quickly).
The randomness and low probability of admissions really hurt the street cred of URM and legacy candidates that got in through merit.
The probability of admissions is low and random for everyone without legacy and URM status except for the two hundred or so applicants that got national recognition. However, the probability is good and multiples higher adding in legacy or URM status.
Comparing those two probabilities, people unconsciously and consciously realize that there is a high probability that the URM or legacy got in only because of URM and legacy status (because regular people would otherwise participate in the random, low probability process). There is nothing a URM or legacy can point to that shows that they “qualified” for the university because of the randomness and low probability.
Note that African Americans receive the highest boost by a significant margin from Arcidiacono’s analysis while Legacy is close to Hispanic boost. I don’t mention athletes because everyone already assumes athletes only get in because of athlete status.
I’m utterly confused about how universities got away with giving zero guidance on the use of race. “Narrowly tailored” is so important in the use of affirmative action. Yet universities purposely and consciously gave zero guidelines and allowed committees and admission officers to have free reign on the use of race. That should be a slam dunk.
Harvard had the gall to claim that admission officers never used race for the personal rating but Harvard couldn’t produce a single document giving guidance on the limitations on the use of race.
