You define who you are. Yes, African American, all things being equal, would give you a leg up on Asians and most whites. Worked in admissions for many years and Asians, which includes lots of ethnic backgrounds, as a group are more likely to focus on their children excelling academically. People from India are of the Caucasian race but like what happened to Ghandi in South Africa, their skin is brown so they get pushed into Asian because that’s the continent they are from. I’ve always been surprised that people from the Middle East weren’t forced to check off African background because of the continent they are from.
I’d skip checking Asian American and just go with African American and white if I were you.
@rkelly5182 Thank you for saying ‘all things being equal’. I think the issue becomes more heated when there is a belief that African American applicants, as a whole, aren’t equal and are being given a “hand-out”. It seems there are all kinds of categories that are given the ‘all things being equal’ AND the “hand-out” leg up but do not receive the same level of opposition. Yes, we debate those categories here on CC but I do not see the same out in the public which is needed IMO.
UCLA and UC Berkeley the new Harvard and Stanford? Don’t even count on UCSD and UC Irvine?
These schools are all extremely Asian, I have no idea what you’re talking about. especially the latter two. and UCLA. but jesus UCSD and UCI are for sure definitely extremely Asian.
@rkelly5182 Wrote:
“I’ve always been surprised that people from the Middle East weren’t forced to check off African background because of the continent they are from.”
I am a little concerned about your need to “force” classification on a certain group of people!
@dragonmom3 did you consider that some schools see applicants holistically? Maybe your child may have come up short somewhere in the AO’s view? I’ve also seen non Asian non white students with better stats turned down from top schools. As for the belief that URMs don’t have equal stats you are right some have lower some have higher and some did not get the same opportunities your upper middle class had.
My childs stats are
4.0 UW, 5.02 weighted
Full IB, sat 1510, NMF, 800 level II math, 800 biology, 36 ACT, over 200 hours community service, several officer positions in school clubs, founded his own club at school, hired by school district as math tutor. No major life event just a regular kid who btw is considered URM and is majoring in STEM.
Having said that we did not take him getting accepted anywhere for granted just because of his stats or URM status, we know how selective admissions can be. I would like to think that my child earn his way to where he was accepted and not that he was accepted because he is urm. I agree this system is not fair, some people see they are getting short changed and not that others were short changed by lack of opportunities their whole life and that colleges are acknowledging that. Think about it as a track race. The people in the inside lanes start further down than those in the outside lanes to make the race equal. Again not a perfect system, but then again neither are we.
@crimsonmom2019, I agree.
@JuicyMango, i remember you from the ucb thread. Have you decided where you are going?
@letsshare Your child DID earn his way to his acceptances, as did my URM child and so very many other URM applicants. When we begin to look at legacy admissions, athletic admissions and development admissions through the same lens as URM admissions along with understanding a selective university does not want an entire school of perfect stat students, we will be much better off.
^^^ =D> =D>
@letsshare I am pretty sure I’m going to UCSD, but I’m appealing my decision for UC Berkeley, so who knows. But I’ll most likely be going to UCSD for bioinformatics.
@JuicyMango good for you for appealing! If ucb doesn’t work out at least ucsd is still a very good school and its getting stronger in STEM. Best of luck to you! Does SLO have a strong program for your specific major?
@letsshare After looking into UCSD’s numerous STEM related opportunities/resources, I am very excited to attend in the fall :).
But UCB is still my dream school, so I will try my best to slip in :p.
I think SLO does, but I didn’t apply.
It’s the conflation of race and class, which drives me crazy. There are middle and upper income URMs, who went to top notch schools, and poor whites and ORMs, who went to low quality schools.
Colleges want more than socioeconomic diversity. Sorry you don’t think racial and cultural diversity are important.
@roethlisburger Yes of course there are. The data does show, however, there is a far (FAR) greater percentage of URMs living in poverty (poor) than the percentage of Whites and ORMs. How should one factor that in for the purposes of this discussion? Or is it your position we ignore it? Hoping from my previous, though small number, of posts you will know I am asking from a place of honest curiosity. Thanks.
This is true, but not particularly relevant to the discussion. If they just wanted to give a boost to everyone in poverty in admissions, they could easily give the same admissions boost to everyone in poverty, regardless of race or ethnicity. Elite colleges expect a certain baseline level of stats from even their “hooked” applicants and ACT/SAT scores tend to correlate strongly with income. The result of that is AA, at least at the top colleges, tends to benefit upper and middle income URMs much more than URMs in poverty.
@roethlisburger Thank you for the information. Do we know what that baseline stat level is for “hooked” applicants is? I ask as one of dragonmom’s issues was URMs having lower stats but still getting in.
Who do we blame when someone of the same race has lower stats but still gets in?
@OHMomof2 Oh, I’m sure it will be some other gripe like rich parents, or legacy, or athlete or, or, or… 
@OHMomof2 Yes, kind of where I was attempting to go. We somehow seem to want to be able to blame some “other” when it doesn’t work out in our child’s favor. Given the ACT/SAT information given upthread, there is an expected baseline for even “hooked” students, then why does the blame seem to be on URMs in particular? ‘Who do we blame when someone of the same race has lower stats but still gets in’ indeed.
The reason that URMs are “blamed” is because the Espenshade study confirmed what was long suspected. As a group, URMs were (and perhaps still are) given a significant benefit, and ORMs were penalized.
And instead of the reaction of colleges being “No, we don’t discriminate based upon race, it is all explainable due to these other various factors”, the reaction was instead to stick their head in the sand and refuse further cooperation. So the groups that were being discriminated against in the Espenshade study have every right to be concerned.
And while people can come up with anecdotes of why someone with the same race but lower stats gets in, the reality is that none of that really matters, because anecdotes are not data. Any decent social scientist can come up with a set of factors that separate race from available opportunity (including family income, family education, family structure, quality of school system, etc. ) and then determine if race still has an explanatory effect on admissions, and if so, if that difference is defensible.
In fact, there are plenty of those qualified social scientists at the very colleges that actively seek to hide this data. The colleges know this very well, but still choose to hide this data. That alone should tell you something.
ETA: Note that I think that any “blame” on URMs is misplaced. They are simply taking advantage of the opportunities given to them, just as legacies and athletes do. Any deserved blame rests directly with the admissions staff.