Story of my 3 Asian classmates and 1 friend from my area (including myself)

Parents Forum
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<p>Using race as a factor in admissions is a form of (lawful) discrimination based on race, but it is not “racist.” </p>

<p>“Racist” means a person considers one race (or more) to be superior over others, or that a person’s race denotes negative characteristics about that person. Colleges don’t do this; they want students of every race; no race is superior, but some may be underrepresented or overrepresented, so they take an applicant’s race into consideration when balancing out the class. Asians get the advantage when they are underrepresented, and when this happens, it does not mean that the college likes them better or hates the other races more.</p>

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<p>I doubt this would accomplish what you are hoping for. Would you also make it a rules violation for Adcoms to know what school the student attended? Neighborhood address? Would students be precluded from mentioning any culturally related ECs or activities? Would they have any identifying comments in their essays blacked out? </p>

<p>Besides, colleges – especially private – have every right to see and know who they are admitting. They will do whatever is in their own best interest – which is what they seem to be doing now. And even if the system was changed, it wouldn’t resolve the fact that lots of qualified Asians would still be rejected from HYP and the like.</p>

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<p>Working for extra credit CoolRunning – surely you know how we overachievers do things by now… :)</p>

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<p><em>raises hand and waves it frantically at CoolRunning</em></p>

<p>But, teacher!!! You forgot to assign the homework!</p>

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<p>But your posts doesn’t come out that way. You actually started giving reasons why OP might have got the rejections. Which to me looked like saying as “OP get lost you were rejected because there was no compelling reasons for these colleges to accept you.”</p>

<p>You’re not realizing but you have been telling everyone else also to get lost by saying “Class Dismiss.”</p>

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<p>OK, overtime. Fab and POIH, to review from page 24 . . . and this time read it as someone who is trying to help a kid that chose to play the race card instead of looking deeper within. Ok? To repeat:</p>

<p>Op, hopefully this [long] post will help you and your friends to stop “hurting” about not being selected to any of the ivies. I think you, and many posting here, really do not have a full understand[ing] sic about the way the top schools, especially the ivies, make their selections.</p>

<p>Beyond the silly numbers and weak minded discussions of race, heritage and skin color, if you did ALL of these things written below, you STILL only have a single digit chance of getting into a top 10 school. If you did everything PERFECTLY, you are competing with people who ALSO did it perfectly.</p>

<p>We all know that the top schools get lots of applications (25,000 plus for only 1,200 seats). Worse, applicants are “self-selecting” in that ALL of the applicants have top stats. The Adcoms are looking for one thing, and one thing only: “Vetted” applicants.</p>

<p>A 4.0 means absolutely nothing unless the performance is backed up by SAT-IIs and AP exams that are also perfect. The SAT-IIs and AP exams are a third party validation of your excellence. A student with no validation is ignored. If your school does not offer AP courses, you ARE at a permanent disadvantage, so change schools. Can’t change schools? Do not apply to the top schools because they will toss ORMs, URMs, and all other un-vetted applicants into the same circular file. OP: This was your first strike. </p>

<p>Anything above a 2200 on the SAT-I meets the threshold. Come on guys, the same few types of questions are asked year in and year out. Because it is a STANDARDIZED test, the core question types are never modified. If you can’t beat this simple test, please do not apply. If you can beat the test, well, ok, one less thing to worry about. OP: You did well on your SAT-I, you got a single check mark for scoring over the threshold. That’s all, one check mark – if they continued reading your application at all, after strike one.</p>

<p>You wrote not less than four essays (3 on the common app and one for the supplemental). What was your story? Did your first essay blend into your second, and then your third and fourth? Those little documents MUST tell your UNIQUE and COMPELLING story! This is the hardest part for high scoring SAT-I folks because it comes from the opposite side of the brain. You did tell a consistent, warm, and moving story whereby you are the hero without ever saying so, didn’t you? After reading your four-part story, did the Adcom want to hang out with you and be your friend? If not, strike two.</p>

