As an Asian American parent, 2nd gen, I am confident that we as a country have gone too far to the other end of the spectrum to ensure diversity, be it color of our skin or financial difference. Yes, the URM, first gen and low income deserve the opportunity to a good education however this practice is hurting the middle class, regardless of skin color, the most. Being Asian American with upper middle class income, we are in a severe disadvantage when it comes to acceptance. Now that all the results are in, it is very apparent. Just take my daughter’s high school stats. She has perfect gpa, 4.9w with 10 AP. 1470Sat, 33act, top 5/600, inc $150k, CA. She was rejected USC, Duke, Stanford, Georgetown. Wait listed at UCLA, Accepted all other UCs and SLO. Privileged “white” rich with lower stats accepted at USC, a few Asians with great stats rejected. Nobody accepted to Duke. 1 privileged high stat white waitlisted at Georgetown but a low income low stats First gen catholic Hispanic accepted. No acceptance to Stanford. UCLA offered acceptance to: top 3 acceptance - all Asians, 2 low stats first gen Hispanic. Waitlist for many top ranked mixed. A couple top 10 also accepted at MIT but they were special - one was already programming, the other is extremely intelligent. Overall, all middle class white and Asians will be attending the UCSD, UCSB, UCD, UCI and plethora of state u.
It has been frustrating. We all strive for a colorless America, an equal opportunity America. But if the ethnicity checkboxes continue to exist, we will never get there. My kids were really color blind until this college application process occurred. Now they are a bit bitter and I am afraid everything we have taught them are going down the drain.
@OrangeMom28 It’s not all about stats. The problem is you think just because your son is Asian, he was rejected. What you ignore is everything else schools consider. Many Asians were accepted. They clearly had something those that were rejected did not. You’re son’s stats are good, but they aren’t rejection proof. Sorry. The attitude that because your student has good stats, they are entitled to a top school is the bigger problem, imo.
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My son was a “pre-chem” tutor at UCB a few years ago.
His thoughts were that these (100%URM) would not have passed his 10th grad Honors Chemistry class and certainly did not have the academic skills to be successful at any university, let alone Cal.
They were not even athletes 
SFFA also points to a widely cited Princeton study, which in 2005 found that an Asian American applicant must score 140 points more than her white counterpart on the 1600-point SAT.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/06/07/affirm
Asian Americans are discriminated against in college admissions. Stats back that up.
While much is being made of URM… the fact is whites are an affirmative action group a perspective that is lost for obvious reasons.
@dragonmom3 but the uc’s don’t practice affirmative actin or consider race so what’s ur point?
While it is true UCs eliminated affirmative action, it is untrue to state they don’t practice. How do you explain the stats I posted for UCLA? How is it the top 20 in her school only a few were admitted but a few others who were admitted are low income URMs and waitlisted a few in the top 20s?
Were they applying to different majors?
@dragonmom3 Of course being a tutor you see kids that are less prepared. That does not mean that as whole the URM population is lacking the skills to be successful.
@LookAtThisNet .
He never said that all URMs needed tutoring.
Just that those who did happened to be URMs.
He was surprized that they were accepted.
That’s all.
Only the URMs need tutoring? What complete hogwash! How do you say that with a straight face? Come on. Use logic.
@OrangeMom28 the poor urm obviously displayed something through their application besides race and financial background that the UCs wanted more than the top 20 kids
OrangeMom28 I generally agree with you.
