<p>
It’s very difficult to explain an almost 10% decrease in Asian Americans since the holistic approach was adopted two years ago.
Essentially, the parts are less than the whole for Asian American applicants. What is tragic is that the system fails those disadvantaged low income students in the name of ethnic diversity.</p>
<p>Thanks for the quotation of the (amended) California constitution on this issue. I’ll have to ponder the paper by Groseclose some more and see how it relates to the current law in California.</p>
<p>Okay, so i’m half Colombian and half Chinese.
My last name is Irish (from Ireland)
and my first name is Chinese
Should i mark Hispanic as my race on my college apps or Other?
I’m definitely not going to put Asian. haha
Will i get in trouble if i mark hispanic and they see that i’m only half?</p>
<p>Review the first several posts in this FAQ thread for the definitions, and note the vagueness of the definitions.</p>
<p>^ You’re just as Hispanic [is Colombian Hispanic? I don’t know] as you are Asian</p>
<p>Tyler stated:</p>
<p>“While I do think that UCLA intentionally admitted more black students, I do believe that Groseclose’s specific claim is unsubstantiated and biased.”</p>
<p>I believe Groseclose would agree with you that his claim is unsubstantiated. Indeed, that’s the gist of his argument: He wants the data to see if his claim is substaniated, but he can’t get access to the data.</p>
<p>UCLA reminds me of the Chinese gymnasts in the Beijing Olympics. Everyone knows that they are not being honest, but since they control the information needed to prove the cheating, the rest of the world is left to shake their head in disbelief as they continue to deny the obvious.</p>
<p>Does anyone understand why UCLA doesn’t want to accept Groseclose’s suggestion that they automatically accept students from the top 1%? I spoke with an admin from a top state school in the Midwest, and he explained that he dislikes those automatic acceptance numbers because Asian students end up claiming most of the spots. He stated that some Asian students would transfer into the inner-city schools simply to qualify as top students. </p>
<p>Can there be any other reason not to adopt the 1% rule?</p>
<p>^^Which “top state school” was it?</p>
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</p>
<p>My advice would be to accurately represent yourself. The CA says to mark all that apply; all applications I’ve seen either say “mark all that apply” or have a spot for “mixed”.</p>
<p>The ethnicity of your name does not matter.</p>
<p>There is no reason to omit your Asian heritage, you will still be considered Hispanic for college admissions purposes.</p>
<p>Commenting on “AP Examinations Taken by Students in United States Public Schools” data posted by tokenadult on previous page…</p>
<p>WOW. There is something seriously wrong with our school systems and varying racial attitudes towards education in our country when more Asians receive 5’s on their AP tests than 1’s, while African Americans receive EIGHTEEN times more 1’s than 5’s on AP tests.</p>
<p>There are some severe problems in K-12 education in the United States, and those do have uneven effects on the general population as considered by the federal ethnic and racial categories.</p>
<p>sunfish (post 421):</p>
<p>Holistic admissions looks overall at a person’s academic & nonacademic achievement in both a qualitative & quantitative way. (Actually, the Ivies do that, too. ;)) The result is that (as with Ivies), a highly accomplished artist, awarded musician or debater, proven leader, etc. may be admitted with a 3.9 if the overall accomplishment is determined to be in total more impressive than a student with a 4.0 & fewer “outside” strengths.</p>
<p>Holistic admissions is not to be confused with UC’s Comprehensive Review which considers the following, as well:</p>
<p>Those with challenges who have nevertheless managed to achieve competitively against peers with less challenge. Challenge is not defined as race – officially or unofficially – by U.C. (In the admissions formula)</p>
<p>Challenge includes family circumstances (particularly if they are extreme or sudden), income level, language hurdles, traumatic personal event, significant disability that one has succeeded against (such as a history of documented learning disabiity or physical disability), etc.</p>
<p>An additional challenge factor is immigration. An additional factor (a plus) in Review is First Generation to attend college.</p>
<p>To the extent that some challenge aspects are common to some racial & ethnic segments – such as child of a single parent --, to that extent there is built into the <em>Comp.Review</em> formula (as opposed to holistic admissions) a slight advantage to Black applicants. However, an Asian family newly arrived from overseas can be (& is often)considered to be even more challenged: often the father is still overseas (thus effectively a single-parent household), there is more universally a First Generation category, & there is usually a language hurdle (3 factors there).</p>
<p>The students who are disadvantaged in both holistic admissions & Comprehensive Review are relatively privileged middle-class+ students whose accomplishments are o.k but not spectacular. (i.e., They haven’t taken full advantage of – in this case – <em>positive</em> circumstances.) The economically strong students (=no economic challenge) include a huge group of whites & Asian Americans not recently immigrated.</p>
<p>The winners in holistic admissions are those who meet the Comprehensive Review specs in many categories while also having achieved in several areas in addition to academics. That actually includes many lower-income Asians, low-to-middle income Anglo Caucasians, and low-income Hispanics and Blacks.</p>
<p>This is why I tell my students: If you have no particular “U.C.” challenges (esp. if you are strongly upper middle class), and no exceptional accomplishments in leadership, community service, awarded talent, and academics outside of the high school campus, do not consider UC a safety for yourself. Add private colleges to your college list, and/or expect to be admitted to 1 mid- or lower-ranked UC campus.</p>
