URM Efficiency?

Hey CC community, I don’t mean to come off as ignorant in this post, but I just wanted to know if being URM remotely increases your chances at an elite college under these circumstances : URM, 150k income, lived in “ghetto” for 2 years. I’ve had a pretty normal life and the only adversity i’ve had to overcome was those 2 years in the ghetto which I barely even remember. I’m guessing being a urm doesn’t really do anything at this point? Thanks

Yes, it still helps you. Many schools are still looking for a racially diverse population regardless of income level.

Whether or not it does, it is safest to make your reach/match/safety assessments of colleges without considering any benefit for being URM. Most people seem to greatly overestimate such an effect, which can lead to a making inappropriate application lists.

At schools with less than 20% admit rate, it won’t help - it’s not like they have a shortage of super talented URMs to reject. At schools in the 20-35% admit range, it’ll help marginally - ie., if you’re the type of URM their campus is seeking and you’re competitive for everything else (“all other things being equal”), it’ll give you an edge. At schools with a 40% admit rate or more and where your ethnic group is under-represented, the fact you fill an institutional need for diversity will help you.
In short, being an upper-middle class URM does not help that much and for elite universities, it basically doesn’t.

Thanks for clearing that up @MYOS1634‌ I always found it fishy that ivy’s would give me an edge because of my ethnicity

Being URM does help, anyone saying it is “negligible” is lying to you, unless you are talking about states where race-based affirmative action is essentially illegal (but even then colleges have ways to give URMs a slight advantage). The fact in the matter is, at least one study I have read about affirms that being URM is equivalent to a couple hundred or so points extra on the SAT, and that is on a 1600-scale (on a 2400 scale the point difference would be even greater). This is a complicated situation because many URMs are from less favorable economic situations, but then again many are from perfectly well-off economic situations. I will not state my opinion on the matter, since my opinion is not completely well-defined yet- however, it is important to acknowledge that being URM does hold a significant advantage admissions-wise ceteris paribus.

^yikesyikesyikes: how many students have you worked with? Or are you in high school and saying “everyone knows that”?
Being an upper middle class URM is NOT treated the same way as being a working class URM by elite universities, which was essentially what the OP was asking about (being an upper middle class URM applicant to elite universities).

I just disagree with this. Of course the OP needs to be well qualified, but for schools that have boatloads of well qualified applicants, being a URM does provide a slight advantage. Take a school like Swarthmore that doesn’t get tons of URM applicants to begin with – a URM with the same stats as an unhooked student who seems like a good fit is going to have an advantage. And I don’t believe that economic strata makes a huge difference – schools WANT to be able to brag about their ethnic diversity of their class (you don’t really hear them bragging so much about the socio-economic diversity of the class at most places, though).

As was already said, URM status absolutely does help with admissions, from the smallest to most elite of colleges. It is just a fact that every school seeks to show diversity either for altruistic or political reasons. That you are now firmly in the middle class may be irrelevant if they can still use your admission to their advantage. Fair? Not really. But reality none the less.

@rubberfall, there is more nuance to it than that. Some public universities are not allowed to take race into account, and generally don’t. It isn’t a blanket statement. And some schools DO get a lot of qualified URM candidates (Ivies, Stanford), so they can still be very selective in the URM population to get all the qualities they want in a student.

Absolutely true. The elite schools are all going to be competing for the URM with the top scores, but likely the non-URM with exactly the same scores and qualifications would still be calling the elites a reach.
Also true that some public universities such as Cal Berkeley now cannot take race into account - and with the resultant near complete loss of URM diversitiy since only concrete qualifications are taken into account.
What happens is that the very qualified NON-URM will be competing with other very qualified NON-URM’s for a limited number of spots, and the URM spots are left for URM’s (who generally will not as a group be as competitive - thus as I stated, a URM with top scores will be “recruited”, while a NON-URM with top scores will be “considered”.)

I think we’re in agreement, just not expressing it the same way.
Let us imagine a URM applicant with 3.8 GPA and 1830 SAT. Two clubs, one part-time job.
That student is applying to Harvard. S/he will be turned down in three seconds flat if s/he’s an upper middle class URM. However, if the applicant comes from a disadvantaged high school where the average CR+M+W score is 1270, then that 1830 is a fantastic score; the ECs are the only one the applicant can do due to lack of transportation and the part-time job helps pay the rent: that applicant has a chance.
Now, let us imagine that same URM applicant applying to a school ranked 53. (I picked that number at random). 3.8 is pretty good for them, 1830 is below average but still acceptable. EC’s factor in slightly but URM status, regardless of socio-economic class, gives that applicant a boost because the student can clearly do the work and fulfills an institutional need.
Now, if that student is competitive for the school, say 2180 SAT, 3.9 GPA with 6 APs, and a national-level EC… if that student is a URM, you’re right that many LAC’s would recruit him/her and even at Harvard his/her odds are better than most - yet, more students with that profile will be rejected from Harvard - URM or not- than will be admitted. If the student comes from a lower-income family, they stand a very, very high chance of being admitted (although some students with that profile, even through questbridge, do get turned down every year). At LACs that heavily recruit (with diversity fly ins, etc), there’s more leeway than for Harvard but if the college range is 1850-2050, being URM won’t make up for a 1600 unless there’s also a lower-performing school or lower-income explanation. In short, it’s a hook, like being an athlete or a legacy, but it’s not a magic bullet. Some students (or parents) on CC make that mistake, hence my explanation above.

What @yikesyikesyikes‌ is telling you is more than likely just common rhetoric spilled by CC Users. If yyy dies have links to the controlled study that proves that URMs can have, on average, SAT scores that are 200 points lower than the norm then I will apologize. But I don’t buy it.

Aa another URM the best think I can say is apply to schools that are in your range so that you aren’t “banking” on getting in due to race. Its impact varies from school and for each individual URM (different URMs bring different things to the table). I think its impact is often overstated on CC and is used as a scapegoat for why certain students did not get in to certain schools. So, with that in mind, it’s better to play it safe than bet on race.

@TheAtlantic Here is the study:

http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/files/webAdmission%20Preferences%20Espenshade%20Chung%20Walling%20Dec%202004.pdf

Please refer to page 10 of the PDF or 1431.

wow that’s a really interesting article… an extra 230 points sounds insane.

That actually is an interesting study, especially in comparison to other hooks. Thanks for the link.
I wonder if the trend has decreased with recent court cases and SAT conversions, rather than increased though.

@rubberfall, do you have any references to back up this claim? It is not clear that without an admissions boost, ethnic diversity would be unattainable. It is not clear a “significant” admissions boost occurs.

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=ethnic+diversity+at+uc+berkeley&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

“University of California-Berkeley is ranked #149 in ethnic diversity nationwide, with a student body composition that is far above the national average.”

http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-california-berkeley/student-life/diversity/#

And, @yikesyikesyikes (ref. post #13), notice figure 1 on page 1443 of your cited reference, showing the steep decline of the URM advantage (from 1993 to 1997 the African American and the Hispanic influence each had declined 33% in four short years. Now that these data are much older, and the article itself is over 10 years old, I wonder how all of this has changed. From the cited reference, page 1444:

The Atlantic is correct. While URM status is a hook for admissions it’s only a hook if you are in the range. A 1500 SAT scores just ain’t gonna cut it for a top 10 private college. OTOH, a 2100 AA (and corresponding GPA) will likely have great admissions success.

@bluebayou I couldn’t agree more!