<p>Well, I kinda narrowed it down to how they look at admissions in my twisted perspective, and I have it down to two categories : Stats (SAT, GPA, rank, etc.) and who you actually are (Background, ECs, etc.)</p>
<p>Do any of you feel that in the admissions process one outweighs the other or do they complement each other or what?</p>
<p>Thanks for any input!</p>
<p>SATs, GPA & rank need to be a certain baseline level to be seriously considered. If below, you would need phenomenal ECs & essays to be admitted. Above that, you still need phenomenal ECs and essays.</p>
<p>What if you're like an underprivileged URM, is the baseline still the same or do they cut you some slack based on where you're coming from?</p>
<p>Hey guys I just kind of came up with how I see things and will vaguely define it</p>
<p>Does the world conform to this??</p>
<p>No but I more or less categorized the major stuff into two big piles, I'm not defining anything, or am I just too incoherent to understand?</p>
<p>they're both important obviously, but def. extracurics have a big influence. i think my leadership activities really helped me in addition to good scores and grades</p>
<p><insert vague="" answer="" that="" restates="" question="" in="" the="" form="" of="" a="" statement="" here=""></insert></p>
<p>his answer pretty much sums things up ^^</p>
<p>stop stealing my dr. h. formula-speak</p>
<p>Take the bull by the horns</p>
<p>If you want to go from 2nd base to home you have to round 3rd base</p>
<p>How many roads must a man walk</p>
<p>It takes a team to play baseball</p>
<p>Only one man makes a touchdown</p>
<p>A coach is only as good as his players</p>
<p>The quarterback is probably quite</p>
<p>Good old dr. h</p>
<p>Oh absolutely the baseline is lower for URMs - I'd say to the tune of maybe 200-300 SAT points on the 2400 scale. In other words, if you are the average white/Asian non-athlete no hook person applying RD from a major feeder school in the Northeast and you have 1800 your app is going into the automatic reject pile before you can say boo. But they will treat an 1800 URM application very seriously, especially if you have a good "story" to go with it (and the "story" is not that you have one Hispanic parent and both your parents are professionals and you attended a hoity toity private school.)They don't like to get too specific about this because under the Supreme Court rulings you can't literally just add 250 points to each URM's SAT scores any more. But, in that case, it came out that at Michigan the same SAT score/GPA grid combo that gave a white person an 8% chance of admit had a 100% admit rate for URMs. So yes the reality is it makes a significant difference. They still may not take you but at least it keeps you off the automatic reject pile at a lot lower level. </p>
<p>And from what I understand, that's basically the process - they first look at your scores and grades and see if you are minimally qualified (given your race/region/school - the yardstick is somewhat rubbery - the same score that would get an Asian kid from Bronx Science laughed at (cause they have 20 more Asian kids from his school with much better grades and scores) might be a "serious consideration" score for a black kid from Alabama or a white kid from Idaho, but this only gets rid of a fraction of the application pile - maybe they can get rid of 1/3 of the applications this way. Then the really hard work begins of sorting out who they really want to take and that's when they start to take all the other stuff into account.</p>
<p>^If you ask any adcom, they will deny this.</p>
<p>Yeah, but the numbers are still there.
You can't appreciate the diversity however until you realize that Penn could fill an entire CLASS with asian kids from NJ or jewish kids from long island who have 2300+ scores and are in the top 5% of their classes. These people are all the same - you've met one NJ premed or NY ibanker, you've met them all. Here's to some people from the rest of the world.</p>
<p>I can't believe I just said that.</p>
<p><---- not jewish, not asian, from oregon and not ny or ny, not ibanker, not premed</p>
<p>eat that, homogeneity!</p>
<p>Or ibankers from massachusetts</p>
<p>or quants in NYC?... congrats by the way, i saw on facebook</p>
<p>Hahaha, thanks, housing is going to be a pain though ~_~</p>
<p>You'll be an IBanker. Just live in the office. Don't waste money for an apartment your only going to be living in for 5 hours each week.</p>
<p>Adcoms have to deny a certain amount for legal reasons - you are no longer allowed to assign numerical "plus" factors to URM status - they can't literally add 250 points to your SATs. But this is in effect what they are doing - the 2100+ average admit score is really a layer cake made up of Jewish/Asian/NE/W. Coast 2200-2400s and URM/athlete/"development admit" 1800-2000s, with the middle filled in with white, heartland 2000-2200s. They basically have to balance them in order to keep the 2100 average that they are shooting for. If you could see a grid like the U. Michigan people had to disclose in their lawsuit, it would be painfully obvious that this is what they are doing. They really have no choice if they want to meet their URM targets - in 2005 in the entire US there were 244 black students that scored 750 or above in math. These 244 black applicants are split up among all the top say 25 schools so Penn would be luck to get 10 of them. But they could get 244 Asians w/ above 750 math just out of say Northern NJ. </p>
<p>This journal article gives some of the stats:</p>
<p>Percy do you have any info on the average Hispanic score on the new SAT?</p>