<p>The combination of Comprehensive Review (a long-standing admission process) and holistic admissions disadavantages upper middle class students who spend most of their time taking a million AP classes, studying their buns off to increase their 2200 previous score on the SAT, & padding their resumes with school clubs and “e.c. time.” Now, if by doing the first, you end up being ELC, you’re a lock anyway, for at least one campus, & in a good position to be considered positively at other campuses. But if you aren’t ELC, & your “others” are not in the areas specified in Comp. Review (where really only community service has a time value), you’ll be part of the general pool, where holistic admissions may disadvantage you.</p>
<p>We are seeing a trend of students NOT reporting their ethnicity. Why? I can’t say exactly. I will admit that there seems to be more advantages to minority students. I can’t think of any way that not reporting ethnicity would help the student in any way.</p>
<p>BTW, if it hasn’t been mentioned, the government has changed the ethnicity categories. Most colleges will be modifying their applications as a result…</p>
<p><a href=“%5Burl=http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060945301-post432.html]#432[/url]”>quote</a> …I can’t think of any way that not reporting ethnicity would help the student in any way…
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Clearly, the applicants that don’t self-identify are availing themselves of the option to be evaluated on the merits. </p>
<p>This benefits the individual because its how they want to be evaluated. </p>
<p>It also benefits society because the inevitable outcome of every individual declining to self-identify would get us closer to a merit-based process.</p>
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</p>
<p>This is just not true. MOST of what goes into an application is NOT merit-based. Your zip code, parents’ education level, high school quality, immigration status, economic ability to afford lessons, tutors, test prep, whether your parents are divorced or even alive,…NONE of that is attributable to an applicant’s merit, but it is all considered in admissions.</p>
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</p>
<p>All of this has been mentioned in the first few posts of this FAQ thread, with links to the federal government webpages, especially in the very first post. </p>
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</p>
<p>If that is indeed the correct analysis (as to admission probability) at a particular college, then I guess one could say that declining to self-report ethnicity is an unselfish act. In my view, declining to self-report ethnicity might be an assertion of the scientifically true fact that we are all human beings here and we all have more and deeper similarities than differences. And I think from that fact one could tenably argue that declining to self-identify a personal ethnicity is an act of enlightened self-interest that improves the solidarity of society and thus brings about a better future for the applicant and for the applicant’s classmates and descendants. </p>
<p>You have and everyone has the legal right to leave the form blank ([post</a> #1](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060810810-post1.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060810810-post1.html)). </p>
<p>The recent national trend has been for an increasing number of college applicants to decline to self-identify any ethnic group ([post</a> #3](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060810876-post3.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060810876-post3.html)). </p>
<p>Many colleges admit many students each year for whom they do not know of any ethnic affiliation ([post</a> #4](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060810896-post4.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060810896-post4.html)). </p>
<p>No one needs to worry about this. If you choose not to self-report any race or ethnicity, for whatever reason you have, the college won’t hold that against you, because for all the college knows you are just a student who is very aware of your legal rights and chooses to exercise those rights. See [post</a> #25](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060816703-post25.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060816703-post25.html) for evidence that colleges don’t care about a blank response, because they can’t infer anything from it, and aren’t required to do anything about it. </p>
<p>Colleges operated by state governments have to follow the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment to the federal Constitution. Privately operated colleges, depending on various other applicable laws, may have more scope to treat students differently on the basis of race. Relevant court cases are linked to from [post</a> #15](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060814781-post15.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060814781-post15.html) of this thread.</p>
<p>QUALIFICATIONS / MERIT </p>
<p>A latent issue in several posts in this thread, sometimes more visible than other times, is defining what kind of student is “qualified” for what kind of college. (I don’t know if people using the different term “merit” are talking about a different concept from qualification, but I’d like to hear discussion of that term too.) I will repeat here something I’ve written earlier in the thread: there are HUNDREDS of colleges in the United States that have explicit open-admission policies, so there are some colleges for which every student is a qualified student (or, saying it that way, some colleges where every student “merits” admission). </p>
<p>So if we are talking about students being qualified when some other students are not, we must be talking about some subset of colleges (which subset?) that are somewhat selective on some grounds in their admission policies. What’s your definition of a “qualified” student for the college you care about most? What information would appear in a student’s admission file that would show that a student is either qualified or not for the kind of college you are talking about? </p>
<p>PREFERENCES </p>