We live in Southern CA, and UCSD and UC Irvine are going to become the next UCLA and UC Berkeley in STEM fields. If you had asked me before your kid applied in a STEM major, I would have told you to be prepared to get denied at UCLA/UC Berkeley because I have seen many, many Asian-American students with 1550 in SAT, National Merit Finalist and near perfect grades with decent ECs get denied from competitive majors at UCLA and UC Berkeley. I would have told you to have your kid apply at Honors Colleges in colleges where they will welcome or want to attract Asian-American students and give nice merit scholarships to boot. In these Honors Colleges, high-achieving Asian-American students (and any races) are highly sought after. Therefore, my advice would have been to use the existing system to your advantage. In fact, my kid, a non-STEM major, thank God, applied to two Honors Colleges and got free tuition and 100% costs covered merit scholarships. On one hand, these colleges will treat your kid like an academic super star but on the other hand, your son will get denied at UCLA and UC Berkeley, partly because of what you said and partly because there are so many other high-achieving Asian-American students. In other words, Asian-American kids are competing against each other. This is why my wife and I sincerely say to each other “We are lucky our kid s*cks at STEM and will pursue a non-STME major because he has a chance to go to one of top schools.” Sure enough, he got into Stanford REA and Berkeley, in addition to two Honors Colleges. I believe Asian-American parents in CA must do a better job of preparing our kids to not expect much from UCLA and UC Berkeley and apply to OOS public colleges and/or Honors Colleges where they will be sought after. That way, if
UCs may say they don’t take race into account but practically, there is no way you can stop this. I believe affirmative action can be substituted by other criteria such as “First Generation College” or “Low Income” or combo. I refuse to believe that URM lacks necessary means or resources to do well in standardized tests. If this is the case, let’s get rid of the standardized tests. For example, when being Asian was considered a URM long time ago, and my family was also a low income, I bought Barron’s book for 10 dollars and studied 1 hour every day for next 3 months and managed to get 99.99% in SAT even though my gpa was 3.0.
Actually, I am all for getting rid of standardized tests because it would free up more time for high school students to learn, work or do more activities. Personally, I don’t think standardized test is a good correlation of how well an applicant will do in college because I myself do very well in standardized tests but lack good memory or is lazy to do well academically.
As @Rufusbaker poster said, it is what it is (which I already knew thank God), and the only thing I can do is to use the existing system to our advantage so that in the worst scenario our kids will get merit scholarships from decent colleges and then go for graduate schools where I believe the admission system is different.
Wow, I thought I couldn’t be shocked by posts anymore, but post #407 managed to do it. [-X
Would be great one day colleges will release the data on applicant stats range group by race (apply, admit, enroll). That way people can see the problem of “race bias” is the result of the vast differences in the cohort stats. I’d prefer schools to group students with income level, regions, inner city vs public vs charter/prep schools… and adjust the cohort admissions accordingly. The application bias favoring URM, Legacies, Athletes go against true meritocracy and fairness. But then again, life is not fair I suppose. One of my students went to do premed in an Ivy told me last year - you want to get good grades for Pre-med and after signing up the class, 1st thing is to look at whole else is in the class - if they are all Asians, drop the darn thing esp. if the class is curved based on high performers and you may not even get an A with a 93 average. Oh well…
Everyone with a pint of knowledge knows that a relative meritocracy (admissions taking into account income level, geographic location, and hardships) is much more fair and logical than rewarding people for being a certain ethnicity.
@“Snowball City” Agree with your take. I am actually for eliminating ACT/SAT also. I am for giving economically disadvantaged students (whether they be Black, Hispanics, Asians, whites etc.) more chances to attend good colleges. It’s just that I don’t think URM is a good way to produce the desired effect. Like wise, I am not espousing that NBA teams accept ethnically more diverse players so that NBA players make-up can better reflect the diversity.
Who knows? Maybe at the end, this discussion is dumb because URMs don’t even make up that many students. Anyway,. if you are high-achieving Asian-Americans, start applying to Honors Colleges and colleges where you will be viewed as URMs – that’s my advice. Do not depend on getting into UCLA or UC Berkeley. I predict pretty soon, UCSD and UC Irvine will become the new UCLA and UC Berkeley. Go away from CA for colleges and go South. Prepare to go to lower-ranked schools and try to shine; and then try to get into top 10 graduate schools.
I think the pressure on the college system makes people look for others that do not fit their definition of merit. For some it only means test scores, others it means overcoming obstacles, and for others it means a variety of life experiences.
