@puzzled123 Correct me if I am wrong, you are Asian? Could you add some color as to why many, many top schools are ignored by Asian applicants. Some have Asian populations as low as 3% or 4%. Is there a dynamic in an Asian family or anything cultural that explains this. Even a school like Georgetown has a relatively small Asian population. Wisco which is a top science and engineering school is less than 4%.
@JuicyMango they sound sterotypically Jewish more than Asian. Or at least Jewish people from the 1960s
Ok but it does not explain why Asian students ignore so many top schools.
@batesparents2019 It kinda does, the top schools which are not considered tippy top for STEM are eliminated by the student (Georgetown) then some that are top for STEM but do not have the fame are eliminated by parents. Poof, you have a strikingly similar shortlist for a ton of students.
@Bored1997, @JuicyMango,
I think we get the pressure many Asian kids are under to apply to science and engineering majors at top schools. We just don’t get how this is the fault of the schools to which they are applying. It’s not Harvard’s fault if they get a gazillion applications that look so similar that it’s hard for them get excited about more than a handful. It doesn’t mean these students aren’t talented or genuinely interested in these fields. It doesn’t mean they don’t have an intellectual “spark.” There are only so many places in the physics department, and if 1/5 of your applicants want to be physics majors the result is going to be a whole lot of disappointed kids.
@Bored1997 “not considered tippy top” based on what measure?
I understand the issue perfectly what I don’t understand is how with all the information available Asian students cannot see that for example Holy Cross is revered for pre-med. It is no secret and that is just one example.
It must come down to the parents and other peer pressure?
They are not claiming to be right/just with their admission policies. Indeed, some of their institutional goals as they influence admission decisions may not be what they want the general public and the applicant pool to know the details of, so increased transparency is not what they really want.
An example is the legacy preference. They want legacies to think that there is a large preference in order to get them to apply, and their alumni parents to keep donating, and rejected legacies not to complain too much. But they also want non-legacies to think that the legacy preference is small, so that non-legacies feel that they have a chance and apply. Obviously, broadcasting how large the legacy preference actually is could risk causing either or both of legacies and non-legacies to apply less (and donate less in the case of alumni parents).
Race/ethnicity diversity is, of course, a marketing point for many colleges. They realize that many students do not want to attend a school where their race/ethnicity is too few in number. But they do not want to talk publicly about the desired percentages, since it sounds too much like racial quotas.
@BatesParent2019 Yes I am Asian. Here is why I think Asians don’t consider a lot of these top schools:
- Yes, a lot of us are pressured to become lawyers, doctors, engineers, or successful business people. This has less to do with us being Asian and more to do with a lot of us being immigrants. The area I come from has a very high concentration of Asian immigrants. Almost all of us have heard stories of parents immigrating here with a hundred dollar bill and a temporary work visa, and working their way through a grueling path to citizenship, working up the capital to by a house, and despite these hardships, paying extra to live in an area with great high schools. After this, I think they are pretty entitled to want a good return on their investment. Lawyers, doctors, engineers, and successful business people happen to make a lot of money. Of course these immigrants would want their children to go into one of these fields, rather than paying a premium for their children to major in art history or literature. The #1 reason that a top school may be ignored by asians is because it has too much of a liberal arts focus, and lacks a particularly great ROI. However, many second or third generation asians, who usually happen to be a lot wealthier, have bought into the American system of liberal arts education.
- As for schools like Georgetown, while they may have high-ranked science departments, they are often ignored when compared to schools like Berkeley, that are easier to get into, cheaper, and have much better STEM job-placement. For most asian immigrants, if they were asked whether they wanted to study 4 years in a school with a fantastic education vs a school with larger class sizes, less personal attention, but better job placement, it would be a no brainer to them. Forget Georgetown, in our area, if someone picked Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, Penn, or even Columbia over Berkeley, people would be pretty confused.
- If you could provide a list of these commonly ignored schools, I would be able to tell you why I didn't consider them (if i didn't).
@sue22 I am already done with the application process I had a load of waitlists with some expected rejections and 1 acceptance, even though my list was made by my GC and called balanced on CC according to my stats, I am not complaining. I just think that with those many waitlists and all of them saying that I am academically qualified, they were plainly saying nope not interesting enough, you just do not have a good personality. I do fit into the stereotype. I was waitlisted for top schools like Berk, CMU, UCLA, Penn among others.
@puzzled123 I totally understand why Berkeley is attractive to CA residents. That is not what I see being on the East Coast.
So back to your request, if an Asian student of high stature wanting to be a medical doctor was advised to apply to Notre Dame, Holy Cross, University of Wisconsin, Bowdoin College, Wake Forest or Vanderbilt, what would the reaction be?
@Bored1997 @JuicyMango feel free to jump in
I wouldn’t be sure about students on the east coast. But to me, price-wise, if I didn’t get into any of the tippy-top schools, the state flagship or OOS Cal/UCLA would make a lot of sense over a lot of those schools.
Also, a huge proportion of the asians are in California:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Asian_Americans
@puzzled123 Ok then it appears that some but clearly not all Asian students and parents see a binary world. That would account for why those schools have such low populations of Asian students.
I think however your position is not based on fact, rather driven more by rankings and rumor and incorrect assumptions about liberal arts colleges. BTW, the cost of these schools to low and moderate income families is probably on par with instate tuition.
So if a whole group has written off all but about a dozen schools, why complain about it?
OOS UCs are not really a bargain for non-financial-aid students/families concerned about costs, although some of the highest profile private schools seem to be raising their costs as fast as they can, so that some of them are now significantly more expensive than OOS UCs (unlike a few years ago). But there are many very respectable public schools whose OOS costs are significantly lower.
UCLA is 56k for OOS. A low to moderate income family could go to Notre Dame, Bowdoin and Vanderbilt for nothing to about 15k a year. UCLA on the east coast holds ZERO prestige. The others a ton.
For the moderate need family OOS is really not a good deal. A need blind private would be better.
I think Vanderbilt is popular with everyone and is a well knownTop 20 school. They have a medical center on campus.
Vanderbilt has a relatively low level of Asian students for a top school, 9%.
@Boltingflame If you could remove your post would you?
^What would happen if the NBA hired basketball players based solely on their height and the number of free throws they could sink in a minute. Would it improve the team? And what would happen when the results were a team with 4 guards and a center but no forwards?
@mom2collegekids You seem to know alot about U of Alabama. Why is the Asian population only 1% when it offers high stat students full rides and its health science programs namely the medical school is rated higher than virtually all Ivy League medical schools for primary care?
The NBA is a terrible example, if you are familiar with all the “great white hopes” who were drafted much higher than their talent deserved. Remember Danny Ferry? Christian Laettner? Some very talented prospects were drafted later than expected, on account of rumors involving substance abuse or simply a lack of discipline. Do you really think “merit” can be perfectly quantified? How do you quantify talent, imagination, creativity, and abundance of spirit? Don’t you acknowledge that a 2100 from a disadvantaged student is more impressive than a 2300 from a kid whose parents could pay for tutoring, top-notch private or suburban high schools, and who grew up in a more erudite environment? Nobody, absolutely nobody, gets into Harvard without terrific credentials. One of the luxuries the wealthiest institutions have is the ability to construct an exciting, dynamic student body, where a public university might have to rely on number-crunching. How stimulating would an environment be if it consisted exclusively of wealthy suburban kids. I would like to think that most students who are intellectually adequate for Harvard would find nothing more stultifying than to be surrounded by people just like themselves.