<p>There is at least some notional difference between the concept of qualifications (is that the same concept as “merit”?) and the concept of preferences. One classic example of admission preferences, one I was just reading about in a book yesterday, is gaining admission to a college because daddy donates millions of dollars to the college. Another preference is “legacy” preference–granting admission to the children of alumni in preference to applicants with better “qualifications” (define, please). Colleges vary in how much they regard either of these grounds for preferring applicants. </p>
<p>What other examples of preferences applied to applicants of otherwise indistinguishable qualifications can you describe here? Where would we look up information about how those preferences operate in various colleges’ admission decisions? </p>
<p>Thanks to all of you who are maintaining a civil and informative manner even while discussing these often contentious issues. I certainly wouldn’t expect everyone posting here to agree with one another, but I’m glad to see I can generally expect all of us to follow the Terms of Service here </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/faq.php?faq=vb_faq#faq_new_faq_item[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/faq.php?faq=vb_faq#faq_new_faq_item</a> </p>
<p>and disagree about issues without behaving disagreeably.</p>
<p>One obvious place would be the CDS of various schools. Looking at different schools criteria for acceptance or the degree of emphasis in admissions was a helpful resource. If in a CDS race was a significant factor, it piqued my interest in devising a list if the school was also strong or highly regarded in my DS areas of interest. Also as you may already know, [The</a> Journal of Blacks in Higher Education](<a href=“http://www.jbhe.com%5DThe”>http://www.jbhe.com) have lists of prominent school application, admit and retention/grad rates for African Americans..</p>
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</p>
<p>IIRC, I thought I may have read that for selective schools, i.e. the top 100 or so most selective schools and universities, the ball park ACT scores were in the range of 28-36. For SAT, 1200-1600. Obviously, legacies, URM’s, athletes, and developmental cases may be below those qualifications as well as some exceptional socio-economic students at schools with more liberal admission policies.</p>
<p>Thanks, madville, that’s a good suggestion to look at the Common Data Set information for various colleges to see what they each say about what admission factors are important at each college. I looked up my alma mater, a Big Ten state university, and what I see are four factors listed as “very important”: </p>
<p>Rigor of secondary school record
Class rank
Academic GPA
Standardized test scores</p>
<p>No factors are listed in the second priority category for admission selection, “important.” </p>
<p>Nine factors are listed in the third priority category, “considered”: </p>
<p>Extracurricular activities
Talent/ability
Character/personal qualities
First generation
Alumni/ae relation
Geographical residence
Racial/ethnic status
Volunteer work
Work experience </p>
<p>Some factors that might be considered, or even very important, at other colleges are not considered at all at my alma mater: </p>
<p>Application Essay
Recommendation(s)
Interview
State residency
Religious affiliation/commitment
Level of applicant’s interest</p>
<p>Sure enough, the application form doesn’t even require any essays, and the college doesn’t conduct admission interviews. I was surprised to see “state residence” NOT listed as a factor at a state university, but I think insofar as in-state students are considered more desirable by that college, that is covered by the “geographical residence” that also favors some students from neighboring states. </p>
<p>Note that here I am talking about admission selection factors, and not making any case that some of these factors are best described as “qualifications” while others are best described as “preferences.” It occurs to me that where to draw that line is debatable, and I’d like to hear people out on what factors they think constitute “qualifications.” </p>
<p>After edit: </p>
<p>Other participants in the thread can follow up on madville’s helpful suggestion by looking at Common Data Set information for other colleges. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/76444-links-common-data-sets-posted-colleges.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/76444-links-common-data-sets-posted-colleges.html</a> </p>
<p>(The posts near the current [September 2008] end of that thread have many helpful links to college postings of Common Data Set information.)</p>
<p>[#436](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060946287-post436.html]#436[/url]:”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060946287-post436.html):</a></p>
<p>This presentation has some discussions on general admissions criteria (page 6), a brief history (page 12) and other analyses: [US</a> College Admissions Criteria](<a href=“http://www.education.umd.edu/EDPA/faculty/cabrera/College%20Admission%20Criteria.pdf]US”>http://www.education.umd.edu/EDPA/faculty/cabrera/College%20Admission%20Criteria.pdf)</p>
<p>Admission criteria vary and are determined by an institution’s mission. A merit-based admission process would have, and result in, applicant and public confidence in the process. Confidence comes from a perception of [fairness[/url</a>]. To that end, the admisssion criteria for a given college should be clearly communicated, easy to understand and free of suspicion about [url=<a href=“Academic Stuff”>Academic Stuff]hidden</a> agendas](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060913642-post394.html]fairness[/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060913642-post394.html).</p>
<p>A qualification is something that an applicant does on his own. Examples include grades, test scores, ECs, essays, and overcoming adversity. I don’t think that “preferences” is a good term for the second category. Colleges prefer students with strong qualifications who are also members of a desirable group. So let’s call the second category “group membership.” Examples include low income, race, legacy, school attended, and geographic location. Membership in one of these groups is determined either at birth or through the decisions of one’s parents. How does that sound to everybody?</p>