I agree with your response. My daughter is a Freshman Engineering Major at Virginia Tech. She was a U.S. Presidential Scholar selectee; A NASA Academy/Scholar; a Sudent Athlete; a dedicated SPCA Volunteer; an accomplished professional artist and graduated with and Advanced Diploma with a 4.0 plus GPA. I believe Virginia Tech accepted her because of her merits rather than her ethnic background.
6 Likes
*student
Absolutelyā¦congrats to your daughter. My guess is that the Asian and white male pool is likely more than 6 times the size of black females - and thatās probably a major underestimation . (86.3% of engineers are male when compared to 13.7% female). Principles of percentages have to have equal sized pools when comparingā¦ 100 males at 35% mean 35 would be accepted, 16 females at 69% percent means 12 are accepted.
2 Likes
Thank you! My daughter chose Virginia Tech over University of Miami ($$$ Scholarship), University of California Irvine, Clemson, Tulane and NCSU (All great EngineeringSchools). She felt Virginia Tech understood her personal/professional goals and embodied her educational values.
4 Likes
Yes, your explanation supports my point.
The in-state acceptance rate for Engineering is 44%. Letās assume you are correct, and all applying have about the same stats. If you had 1000 Asian males apply and 100 black females, and Tech was basing it solely on merit, you could expect about 440 of the Asian males and 44 of the black females to be accepted.
What is happening instead is that VA Tech is telling us that they DO consider race and ethnicity in their selection. They are NOT just basing it on pure merit.
Reality: According to Techās own numbers, last year they had 969 Asian in-state males apply to Engineering . They made offers to about 36%, or 345 of them. For black in-state females, 124 applied, and about 69% were accepted, 85 in total.
If they evenly accepted students without regard to race and ethnicity, about 81 extra Asian males would have been admitted. And about 31 black females would have been denied.
2 Likes
When admissions algorithms work in our favor (kid gets admitted) we donāt care what the algorithm is but it must be good because my kid got in. When the kid doesnāt get into the school the algorithm must be broken and should be changed. Similarly with who gets what scholarship/aid.
End of day thereās a LOT of colleges out there that gives options to all our kids - hence why they send out multiple applications.
I get it that itās a tough pill to swallow when the school our kid most loves doesnāt love them back.
9 Likes
Anyone interested in reading up on VTās diversity recruitment, attached is a link. Iām also looking for an article that was published the year my daughter entered VT that spoke to the increase in their diversity stats. If I find it, Iāll post it.
Diversity Undergraduate Recruitment | Virginia Tech (vt.edu)
Here it is (Meet the Class of 2025):
Meet the Class of 2025 | VTx | Virginia Tech
Hereās Class of 2026:
3 Likes
Engineering is historically so top heavy with males that it is no surprise that qualified females of any race are often sought after. VT could probably fill all or most of their engineering spots with Asian and white males, but how boring would that be! More women in engineering is a good thing!
9 Likes
I think the objection to your point is that you seem to be implying that Virginia Tech is considering race over merit instead of in addition to āmeritā. We know race is considered because they tell us it is considered.
What I am saying is that Virginia Tech is not taking unqualified candidates. For engineering they have about 2000 slots and like 20,000 applications (i donāt have the numbers off the top of my headā¦ itās in a link already on here). They are going to accept about 6000 students and assume 4000 are going to go somewhere else. Of those 20,000 applications about 10-12000 of those applications are going to be in a range that VT considers to be qualified. So they need to differentiate those candidates in other ways. And race is one of them.
That does not mean students are getting accepted based on things other than merit. Merit is the very first criteria any student has to pass to get to the next level of screening.
13 Likes
Yes, we are in agreement that Tech is looking for qualified candidates.
My point is that by even considering race and ethnicity in their decisions, some students who may be more qualified are likely getting passed by, solely because of their race. There is just no way around that. Taking a larger percentage of one race means discriminating against another race. Perhaps you think that is a fair thing, and you are certainly entitled to have a different opinion, but I for one would love everybody to be judged on their qualifications and merit, without regard to things like skin color.
As someone who is part Nigerian, I know my kids can honestly put āmultiple racesā on their applications. But I wish they didnāt have to state their race at all, and I hope that question will be removed from Common App once the Supreme Court reviews the legality of that question.
4 Likes
I think the problem is trying to quantify āmore qualifiedā. No one is put into the exact same situation, so different inputs leads to different outcomes. Not all 4.0 gpaās are the same, and not all 1500ās are the same. Some kids get private tutoring, some kids donāt know where their next meal is coming from ā a 4.0 from the former is less impressive than a 4.0 from the latter.
And Iām not putting down people who can afford private tutors or saying their kids should be passed over ā you should maximize the opportunities you can. I am saying that quantifying who is āmore qualifiedā is not completely objective.
