<p>Hunt, your suggestions do not work either. Your children’s last names have to be changed at birth, he/she has to get into elite prep school which has produced multiple NBA players, Intel finalists, and IMO medalist, major company CEOs, to become class valedictorian when he/she graduates, to become top 5 students in the state by many measures,… plus what you said… If this is what the top private schools want. What else? </p>
<p>My son spent 4 hours on Stanford’s application and got in.</p>
<p>The magnet high schools don’t practice AA and the graduate schools don’t practice AA, only at undergraduate level some universities do.</p>
Well, I think you overstate the case a bit. But I will say that it appears to me that the way to get into a top selective school–assuming you don’t have a hook like athletics, URM, or legacy is the following:
Get top grades and scores
Have excellent ECs
Have some very good measurable personal achievement in some significant activity, preferably outside school. Examples: win a major prize, be admitted to a competitive summer program, have very high musical or other artistic skills, etc. It’s better if this achievement is not something that large numbers of other kids also have–example–All-State Orchestra for violin. Bassoon–better.</p>
<p>^A hipster!? Clearly you have no idea what you’re talking about. I see in my weekly life (classes, dorm, dorm friends, other friends) only two white hipsters. Out of dozens of white guys.</p>
<p>Back home (Midwest) there are even fewer hipsters. Stereotypes are based in a reality. Yours isn’t.</p>
<p>Okay so I think I’m going to have to spell this out for you.</p>
<p>Whether or not you’re white is completely irrelevant. I’m calling you a hipster (note: hipsters can be any race) because you’re “against the supermajority”, and that’s practically rule 1 in the hipster handbook. In other words, “hipster” is an ideological label, not a racial one. Let me know if you need me to restate it a third way.</p>
<p>Rule 2 is denying that you’re a hipster, so I guess you have the basics down.</p>
As Humpty Dumpty told Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” So, of course, you can use “hipster” in this odd way if you like.</p>
<p>Because I am? I can’t believe how racist some people can be on this forum. And don’t tell me I’m not. If someone can be an Asian American, then i can be African American.</p>
<p>Basically this thread comes down to a lot of raging Asians. You cannot do anything about AA, so stop whining! Just do your best to portray yourself honestly and you’ll have just as good a chance as those “filthy, underqualified” URMs!</p>
<p>“You cannot do anything about AA” - Not true. You can vote for legislators and chief executives (Presidents, Governors, etc.) who will appoint and approve judges who follow the law. Today, anti-discrimination laws are a joke because liberal judges allow laws like Prop 209 (CA’s anti-quota voter-approved proposition) to be ignored. This happens at the local level all the way up to the Supreme Court (see Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003).</p>
<p>I tell this fact to rooms packed with angry Asian-American parents who wonder why their high school kids are usually chosen to get bused across town and can’t go to their local high school because of “diversity” issues. Then they see their high-performing kids get the shaft during the college admissions process while the non-Asians in their HS blow them away time after time when applying to Stanford and the Ivies.</p>
<p>I point the finger at them and say: “It’s your fault. You allow this to happen by voting for the very people who are more than willing to sacrifice your child for the ideals of ‘diversity’” They hang their heads in shame, because they know its true, and then they do nothing. Asians are not a very strong voter block out here in California.</p>
<p>^ Well no, you can’t. It only applies to public colleges. Barring a constitutional amendment, I cannot imagine that the government could interfere in private schools. Even claiming “interstate commerce” would very unlikely be upheld in courts.</p>
<p>Also, “Today, anti-discrimination laws are a joke…”
I’d say they are better than ever before. While there is room for improvement, you only know a life of relative non-discrimination. Before, unless you were White, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant, it is very unlikely that you did not face some sort of legal (at the time) discrimination that is currently prohibited.</p>
<p>Is the current system fair? No. But it isn’t the horrid liberal-agenda discrimination that your post implies</p>
<p>Of course it’s not “fair,” but in the name of diversity i suppose it is probably necessary (although I believe it kind of goes against basic American principles) to make race one of the largest deciding factors.</p>
<p>On this note, I think atheists/agnostics should receive preferential treatment in admissions. We are the most disliked minority in America, after all.</p>
<p>Google says so: [url=<a href=“Google”>Google]see?[/url</a>]</p>
<p>I’m serious, you guys!</p>
<p>edit: Mr. President says so, too! Bush senior: “No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”</p>
<p>I am trying to understand Stanford’s admissions policies regarding Asian Americans, and this thread includes revealing information, as well as a great deal of emotion which serves to obscure the issues that are important to me. As a supporter of Affirmative Action, I do not begrudge a single spot offered to an URM, regardless of the URM’s numerical qualifications. The issue is the remaining spots. Are whites and Asians lumped together and admitted or rejected on their merits? Or does Stanford actively discriminate against Asians? First, Stanford seems to admit a disproportionate number of California residents (compared to similar private universities in CA and other states). And a higher percentage of Asian-Americans live in California than in the nation as a whole. As someone pointed out, Stanford should have Asians in the numbers seen at Berkeley and UCLA. But it doesn’t. Are the test scores and class ranks of Asian Americans higher than their white counterparts? Yes. See, for example, statistics published by the College Board. Why are whites admitted over more qualified Asian Americans? This is the question.</p>
<p>The person who thinks that Asians at good schools are cut from the same mold doesn’t know many of these individuals. At top music schools you find heavy concentrations of Asians, African-Americans and Jews. Only the Asians are stereotyped as being “pushed” by parents to excel in music. Sometimes smart kids who can’t play football or run track excel at tennis or golf. They aren’t all Asians, but they tend to be smart. Yet smart Asians are singled out for pursuing these sports in “gangs.” It is not okay to stereotype and denigrate Asians because they are successful and high achievers. It is not okay to admit less qualified whites to achieve “diversity.” The problem has never been the URMs.</p>