You have to make some estimate of what percent of non-resident aliens, multi-racial, and race/ethnicity unknown qualify as either black and/or Hispanic. If you did that, I do think you would find at least 29% black and/or Hispanic at most of the Ivy League.
I’m not buying that, @roethlisburger. Even if you add up ALL the categories laid out in post #462 for Harvard (9.7 % Hispanic, 7.8% international, 6.3% black, 5.6 % 2 or more races and 5.5% unknown) and assume ALL the 2 or more races and unknowns are black and/or hispanic, which is highly, highly doubtful, you only wind up at 27.1% which is still lower than the 28.9% combined number for blacks and hispanics (although there is no doubt some overlap there as well). What you are claiming is not adding up and URMs are not overrepresented. They are underrepresented and that is why they are attractive to selective colleges trying to build a diverse class.
Bottom line, if you are white or asian, URM students are not taking your spots. Those spots aren’t open to you just like an athlete’s spot isn’t open to you if you are not an athlete.
You did your math wrong. If you add up all the other categories, you should get 34.9, not 27.1.
Why would I include international students in that number? They are there own category and don’t represent URMs from the USA, correct? @roethlisburger So, I actually did my math correctly. 
So that leaves at least 70%'white/Asian. Also, I’m primarily focusing on Blacks and I was not only talking about Ivy league schools. Trust me, go on to these campuses and you will see very few faces of color. My Ds went to a high school that was only 30% white and now attend colleges that are about 25% minority (includes Asian).
Thank you for your support.
That’s another historical anachronism in the admissions process. As cobrat has pointed out, the Ivies went to holistic admissions to limit the number of Jewish students. I’m not even sure why colleges have sports teams, other than the few spectator sports which either break even or turn a profit.
I won’t defend the college sports machine. I’m not a fan. That would be a whole other lengthy thread of rants.
Just being pragmatic that spots that aren’t open aren’t open. Nobody has promised that elite college admissions are based solely on an objective ranking based on inconsistent test scores and an archaic and gameable testing scheme.
The discussion around race or admissions is more around the lower scores and academics needed between the races. An Asian with a 2100 is at a disadvantage because he or she will be compared with other Asians for the percent of the class the college wants to allocate to Asians. URMs it has been shown score a lot lower (reasons that deserve another thread imo), so a URM with a 2000 say has a much better chance to get in to an ivy than an Asian with a 2200. Colleges should be (and I think are) free as to how they want to build their class, that’s why you get these discrepancies.
@Much2learn Being a practical person, I focus on understanding the system and using the system to my kid’s advantage, before setting on a course of action. Hopefully, many others do the same. I attribute my kid’s getting into his top 2 colleges – Stanford and Berkeley – to this approach. We picked 5 colleges to apply to only after we had a good idea of how this college admission game worked. And we never listened to anyone who told us you needed 4.0 gpa or 35 ACT or 2350 SAT to get into a top college. Even who you ask for recommendation letters is very important, as well as encouraging your kid to get to know his counselor and teachers and asking them to discuss non-academic qualities. Unless you can get these people to go to bat for you and like you, your chance of acceptance will plunge. This is more important than getting near perfect grades or stats. For example, you should not be taking AP tests left and right. Getting 5s on 10 AP tests will not be viewed more favorably than getting 5 in 2 APs and 4 in other 2 APs. Better to put efforts into your ECs and working on your essays.
If our kid learned anything from this college admission process, he learned to pool his resources and strengths to convince others in power.
If you are an URM, use that to your advantage. If you are an ORM, you have to learn to appeal in other ways and compete in other ways and try to apply to colleges which will treat you like URMs. Whether I agree with the system or not is not going to help increase my kid’s chances of admission. I told my kid to get in the system to try to change the system. Hopefully, one day there will be no hooks of any kind and no URM or ORM. All I know is that death is a big equalizer and not much can be gained from complaining.
@websensation that’s some good advice and exactly how my D got into UChicago. Problem here is everyone is fascinated with stats when it really only is a qualifier and not a determinant.
but so do muslims…i mean you can make fun of asian like you can’t of blacks
- Also you misconstrue a lot of things...affirmative action was set as a precedent to correct AMERICAN GOVERNMENT's institutional biases against Afro AMERICANs....not just overall black discrimination. Nigerian Americans did not face American government slavery or segregation...why are they afforded such privileges? We routinely are shown data where African American students are accepted with lower SAT scores, and Nigerian Americans (unlike African Americans) getting accepted to all 7 ivys etc. Yet Asians with perfect backgrounds are arbirartily denied to most of those schools. Why is discrimination against ORM Asians (also historically disadvantaged with the Chinese Exclusion Act, WW2 Japanese internment) okay, but discrimination and quotas against ORM Jews (up til the 1960s was the case in top schools) wrong?
HBS didn’t have a single afro american student in 2016 in its admit. All Ngierians cameroonian Americans…60% of affirmative action recipients I read on college confidential (source in my post history if you can search it) are now the descendants of African or Carribean blacks children. Shouldn’t those policies be targeting poor African Americans affected by slavery segregation? Ted Cruz/Marco Rubio, two unbelievably racist political figures, like a disproporitionate Latinos given affirmataction…white. The descendants of conquistadorswho were responsible for unbelievable barabarism. How is it that a Cuban canadian like Cruz can attain citizenship, get affirmative action, yet a highly discriminated minority like say an Arab American or poor Asian like Laotian American are just thrown into and lumped in with others? We have Hispanic and non-Hispanic white, why not nuance here?
