<p>Today I got a letter from Wustl after sending them a short postcard they issued me some months back with my SAT scores, GPA, interests, and Ethnicity.</p>
<p>Anyways I got invited to the 2006 Discovery Weekend, and I was pretty awed. Point is, do any of you guys know of minority recruiting programs that are still going (where I just send in a bit of info) where I can get the oppurtunity to visit top 20 colleges free of charge. Thanks for the help guys! (I hope this doesn't turn to an AA flame fest lol).</p>
<p>Yale (probably for swaying purposes since they don't have Harvard 2/3+ yield rate for blacks)
MIT (those most of their MITE programs attendees come from NSBE
Columbia
Cornell (Engineering only-very competitive, only 40 allowed to attend)
Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore (these three intentionally conflict schedules)
Wesleyan
Johns Hopkins
Carnegie Mellon
William & Mary (must be instate)
Oberlin</p>
<p>Also, the only ones that I know are fly-in are Cornell, the liberal arts college, and Carnegie Mellon. Yale, Columbia, and JHU are open houses. William & Mary, the expect that you're instate. MIT, NSBE handle their members travel and the school handle Boston area kids, but I think you'd be on your own.</p>
<p>Claremont McKenna College in California
CMC may have a fall fly-in program for underrepresented students, but I can't find anything official on the college website. Contact CMC Admissions if there is an interest.</p>
<p>Everyone is looking for the top students of color. I find that almost all of USNWR's top 50 schools will pay for transportation and compete all out for top black and latino students if the student shows enough interest in them, and if they think they have a legitimate shot at yielding that student. At the school where I work, I've seen the following additional schools fly (or pay for a train ticket) to kids in the last few years:</p>
<p>Vassar (bus is paid for)
Davidson (flight)
Rice (flight in 2006)
Scripps (flight in 2006)
Boston College (train or bus)
Middlebury (flight)
Occidental (flight)
Dartmouth (flight during summer between jr and senior year for 40 tops kids)
Carleton (flight in 2006)
Carnegie Mellon can be very generous
Amherst (accept 75% of students they fly in)
Macalster
Wesleyan
Williams</p>
<p>This list is by no means an exhaustive list. If you are a strong student and have you a particular school in mind, you should contact them and ask them directly. I did this and Occidental told me that my request played a significant role in their decision to launch a new fly in program. Like most things in life, almost everything is negotiable when you are bringing something to the table.</p>
<p>Please keep in mind that many of the programs mentioned are not only looking to recruit URMs, they are also looking to recruit low income students and students from underrepresented geographic areas.</p>
<p>An underrepresented geographic area would be a state or county in a state that may not send a lot of students to a particular college, i.e. Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, rural Alpine, Modoc, Mono, Trinity and Sierra Counties in California.</p>
<p>There are probably rural counties in Arizona that could be considered underrepresented, but not the entire state.</p>
<p>Urban cities (urban / low income / low performing neighborhoods in cities) could be considered underrepresented because they don't send a lot of students to elite colleges or other schools that are "off the radar" of an urban student.</p>
<p>Desi Indians are not considered URMs. They are often categoried as Asian on diversity / demographics reports.</p>
<p>Smaller schools do take demonstrated interest into consideration. If you were invited and did not reply it may reflect that you were not interested in the school.</p>
<p>How do you get information about these fly-in visits? Is it something you must be invited to or can you contact the school and request information about free visits? For example, the Undergrad Minority Recruitment Program of a few schools have contacted me but they haven't mentioned anything about visiting, only about providing additional information and phone sessions where I can ask questions.</p>
<p>j07,
It varies with the college, for some you can request an application for their diversity weekend, others get names from various lists (Venture Scholar's, NHRP, etc.), others likely get the names of people who have showed interest in one form or another. For instance, my D got an invitation from one of the schools that she both sent her SAT scores to and designated as one of her schools for National Merit recognition.</p>
<p>Several schools are know to have designated diversity weekends either during the fall admissions season or in the spring after acceptances. I have heard that one can call up colleges and request that they pay for a visit, but personally don't have experience with that.</p>
<p>Ultima, some of the programs that compete with eachother <em>cough</em>Williams, Amherst, & Swathmore<em>cough</em> may actually look into your reason for declining as well as somehow confirming if you were invited to or attended one of other two counterpart's programs. I don't no how, but the Swarthmore admissions scared me with that one.</p>
<p>The discovery weekend at Swarthmore was ok. I felt it a little contrived. There were odd “activities” planned for every minute of the weekend. There was also this strange hippie like “inclusive” nature to the people. I know it was a minority recruitment event, but still. I felt like, instead of trying to convince me to be a student at Swarthmore, the school was trying to convince me to be a minority at Swarthmore, and it wasn’t too pleasant.</p>
<p>My son got a call from Harvard UMRP.. encouraging him to apply. Are they seeing the PSAT/ National Merit info already?
Does he have a better chance with any Ivies as a National Merit scholar?</p>