You can’t have your cake and eat it too. About 85% of US colleges don’t consider race whatsoever. They purely admit based on transcript and tests. I’m sure your brother would have been a shoo-in at probably 98% of those schools. But instead he (and you, it seems) wish to contend for spots at schools that admit holistically, that can use their own formulae for assembling a great freshman class – in order to preserve their own identity. These “identities” ironically, are part of what make them so coveted (and the fact that some of them have monstrous endowments and fantastic resources). The simplest way to not be treated based upon any race consideration would be to eschew applying to those colleges – but that’s the rub, isn’t it? You’d ask them to re-align their admissions policies to mirror the other 85%. But then how do they remain in the single digit USNWR ratings that kids/families bow down to so often?
But you’re mistaken on another point. That black kid didn’t take your brother’s spot. He took the spot of a lesser qualified black kid. Yep – i’m asserting that even though supposedly illegal, many schools still practice soft quotas. Who took your brother’s spot? A more desirable white or asian student. It’s called category admissions.
For example, let’s say your brother’s target school is in need of 5 women field hockey players. They get 20 applicants. They rank them and number 5 gets the last spot while 6-20 are rejected. Players 1-5 have an avg SAT of 2000 – ranging from 1600-2100. But an effective 25% admit rate.
Your brother, without any particular sub categorization, is in the “general” pool. There is 1500 spots. and there are 15000 people who are in this pool. 10% admit rate. The SAT avg of those eventually chosen happens to be 2100. The SAT avg of those rejected 13,500 is also 2100.
The athlete who scored 1600 clearly has scored less than even those 13,500. Can someone in that 13,500 cry that the athlete “took” their spot? Nope. It was never open to them to begin with.
And why do you focus on race as the sole source of your injustice tirade? If you want to talk about “unfairness”, why don’t you defend the internationals?
Carrying along my hypothetical Ivy admit class, let’s say there are 150 spots allocated for international applicants. They get 10,000 applicants due to this schools amazing financial aid = an effective admit rate of 1.5%. The avg SAT of the admitted 150 is 2370. The avg SAT of the rejected 9,850 is 2200. If only one of these students had a green card or US citizenship, we can surmise that their admit chances in the “general” pool would have at least been 10% if not greater (all things being equal). Where’s the outcry? No one upset that the Chinese princelings or kids of Russian oligarchs, or South Korean top prep schools, or 2400 SAT achievers from Pakistan don’t get a fair shake?
They’re capped at much harsher rates than American applicants. No injustice there? Or conversely, should the colleges even decrease their admits to open up more spots for the “general” pool?
Not so simplistic as your surface level analysis of “black kid with lesser stats got in, my brother didn’t get in”… and it’s been the discussed ad nauseum on this forum since it began more than a decade ago
Please know that the college wanted something that the black student had to offer and was also equally sure that your brother, while viable, would do fine elsewhere but he was similar to many other applicants. Now please don’t carry this to the next stage where every African American classmate or eventual co-worker or associate you meet will be judged through the commonly held lens of “he/she got here only because of race” or “Wow, this is surprising – he’s really smart. I didn’t expect that” which so often happens.
Also if you can, have plastic surgery to look like a minority B-)