5 Likes
That is a good point, and often missed in college admissions discussions: above a certain threshold, schools are fairly confident you can succeed academically at their school and they begin to look for other things (institutional priorities). Whether this is region, race, gender, ECs, etc. (as well as their relative importance) varies by school based on their success of actually enrolling the students to achieve the diverse (across all factors) incoming class they desire. I do not believe schools view acceptance as a competition/reward-for-a-job-well-done like many students/applicants doā¦ they view it like a sports GM does and the pieces need to āfit togetherā.
So where/how does the perception of unfairness arise? Acceptance rates (because stats are not available for most schools at the level of detail needed to assess admissions practices). The problem for admissions in building their perfect class is two-fold: 1) by the very definition of āunderrepresented groupā there are fewer applicants that are qualified, and as a result 2) they typically have lower yield because they get accepted to more schools (all schools want a diverse incoming class). Soā¦. A higher acceptance rate is needed to enroll the underrepresented groupsā¦ the schools are competing against one another for a limited supply of qualified students (demand>supply from an admissions standpoint).
The same is true of just about any underrepresented group (women in engineering, first gen in STEM, etc.), and the opposite is true of over-represented groups. Problems arise when schools accept unqualified applicants, but I believe that is relatively rare in competitive majors. One last pointā¦ the overall stats for a university (especially a large school with D-1 sports) are relatively useless, as interests vary considerably from group to group: Asian males are disproportionately interested in CS and Engineeringā¦ black recruited athletes rarely soā¦ for an URG, it only takes a handful of athletes admitted with lower grades into easier majors to skew the overall numbers and make it look like a school like VT is admitting unqualified students. There are so many things that can seem unfair in admissions, and race consideration is one of themā¦ I just think it is an overstated one in most highly-competitive majors. Not sure what the solution is to a merit-based approach that removes perception of unfairness, but suspect it includes standardized testing without retakes and with resources available to all for prep (e.g., Khan Academy is a good start).
Edit: also suggest moving this discussion to the general admissions discussion about raceā¦ distraction for the VT thread since VT is no different than most other schools in this regard.
3 Likes
Thread is for VT but will state that per Harvard Univ - they get more applications every year that are 1,600SAT and 4.0/5.0 GPA than they have spots for. At a quantitative level these kids are ALL THE SAME so how else to make a distinction?
I agree with @DadBodThor that your suggestion is that quantitatively they are going to less qualified candidates in the search for diversity. Iād believe that the first gate is āacademically qualifiedā and then it gets into the other criteria.
FWIW I believe the Supreme Court will uphold past practice - but could certainly be proven wrong.
3 Likes
Yes, you can definitely find evidence to dispute the claim of test-optional being the driving force behind volume increases for some college. But if you dig a little deeper into the CDS for VTech for the last several cycles, youāll notice applications for 2019/20 and 2020/21 were similar (around the 30/31K range), it was in fall 2020 that VTech allowed applications through the Common App, prior to that it was only via the Coalition app or directly. Yet there was no spike due to the Common App being opened up to applicants that admissions year. The big jump in applications occurred the following year in 2021/22, which by that point test-optional had been established amongst the majority of schools including VTech and applications were driven up over 42K.
There are so many examples of this happening, including Penn State, Clemson, Auburn, etc. Yes, it is sad that applicants feel the need to apply to 15+ schools, but with the unpredictablility of admissions and inability for the once ātarget/likelyā schools to be pinpointed, this has become part of the admission journey and will continue in the current climate. As for Tennesse (like TCU) itās safe to saw the āfootballā effect has also played into the significant application increase this cycle and once again we see higher overall stats of admited students, taking it out of the ātarget/likelyā relm for many.
2 Likes
I think your timing is off. June of 2020 VT announced it would accept Common App. This would have been for admission to the school year '21-22.
Apps for school year '20-21 - 30,770
Apps for school year '21-22 - 42,054
VT began accepting the commom app in Aug. 2020 so it would be for the '20-'21 admissions cycle. So are the numbers for the school year or admissions cycle year?
1 Like
https://udc.vt.edu/irdata/data/students/admission/index#university
The most current data set is 2022-2023 that would be for āschool yearā 2022-2023 (currently in session).
Accepting common app starting 8/20 would be for the 2021-2022 school year.
1 Like
out of state
Can we not have this race & ethnicity conversation in this thread please? We all know why these rules were put in place decades ago and we all know why they are being discussed today. Personally, im in favor if eliminating ED (benefits rich families), eliminating legacy priority (benefits rich families), eliminating donor priority (benefits rich families), eliminating SAT/ACT (benefits rich families), etc etcā¦ We also know that rich families are predominantly a few races.
8 Likes
Way to suggest the conversation stop and then throw gasoline on the fire.
I guess you also understand that these universities wouldnāt exist without rich families to prop them up with their tax dollars and donations.
13 Likes