I am a mixed race (African and Caucasian) applying to Stanford. Will the affirmative action boost be large for stanford? How will their boost be compared to Harvard’s AA boost?
Being a URM can be a small hook in college admission, but is a minor factor. At the very top schools (can’t get any higher than Stanford or Harvard) admission is a lottery even wit perfect stats. I would look at schools that fit GPA, SAT, ECs, etc.
if you have the stats ( scores, GPA, high rank and meaningful ECs) – it is definitely an added boost. at my D’s school, the only ones that’s gotten in to Stanford ( and Harvard) are URMs ( Specifically AA, Native American) except for my D , who is Asian. In comparison, same classmate(AA) that got into both S and H did not get into Berkeley or UCLA ( since race is not used and was applying for engineering).
Drop the Caucasian from this point on. You are now all AA. My guess is that this will be a big boost at both schools. How are your grades and test scores? I don’t know about Harvard but Stanford is very into diversity. I visited the campus in April and I was surprised at how diverse it was.
This could also be that berkeley or ucla did not think the kid would come.
Also, there’s a big difference in admissions at places like Berkeley and UCLA depending on what major a student is applying for - much harder to get in for CS, for example, compared to liberal arts majors.
Obviously Stanford admits a much smaller percentage of applicants overall than those schools, but it’s plausible that a small number could get into Stanford while being denied for CS at Berkeley, for example, even setting aside URM status which as noted Stanford can take into account, while the UCs aren’t allowed to.
Berkeley is really struggling to keep up its numbers of enrolled African-Americans, because the California State schools cannot practice affirmative action.
But college admissions is a (sometimes nonsensical) lottery - I got into Stanford but was waitlisted at UMich.