<p>I think that we should elimate any distinguishing factors such as race or gender or sexual preerence or anything like that- no mattter what-
simply because it is denying better people what they deserve.
If you are better than someone else- you should get in
period</p>
<p>But once you get up to a certain level “better” becomes a gray area. Colleges don’t have to consider somebody with a 2400 SAT score “better” than someone with a 2200, even if all else is equal.</p>
<p>Yeah but there are UMRs who get in with much lower scores.</p>
<p>Try a UMR with a 1500 (this is the NEW SAT scored out of 2400) and a 3.0 weighted GPA (class rank is about 130/329) with no ECs other than a tiny bit of film who got into Dartmouth? The problem is that there aren’t enough well qualified UMRs to attend these colleges so they have to dip into a less qualified pool. I’m sure that among the students they rejected, there were plenty more qualified students, they just happened to be white or asian.</p>
<p>I’m sure there were more qualified people than him who were rejected because of race.</p>
<p>i dont think the above case happens for no reason any more than it happens for those of any other race.</p>
<p>Unless the applicant stated above is an athlete, you are either omitting or unaware of other sections of the profile, or blatantly misinformed that there aren’t urm applicants that are more qualified then someone not anywhere near the range.</p>
<p>And once again, having a higher score, so long as you are qualified, does not necessarily make you more qualified, contrary to whatever you’d like to believe.</p>
<p>^ I do think there is a disparity in academic qualifications. I am currently attending one of “HYPSMC”, and just a couple observations:</p>
<p>~While there are URM students in the department I am in… there are none on the “honors” track, to my knowledge. </p>
<p>~Among the graduate student popluation in said department, which is rather more based on academic merit than undergradute admissions… the ratio of, say, URM to Asian student is notably lower. (Though obviously this is not directly correlated, not all students choose to pursue grad school, etc.)</p>
<p>~I have spoken to a URM student who said that this kind of intense research-focused department was not ideal for someone with his background. </p>
<p>~I know of at least one Olympiad-winning non-URM student who was denied acceptance to my school. (He is now taking grad courses at another of HYPSMC…) From the CC acceptance threads I read back when I was applying for college, it seems like there are at least a few such cases every year… and it’s probably undisputable that these people are more ACADEMICALLY qualified than most others who were admitted, for whatever reason, at the top schools.</p>
<p>~Professors at this school had once made it known that they would prefer more “academic 1” admits… it’s in the news archive somewhere.</p>
<p>All this is practically anecdotal (it’s one department at one school), but I’d be interested in hearing what the situation is like in other similar places. Granted, I can see this being less applicable to humanities/social sciences departments (where students might also stand to benefit more from the diverse backgrounds/experiences of their classmates)- I wouldn’t know firsthand. </p>
<p>Anyway, this thread probably isn’t the right place to delve into more heavy-handed AA debate. I just think your denial of any academic disparity in AA-tipped students’ qualifications is kind of unfounded…</p>
<p>I’m not taking a position on this one at the moment but it would be a good idea to remember that acceptance rates can be deceiving. Since women tent to have a stronger preference for some schools and apply in greater numbers, a lower acceptatnce rate is not proof of gender bias.</p>
<p>We Chinese find this kind of topic quite interesting. I found that the CR in SAT have lots of articles about rights for women and blacks. I think we Chinese have to improve in rights for human. Though we treat all the ethics in our nation quite fairly, we still need to improve.So it is with women</p>
<p>"the amount of urms that post results threads is far too small a group to make any conclusion lol. </p>
<p>And can you provide any concrete evidence that “URMs with 1800 SATs and mediocre ECs get into schools like MIT” any more often than a student of any other race is?</p>
<p>and nobody is “AA admitted” any more than they are “SAT admitted”, Its all about what tips an already qualified applicant in."</p>
<p>no, how about you actually look at some results threads instead of going la la la i have no idea what you’re talking about. yes, i’ll give you some concrete evidence: look at the results threads of any elite school here on CC. the effects of AA in admisisons will become obvious very quickly. if you don’t look, thats your choice, but maybe you just don’t like the idea of realizing you are wrong- and maybe you like it that way. CC is by no means complete data, but I would say that hundreds of posts are a sufficiently large enough sample size. furthermore its data fully agrees with what any student at a competitive high school will be able to tell you about race and patterns of admissions/deferral/denial from actual results.</p>
<p>no one is “AA admitted”? seriously, parroting back the PR statements of colleges that AA is only a “tipping factor” only shows that you have no idea what you are talking about.