I haven’t settled on this theory entirely but I wonder if the increase in the number international students is exacerbating the situation. http://graphics.wsj.com/international-students/ but that includes graduate students. The increasing number of US students going to college butts up against this.
As regarding the tutoring situation above, those students may have been the tops in their school. I would hope a tutor would be motivated to help fill in the foundations for these students so that they could reach their high potential. It must have been very discouraging for them.
I volunteer with a program in a rural area with students that are low income and first generation. Our overall school culture does not have people prepping for the standardized tests. Until recently the district did not pay for an ACT test. I am hoping that the availability of things like Kahn Academy will help the motivated kids to prepare. We don’t have a store in town that sells any of the prep books.
I agree with @websensation . As these newer Asian and immigrant communities/families become accustomed to the American education system the applications will fan out to the many excellent colleges that don’t have as high a profile. I believe that in 10 years things will be substantially different.
Given the immigrant backlash, the number of foreign applicants is likely to decrease next year.
I did research on URM college admission situation etc., and here is my take on it. But let’s quickly review how many spots are available at all Ivys and HYPSM schools 3 of which are Ivys. Arbitrarily, I am going to take 8 Ivys, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech and University of Chicago as top 12 national colleges, and assume on the average there are 2,000 freshmen spots for each of these colleges which I believe is at a higher end, so I am going to assume there are total of 20,000 spots each year at these top 12 national colleges, leaving out all fine liberal arts colleges such as Amherst, Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore etc. Out of these 20,000, a lot of spots are going to be taken by legacies (who by the way could be very well qualified), athletes and donors. After this big deduction, I would say there are around 14,000 spots left over. Now, there were 16,000 National Merit Finalists, so you can see how competitive or hard it is for any student to be admitted (without being waitlisted) to even a SINGLE spot at one of these 12 colleges.
- Cal Tech class make-up is interesting because I believe Cal Tech comes closest to being "only merit" admission system in the field of Science. Look it up. I found it interesting that the International students make up only 5% of their undergrad but make up something like 35% of their grad student body. Cal Tech's undergrad make-up leads me to question is this how colleges student body make-up will be if all "hooks" were eliminated, at least in CA?
- I believe the focus on URM hides the fact that the way the college admission system is designed still favors white students. Look at the percentages of white students who are legacies and donors. In addition, as long as the majority make-up of staffs, essay reviewers and admission reviewers are overwhelmingly white (maybe not -- I would be interested in knowing what are the percentage of Blacks and Asian-Americans in these positions -- there are going to be biases in favor of white students.
- Before you apply to colleges, try to get to know the system and try not to get crushed by the system. Explore the road less traveled and be willing to look outside HYPSM. Look at the personalities and characters of your sons and daughters and try to find a college and the environment which will allow them to flourish. Colleges such as Rice, Pomona, Claremont-McKenna, Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore etc. -- their education is second to none and just as good, if not better than Harvard or Stanford.
- Try to look beyond UCLA and UC Berkeley because they are becoming the Harvard and Stanford for Asian-American students. From my talking to fellow parents and their kids, for Asian-American students (especially interested in STEM area) getting into UCLA and UC Berkeley is tougher than getting into many Ivy schools. Do not bet on your kids getting into UCLA and Uc Berkeley, ever. Don't even think your kid will get into UCSD or UC Irvine.
- Study up on Honors Colleges which offer good merit scholarships. There may be one or two among these Honors Colleges at state colleges (ranked usually outside top 100) which fit your students really well.
- For Asian-American students, consider applying to colleges where Asian-American students will not be treated as ORMs but will be sought after such as Lehigh. Consider going into Humanities area if you enjoy these courses.
Does any college publish this data or are you making an assumption? I think you’ve got the question backwards. If you want to claim legacy status favors non-Hispanic whites, you should be asking what percent of legacy applicants are non-Hispanic whites?