A product of such a racist system that doesn’t compare students to their environment (low scoring SAT student, but high scoring for his inner city school system), or get past racist projections, is that we now have minorities who didn’t earn their place in affirmative action and can completely stop such programs in the future: ie the cruzs, the rubios, the amarosas, the coulters…people who benefited from affirmative action they never deserved, and now are in positions to stop it.
If you are telling me someone white Jewish billionare’s daughter like Ivanka trump shoul dbe a recipient of affirmative action, yet a poor Pakistani or Syrian Muslim refugee be thrown with Asian Americans from taiwan or Korea, and start out at a lower rank than her, I think you need to re-examine your pedigree of racial discrimination and social justice. The reality is affirmative action benefits already well off and educated minorities IMMENSLY. It’s largest recipeints being white women (provisions for them thrown in by LBJ)- 53% of whom voted for Trump, a man who is at best wishy washy about upholding it/appointing justices to uphold it.
Lastly it’s disturbing to see some of the characterizations of a white senior poster here so broadly assign ethnicities…terms like the ‘middle east’ ‘central america’ are a result of colonization and orietnalism.In China, they have China on the left side of the map, opposite of what we have it here in the US. to the Chinese the ‘middle’ east is the Near West. Pashtuns in Northern Pakistan my be offended by being characterized as ‘indian’ or south asian. Central Americans like Hondurians who are native Mesquito tribe memebrs wouldn’t like to be classed in the mulatto mestizo etc categories. Plesae don’t identify our ethnicity for us, it’s not the same as nationality.
I’m not sure what thread your reply came from, but a couple of points…
http://nextshark.com/cassandra-hsiao-college-essay-ivy-league/
How do you know? Maybe those first and second gen immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean were simply exceptional students? There are a couple in the “got into all Ivies” group this year and they didn’t appear to need any kind of affirmative action, they were super impressive on their own.
I’ll add that any black people from the Caribbean were also descendants of the same slave trade that brought slaves to the US. After that things vary - Jim Crow, etc are uniquely American, but most faced racism in their home countries too.
I’m with you on the Cuban white thing, though there are political reasons for that, I don’t agree with them. I think the Hispanic thing is less of a bump than it used to be, and is targeted more than it was, to those from lower incomes, though that’s anecdotal, I can’t say for sure.
Laotians, Hmong, Cambodians actually are considered URM by most colleges and DO get an AA bump. That is a distinction recognized by most colleges and the distinction is…very few of them apply with the credentials to qualify for top schools so when one does, s/he stands out.
Thank you for thinking about the nuance. As I stated, I do not have anything against race based affimraitve action provided it is double checked with other metrics such as performance, historical disenfranchistement (I’m sure admins can see the differences that I mentioend ie Southern/MW African Ameican vs Ngierian American, Taiwanese vs say AFghan/Arab). So they should use additional metrics/decision making in their process. Nor do I think college is an only meritocratic approach. We have the normative human element at many top schools for this reason.
And you are right, I think such a system that we currently have basically pits two historically disenfranchised minorities against each other, against rich/poor in their own ethnic division, when in fact the largest recipients of affirmative action --as I’ve mentioned, ahve been white females, not ethnic monirities, tohers include legacy admisisons (white males) and sport that far outweigh most ethnic/affirmative action admissions.
Our views aren’t mutually exclusive. Yet the affect on minority students from lower rungs is substantial. That is what concerns me. And admissions might not be a zero sum game, but things like grants/funding ARE. And with such few minorities in the position to get funded/such compeitiont for funds…it just exacerbates and pits minority vs minority further.
SOME carribeans may have gone through the slave trade etc…but again this is not US govenrment policy and it isn’t what affirmative action set out to fix. Affirmative action isn’t a cure for every social ill in the world…it is a tareted policy to largely level the playing field for historical injustices BY THE US GOVERNMENT to AFRICAN AMERICANS…other stipulations for other minorities/genders were added by LBJ.
I think that applies to Aff Action in workplace only, not college, but i could be wrong. At this point it’s easier for men to get into most selective colleges than it is for women, as they get a sort of affirmative action due to their lower numbers at a certain grade/SAT level, and the fact that apparently few people want to attend a college that’s more than 60/40 F/M. Tech schools are the exception to this, where things are generally reversed.
I think AA was created, as you say, to right old wrongs, but has evolved now, for various reasons.
I’m curious about the comment that “Asians with perfect backgrounds are arbirartily denied to most of those schools.” What is a “perfect background”? SAT scores and GPAs? And what is meant by “arbitrarily”? Admissions is a subjective matter, involving a number of judgment calls, but I don’t know how a statement like that could be defended.
Indeed, I worked in college admissions (associate admissions officer) for one of the Ivies for many years. A “perfect background” was a rarity. Probably only 10% of our applicant pool met that definition.
One thing many students may find interesting is to request to see their application. I know many admitted students who were shocked to see how low they scored on one dimension or another. Most thought they were “perfect”.
@OHMomof2 Agree. AA has evolved and the term itself is now obsolete. Socio-economic circumstances are now viewed as carefully as race albeit often the two are conflated. The Supreme Court indeed has advocated moving to a “diversity” approach were socioeconomic circumstances replace “race”. Most colleges have made this transition.
@OHMomof2 I completely agree…white females OVERALL typically need higher stats than their male counterparts, with the exception of some schools and some of the STEM fields.