What do you think drives those decisions?
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Very interesting!
Here is an interesting article offering some reasons. If you look at the Harvard docs, it is notable that African-Americans have always had the lowest yield rate to Harvard, from what I recall about 70% unlike others in the 80-85% yield rate.
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I ran out of free articles on NY Times. Would someone mind summarizing? From the little bit I saw it seemed to say that HBCU’s are more family like.
Some African American students may be chosing HBCUs, but I don’t think that’s the main reason why yield is the lowest among African American students. Because URM is such a strong and universal hook among the elite schools that practice Affirmative Action, a strong URM student is likely to have multiple acceptances among these elite schools. More acceptances naturally lead to lower yield for these schools.
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Or they can be like my daughter and her friends with educated, successful parents who take full rides over full pay at an Ivy.
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Most high achieving students do not apply to any Ivy+ type colleges . This is the norm. The less common ones are the kids who do apply. Among lower income high achieving students, the rate of applying Ivy+ type colleges is especially low. For example, the abstract of the study at https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2013a_hoxby.pdf begins, by stating, “We show that the vast majority of low-income high achievers do not apply to any selective college.”
I don’t find it surprising that immigrant families are more likely to differ from this norm and emphasize applying to Ivy+ type colleges. This may relate to different experiences in their home country, where it may be more common to focus on attending particular college names. Many US families emphasize sports or other out of classroom over academics in general. Such values are less common in many other countries.
Regarding yield, kids who prefer state schools or HBCU to Harvard generally don’t apply to Harvard as backup in cases the less selective college rejects them, so they don’t impact yield stats. Lower yield indicates that they applied to and chose a different college over Harvard, likely a different highly selective college. There are many possible reasons why students might apply to multiple highly selective colleges and choose a different one over Harvard such as better FA package, more desirable location, stronger in desired major, better fit, etc.
Harvard Yields in Lawsuit
Early Action – 92% Yield
Regular Decision – 64% YieldAsian Admits – 84% Yield (46% applied RD)
White Admits-- 76% Yield (45% applied RD)
Hispanic Admits-- 66% Yield (59% applied RD)
Black Admits – 64% Yield (64% applied RD)
The lawsuit lists the yield rates above for a 3-year period several years ago. Note that the average yield for Black students was the same as the average yield for RD admits. One factor in the lower yield of Black students is that Black students were the domestic race that was most likely to apply in RD and least likely to apply in single choice EA Applying RD is also correlated with not having a high income, which is more common among the races that are most likely to apply RD.
Another factor is as noted , among RD applicants, Black admits are generally more likely to have multiple highly selective college admissions choose from. This fits with the pattern at Harvard and most other colleges that when a demographic group gets a strong admission boosts that makes admission less selective for that group, average yield tends to go down for that group. For example, yield for female students is typically much lower than male students at tech colleges that give a boost for being female.
There are many other possible factors as well, including things like Black admits may be less likely to personally know people who have attended Harvard-like colleges and/or less likely to receive pressure from friends/family/community to choose Harvard over alternatives. It’s a matter of speculation.
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Ha, I love that you posted that particular article which highlights my 2 kid’s scholarship program and has quotes from from some of their friends…
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But many others come as skilled workers with bachelor’s degrees.
A new PhD student may not necessarily have much money, but has a bachelor’s degree and a source of income (PhD student stipend or pay for RA or TA work). It is not the same as starting with “nothing”.
Considering that educational attainment transmits well across generations, it is not surprising that many Asian ethnicities are ORM, and many Hispanic / Latino ethnicities are URM, as undergraduates at US colleges and universities, when recent (in generational terms) immigration with significant skewing of educational attainment and first or second generation descendants makes up so much of these populations.
But most people look at visible race and ethnicity first, rather than the factors that actually matter in terms of educational attainment of the next generation. Most people in this case likely includes college administrators and admissions people, as well as the prospective students, donors, and other stakeholders that colleges have to pay attention to in terms of how (visible) diversity affects marketing. Hence, many colleges are stuck with having to try to get enough (visible) diversity for marketing purposes, but their strongest tool for this purpose (consideration of race and ethnicity in admissions) is largely unpopular and legally at-risk.
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Money is definitely one issue. For at least a couple of the African American families who had the very selective options on the table, they were in that 50-70K EFC range, but had much more affordable options (one chose UGA which is 15K a year for Zell Miller scholars, and the other took a full-ride at a HBCU). For another African-American student, the social impact of George Floyd death led her towards an HBCU despite having the same price point for an Ivy League school versus their HBCU. You have students like my kids who never really considered applying to highly selective schools despite competitive credentials due to a family legacy of attending HBCUs.
We know African-Americans who choose highly selective schools, but it tended to be a financial value (nowhere near sticker price). For students of other racial groups and 1st and 2nd gen. Black immigrants, I won’t say that money didn’t matter, but they were going to find a way to attend those highly selective schools regardless.
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Not sure why it should be that much of a surprise… since the same tendency can be observed among other races and ethnicities where students with family heritage from the educational elite (often of recent immigrant origin) are much more likely to aim for elite colleges, as opposed to the local community college, local state university, or perhaps some other college that is not highly selective. After all, 39% of Mission College (a community college) is Asian, and 38% of San Jose State University is Asian (and the vast majority of them are not in CS, since CS is only about 3% of the students there, and CS+CE+SE is only about 7% of the students there), so (despite the stereotypes) there are obviously Asian students not in elite colleges.
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Stats on “Asian” students seem almost meaningless to me. Especially in places like California (or Minnesota) where an “Asian” student may be the child of refugees who were a persecuted minority (Hmong) in their home countries or may be the child of 2 high caste PhD-holding tech workers from India.
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That’s one of reasons why categorizing people by a few races makes no sense. There are hundreds of ethnicities around the world and AOs are certainly ill-equipped to distinguish between them.
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I used to listen to a few podcasts by AOs in the run up to my D22’s college applications and I didn’t get the sense that they were very attuned into these differences.
Unfortunately we live in a society that still categorizes people into racial or perceived racial categories and sadly, I don’t ever see this going away. Some argue that we should stop using “hyphens” since that seemingly highlights our differences. I don’t buy this argument one bit. There will always be people who will see our differences and treat people differently despite what we call ourselves.
The racists who attacked an Indian Sikh man after 9/11 believing he was muslim certainly didn’t realize these nuances. The same goes for the senseless attacks on any Asian-American attacking Japanese/Koreans, etc thinking they were from China. I know AOs have created a separate category for Asian Pacific Islanders to take some of these nuances into account, however.
The article definitely resonates with me. As someone who attended inner city schools and then an ivy college followed by an elite law school, I definitely see the benefits of attending prestigious schools. However, I also see the appeal of going to an HBCU, in particular Howard, Spelman or Morehouse.
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Schools need to go race blind and think more creatively how to diversify their schools. Race diversity is inherently racist always towards another group.
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I know in the college system, in the past there has been a lot of bias against Asian people, though I am not sure if that has changed more recently. Does anyone have any insight on that?
I am half asian and half white, so I was wondering if that would factor into anything as well, or if they would just see me as white.
If you will be applying to colleges soon, you may want to consider the potential benefits of applying against type generally. That is, if you seek out suitable colleges to which not too many of your peers apply, you may provide yourself an advantage without specifically having to consider aspects such as your heritage.
That makes sense. TYSM!
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