UMass Amherst gets more applications than that.
20% Asian American must meaningfully understate the number of ethnic Asian students in the class. Some portion of the 11.2% international students will also be ethnic Asians, whether they actually come from Asia or they are ethnic Asians from Canada, Britain, Australia, South America, the Caribbean, or Africa. And a sizable number of students who could be considered ethnic Asians are known to decline to specify a racial group to which they belong, or to identify themselves where appropriate as mixed race. 20% of the class self-identifying as Asian American probably means at least 25% of the class is part of one or another ethnic Asian community.
Having walked around Harvard and the residential houses for the last 4 years, I would say that seems accurate.
Silly question perhaps. What is “URM”?
Under Represented Minority. Whatever that might be in 2015.
In 2015, an Under Represented Minority (URM) applies to US Citizens who are African Americans, Mexican-Americans, Native Americans (American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians), Pacific Islanders, and mainland Puerto Ricans. International students are not considered URM’s for purposes of college admissions.
For my DD, the thought process that @gibby describes was the reason she applied to Harvard. I didn’t think we could afford a private school unless she got a large merit award. So I had ruled out private schools that don’t give merit awards, and technically Harvard does not give merit awards. What I didn’t focus on was that some schools, like Harvard and Princeton, limit the EFC to a sane number, instead of assuming that both parents will immediately stop saving for retirement, take out a second mortgage on their home, and use all saved college funds on DD #1 and ignore that DD #2 will need to pay for college from the same pool in a few years. Once I realized that Harvard did this, DD applied since her stats put in the competitive pool for admission. Now we wait to see what both the admissions office and the financial aid office have to say next month.