how exactly is it that all a URM has to do to get into an elite college is get somewhere around 1800-1900 SATs, have decent grades and extracurriculars, and write a decent essay? any white or URM doing that would have virtually no chance. that’s not a “tipping factor”. AA is certainly not, as many admissions people propose, a tiebreaker between identical candidates of different races.</p>
<p>Shut up about the “OMG someone with weaker stats than someone else got into XXX school!!!”</p>
<p>I know a asian female who got into University of Michigan with a 3.1 and a 24 ACT, only EC was tennis, not a captain, nada. I also know a white male who got into Harvard, as a transfer no less, with a 3.3 GPA, and without off the charts test scores. Both were upper middle class.</p>
<p>People are admitted for all sorts of reasons. I don’t think the black guy with a 3.0 and a 1500/2400 mentioned earlier was admitted because of his race. There were hundreds of more academically qualified black applicants, many of which were rejected. I would assume he had something exceptional which was the boost. If there is an ‘AA admit’, it is going to be the guy who is in range in every catagory. The 1450/top 5%/pretty good EC’s AA kid might get in 50% of the time at HYPSM vs. 30% if it was a white female. That is all hearsay, but the way I’m reading things.</p>
<p>At Vassar a guy might get a legit boost, same with a black guy at some of those Northeastern LAC’s. But most schools aren’t choosing based on that. And most have a bunch of ‘surprise’ admits every year. Obviously some of those will be minorities.</p>
<p>Why is the 1800/3.5/average admitted to Stanford hope for us all if he/she is white, but a symbol of out of control AA if he/she is black? If you think that HYPSM can’t get good URM candidates you are out of your mind.</p>
<p>“how exactly is it that all a URM has to do to get into an elite college is get somewhere around 1800-1900 SATs, have decent grades and extracurriculars, and write a decent essay?”</p>
<p>maybe becuz they don’t?</p>
<p>“CC is by no means complete data, but I would say that hundreds of posts are a sufficiently large enough sample size.”</p>
<p>no. its not. First of all, you couldn’t find more than 100 african american results threads on the Ivy league board. Second all of that information was supplied on a voluntary basis, so you could get a skewed or partial picture of applicants. Third CC is NOT a sample reflective of the college-aged population at all, so you can’t use CC as a sample for any statistical analysis without it being complete garbage. </p>
<p>Bob, obviously you don’t know what concrete evidence is.</p>
<p>I’m a girl, and I’m not going to complain about being discriminated against for being one. This is why: In my school, we have a roughly 60% female student body. Of those girls, only about 1 in 3 to 4 have a boyfriend. Our girls are, on the whole, much better looking than in other schools I’ve been to, but the combination of our girl-guy ratio and the general reluctance of high school guys (and girls) to approach one another screws us over.</p>
<p>If we had to repeat this scenario in college, our town’s suicide rate would jump up about 5%. If Harvard were 70% women (and this was well known), I’d bet you anything female applicant numbers would decline severely. There’s no grand injustice or mystery to the college bias against girls. It all sums up to one truth: There’s too many smart girls. Nature made the 50-50 man/woman ratio for a reason. A gender imbalance among a severely hormonal population is not good. At all.</p>
<p>If I had to choose between a 50-50 second-tier college and a 60-40 Ivy League in favor of the ladies, I’d take the second-tier with relish. Abstinence isn’t a virtue when it’s involuntary.</p>
<p>It is sexism. For a woman to be rejected in favor of a less-qualified man simply because of her gender is glaringly sexist. Yes there are other factors to consider, but this is sexism at its most basic level.</p>
<p>It may be sexism - - but often to provide female students the gender parity they seek in attending co-ed schools. </p>
<p>But gender and race aren’t the only “tip” factors: athletics, development/donor and geography can also boost a candidates chances.</p>
<p>college is a dirty business. They just dont tell you what’s behind the scene.
there are “invisible quotas” everywhere, and depending on different intrinsic characteristics (family background, skin color, sex…etc) people have different advantages or disadvantages. This is definitely established and no way to deny. Why is this thread still in discussion?</p>
<p>again, race is just a part of admissions process. it is magnified b/c everyone got great scores/grades/recs/courses/ecs…etc so small things can be the tipping factor. but just like other stuff, it’s just one of the potential tipping factors.</p>