@lalalander111 careful with anecdotal evidence, for very obvious reasons (edit, ^thanks @OHMomof2) you will have a higher concentration of URM’s than say prep school lacrosse stars in a place like this one.
Also low standardized test scores often belong to strong in math (but poor in English) non-native English speakers. The TOEFL is substituted for the ACT/SAT English portion of the test.
Unless one has access to the actual admissions records, I suspect one will never be able to meet your criteria for evidence. However, we can look at class surveys from UChicago that show average SAT score by ethnicity.
https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2016/9/14/class-2020-survey/
The score range is as follows:
Asian: 2,277
Indian or South Asian: 2,254
White: 2,226
Middle-Eastern: 2,150
Black: 2,129
Hispanic: 2,098
Furthermore, if you look further down the linked page, you will find that recruited athletes only made of 5.6 percent of the incoming class, and that the average test score for recruited athletes is 2,149. This figure is higher than the average for the two URM groups. Assuming normal distributions for each of these groups, mathematically it is more likely that a higher percentage of the low outlier scores are URM’s than recruited athletes.
Recruited Athlete: 2,149
Not A Recruited Athlete: 2,224
So my URM D with a 36 ACT was denied at Brown so if Brown was just looking to replace high stats kids with URMs to fill some quota why deny someone like my D to fulfill both missions? Because Brown is selecting kids to fulfill their mission and loads of high stats kids don’t do that including my D.
True. We’re all making guesses.
Very low compared to Ivies and NESCAC and other elite schools. Then again, that’s self reported data…primarily female, less than half the class and, well, self reported.
@preppedparent said, “Connect the dots. The ORM is put on the list because the college has accepted URM with lesser stats.”
Seriously @preppedparent, you have been around long enough to know stats are not the ONLY thing elite schools are looking for.
Admissions committees generally get things right at top schools, as seen by the high retention and graduation rates.
It is not hard to have high retention and graduation rates when you have the luxury of choosing from among a surplus of applicants with top-end high school academic credentials (which are highly correlated with college retention and graduation rates), and work at a college with enough of a financial aid budget to offer enough financial aid so that students from non-wealthy families are unlikely to drop out due to running out of money.
Other schools have self-reported class profiles published, and the outcomes all follow the same ranking for test scores (sometimes Hispanic and Black will switch places). Instead of poo-pooing all of the data provided, why don’t you show us self-reported stats where URM’s do not have average test scores lower than the overall average for the school?
^ @ucbalumnus , valid point. I guess I was trying to convey that these so called “lower stat” URM kids are not dropping out because their SAT or ACT score wasn’t good enough, and a ORM would have done much better at a school simply because of a test score on their app.
I wouldn’t use self reported data.
And I didn’t say URM average test scores might not be lower than the class average, they may be, as recruited athletes could also be, or development admits. Or most any group that has a hook in admissions.
You don’t show the recruited athlete scores broken out for Brown or Chicago, the two schools you’ve used to show lower URM scores here. So we don’t know whose the low scores belong to, as I said.
See post 1005 regarding the recruited athlete scores for Chicago.
My bad. Same issues with source though. The article says mostly female students filled out the survey…so no football or hockey players, the big helmet recruited sports.
Those issues aside, Chicago may be an anomaly. Are there really only 5% of students there who are recruited athletes?
“So my URM D with a 36 ACT was denied at Brown so if Brown was just looking to replace high stats kids with URMs to fill some quota why deny someone like my D to fulfill both missions? Because Brown is selecting kids to fulfill their mission and loads of high stats kids don’t do that including my D.”
@Dolemite Almost every school with the exception of HYPS has yield protection. Your daughter was just too good for Brown which believed she would be accepted to better places and would have no chance of attending. I would be surprised that Brown was the best school she was accepted to.
@jzducol ^ please. If that was the case, all 36 ACT kids would be rejected to Brown, assuming that the adcoms knew that a particular student applied to HYPS. According to your theory, all 36 scorers would be turned down for yield protection? Maybe the why Brown essay didn’t resonate with the adcom that day. Please give me evidence that a 36 ACT, URM was turned down for yield protection.
@jzducol, HYPS are not the only schools with yield protection.
Have to laugh at the “your daughter was just too good for Brown” comment. Seriously?
To start with, not all URMs are equally desirable from the standpoint of selective colleges. A black URM is a much stronger hook than being a white Hispanic.
Have we put to rest the myth that the reason why most ORM/Asians aren’t admitted to HYPS and other elites is because in the holistic review process, they are too test focused, and not interested in their ECs, sports, helping the greater good and spikey enough?
I hope so. With few exceptions, all the Asians I know are every bit as passionate about making a difference in the world despite their high stats. HYPS, let’s not hide behind stereotypes to justify why whites make up 50% of an entering class.
Whites are 63% of the US population.
Is 50% too low?
How few whites would make it “diverse” enough?
@CottonTales You are not comprehending what I wrote. It is correct that majority of ACT 36 applicants are rejected by Brown, but rarely an URM 36. HYPS do NOT have yield protection but lower tier schools do.
@jzducol, do you have factual info that 36 ACT scorers that are also URMs’ are rarely rejected from Brown, or is that your assumption?
I did misread the part about yield protection.
Actually, it is likely that most colleges do not. But you have to go beyond a narrow subset of more selective private colleges to see that.
For Brown specifically, “level of applicant’s interest” is “not considered”, according to http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=163 and https://www.brown.edu/about/administration/institutional-research/sites/brown.edu.about.administration.institutional-research/files/uploads/Brown%20CDS_2016-2017_Final_1.pdf .
Out of HYPS, note that Princeton does list “level of applicant’s interest” as “considered”, according to http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=111 and https://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/CDS_2016-2017.pdf .
@dragonmom3 I don’t think quotas of any kind are justified, but rather the most compelling and qualified students should gain admission to the top colleges. Let’s get away from quotas, we need the best talent to be competitive in a world market.