<p>You requested, and then submitted, not less than three letters of recommendation from your school’s faculty and administration. Did these letters add to and enrich the SAME story you told in your essays? These are the documents that VALIDATE your essays. If they do not, strike three.</p>

<p>What did you do beyond the classroom? Work, play music, sing, do sports, volunteer? What is fun to you? Remember, at this level of competition, you are competing with people who have top scores and grades . . . and ALSO . . . that do many things very WELL beyond the classroom that will enrich a top school’s campus. And, all of these things must be VETTED by your letters of recommendation. You did nothing of the sort? Strike four, if they are still counting.</p>

<p>What scholarships have you earned? None? You mean nobody put money up for you so that you can go to college? Not even national merit? Harvard will NOT go first! You must be VETTED at the local, state and preferably at the national level in order to have a shot. If none, then strike five, if they are still counting.</p>

<p>There is nothing to “hurt” about even if you did do all of the above, perfectly. If you did it perfectly, you have a single digit chance.</p>

<p>Op: Please tell us what you did and did not do perfectly, because a rejection is just the lack of a reason to admit.</p>

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<p>That could very well be the case. When universities look for “diversity”, everyone assumes race and ethnicity, but there are other aspects, which can work against Asian applicants. For example:</p>

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<li><p>If Asian applicants tend to be concentrated in certain geographic areas, an attempt to get geographic diversity can unintentionally make it harder for Asian applicants to be accepted.</p></li>
<li><p>If Asian applicants are mainly urban and suburban, an attempt to get diversity in terms of students from rural areas can unintentionally make it harder for Asian applicants to be accepted.</p></li>
<li><p>If Asian applicants tend to concentrate in certain types of extracurricular activities (e.g. the well known piano and violin stereotype “tiger children”), then those applicants who list or emphasize those extracurricular activities are likely to be rejected because the admissions committee has already seen “too many” similar applicants already.</p></li>
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<p>20more,
Which Ivies did you apply to?</p>

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<p>20More, no you have no need to prove anything to anyone. But, keep playing the race card and you will get exactly what you deserve. Travel wide, meson, travel wide.</p>

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<p>Good points, ucbalumnus…</p>

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Close, but let me make a minor adjustment on the M/F preferences - categorizing into Sci/Tech vs. Other:
ORGST- male
URGST- female
ORGO- female
URGO- male</p>

<p>The list is also incomplete, but the categories are appearing faster than they can be recorded. </p>

<p>And I think ORA (over represented Asian) is in evidence as well. Sorry for you Asian folks; it sucks to be the target of intentional discrimination due to your high achievement. However, universities are looking for group representation, and that means individuals will suffer.</p>

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<p>IMHO, none of the above actually matters when judging a candidate. Harvard received 6000 or more equally qualified Asians, selected 300 (159 or more female) that meet several hooks along with not just being Asian but also low income/nationally recognized musician/debate champion/Intel-Siemens prize winner/ legacy/whatever. Assuming they picked 100 of them this way (there are only so many single digit Intel Siemens national award winning people in the pool irrespective of what people seem to think) the other 200 are picked on the whim of the selection committee which seems to be totally populated by recent graduates (they cant find jobs outside?) who make these choices probably using a dartboard (makes no difference how since it is still restricted to 200). </p>

<p>In the end, OP and his friends were fighting it out with 3000+ other Asian males who are all equal in their applications, give or take 0.01 GPA or 20 points on their SATs, and how far they got in their Intel/Siemens competitions. Frankly, if they have nt won it all, there is zero guarantee of a hook. So if there are 3000+ kids that look same on paper, 100 got picked and the rest were wished good bye.</p>

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<p>Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Since history tends to repeat itself, with the arrival of the usual suspects, you can count on a multitude of out-of-context “cut and paste” and more argumental bludgeoning.</p>

<p>Happens about every year!</p>

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<p>I wonder what people have to say about this, which talks about admissions for the MIT class of 2014 (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/882019-statistics-mit-2014-admissions-cycle.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/882019-statistics-mit-2014-admissions-cycle.html&lt;/a&gt;) - </p>

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<p>To the OP - it is hard to be rejected! You and your friends worked hard - but hopefully, you didn’t work hard ONLY because you all wanted to go to a tiny set of colleges. Hopefully, you all know that your skills and knowledge will apply no matter where you go to college.
You, and probably your friends, seem to have some excellent choices. I suspect you will find that , once the sting wears off, you will find that among those choices is a school you will come to love.</p>

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<p>Ok, let us throw in debate, music and anything else you have to the list. </p>

<p>All these competitions are a pyramid scheme and if you are talking about a true winner, then the hook is the grand prize winner. If you have nt won the grand prize, you are still competing with a bunch of others who made the semi finals, state winners etc and they are not discriminating enough to make a difference of one person over another. If you have 50 or 100 state winners in various categories, HYPS is not going to fill the whole quota of seats with a bunch of state winners in science fairs, especially when they can find someone very well known already like Amy Chua’s daughter to make up their quota as Asian/Musician/double legacy etc.</p>

<p>There is a CC thread where an Asian girl from Arkansas admitted to Yale is worried that she may not be good enough. She did nt win any major prizes but she is at the top of her class, did well in all her tests and her hook seems to be that she is a great representative of arkansas for Yale if we consider she may not be statistically different from OP. So it does tie neatly into whether someone applied from California or Arkansas, despite being Asian to improve their chances.</p>

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<p>Wrong. It doesn’t mean that MIT is acting affirmatively for Asians. Actually, it could still be the opposite, but to a lesser degree than other schools.</p>

<p>It does suggest that relative to other schools, MIT places more weight on high ability in the Math/Science/Technology areas. For whatever reason, Asians demonstrate that ability disproportionately.</p>

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<p>A.

B.

I really don’t want to get involved in this stupid argument about racial preferences. As I said before it’s pointless and it is unfair to the URM applicants to consider them with a blanket opinion… I’m not Asian, I’m white BTW. And I find it extremely uncomfortable to be on the same side of any discussion as POIH :)</p>

<p>But this is such an absurd quote I can’t let it go by. Point A would certainly not lead me directly to Point B. The only way to determine if preferences of any kind are being applied is to consider pools of applicants with equivalent qualifications. Obviously if the Kindergarten class of PS37 applied in greater percentages than the graduates of Choate, I would not be surprised to find the prep school grads overly represented in the matriculating class. And I’m exaggerating intentionally here to make a point so don’t get anything in a wad.</p>

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<p>Dad of 3 - adjustment to scoring sheet.</p>

<p>Recruited Athlete - if the coach wants him/her and they meet the basic admittability criteria - they are not part of the pool, they are already in at 100% and have been offered an admission as early as September.</p>

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<p>Read most of this thred but not all of it.
Some information on some of the points/comments made.
Just read the Acceptance threds for Ivies on CC. It is clear how significant the academic differences are for URM than Asians and Whites. You can read an accepted applicants credentials and know what the ethnicity is before you get to that line. </p>

<p>Brown post acceptance %s by SAT score range. There is a significant difference in the acceptance %s for the highest range.
[Brown</a> Admission: Facts & Figures](<a href=“Undergraduate Admission | Brown University”>Undergraduate Admission | Brown University)</p>

<p>Some diversity stats from Princeton Review for some of the Ivies:
Brown - 45% White and 16% Asian
Harvard - 44% White and 17% Asian
Yale - 44% White and 14% Asian</p>

<p>The fact is the Ivies are allocating spots based on ethnicity. So an Asian applicant is competing against the other Asian applicants and a White applicant is competing against the other White applicants.</p>

<p>I think the Ivies are trying to address their approach to reaching their diversity goals by starting to focus on other economic and social factors. Brown is placing a significant wtg on accepting first generation college students. Others are looking for more students whose families have lower incomes. This makes more sense to me than the color of ones skin.</p>

<p>I think the next tier colleges are taking advantage of the Ivies rejecting stronger academic applicants to meet their diversity goals. The academic level of the accepted students at schools like Wash U, GTown and others are on the increase.</p>