Affirmative Action and UVA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what's coming next:

"The University of Virginia, for example, announced a plan this month to target 40 high schools in eight regions of the state that had little history of sending applicants."

New York Times article, 6/30

This is good, as long as they select the top students from these under represented schools instead of using race as a determining factor.

Because we know nothing statistically about who lives in various geographies… zip codes will soon be quotas too.

Surely you don’t believe this. UVA knows the demographic makeup of every zip code in the state.

My zip code has affordable housing/projects and multi-million home/condos. My kids school was 20% Farms. So how do they know which kid they are getting ?

Seriously? They have your address. The school can figure everything out about your family with a six second google search.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what's coming next:

"The University of Virginia, for example, announced a plan this month to target 40 high schools in eight regions of the state that had little history of sending applicants."

New York Times article, 6/30

This is good, as long as they select the top students from these under represented schools instead of using race as a determining factor.

Because we know nothing statistically about who lives in various geographies… zip codes will soon be quotas too.

Surely you don’t believe this. UVA knows the demographic makeup of every zip code in the state.

My zip code has affordable housing/projects and multi-million home/condos. My kids school was 20% Farms. So how do they know which kid they are getting ?

Seriously? They have your address. The school can figure everything out about your family with a six second google search.

We just went through this. Better to be in low COL area than not - also, consider those schools that are need sensitive.

Low COL counts for a LOT in the new parameters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For those saying they went to UVA in the 90s, your experience is your experience. I appreciate your input but it is 2023. These are different kids raised differently and experienced different times. Please stop comparing. UVA 2023 is not the same as 1991.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So does my white son have an easier or harder time getting into UVA today?

If you are full pay you have a strong chance. I’m pretty torn by SC decision. I do believe underrepresented groups should be given an opportunity. Many attend poor school districts where the level of instruction does not set them up to meet competitive admissions metrics. But as a parent of an OS white son who was waitlisted this year (1560 SAT, 4.61 WGPA), I know it was the fact we could only contribute maybe $35000-$40000 was the reason he was waitlisted over others. So I was disappointed for him at the time but we’ve moved on.

You know nothing of the kind. First of all, UVA is need blind so knows nothing about your financial situation when making a decision. Second, your child is accepted ED or EA then you file the FAFSA and only then do you get a financial aid determination which goes to the school. The school then calculates its financial aid offer. What was your EFC? Third, even when applying RD UVA admissions doesn’t know your FAFSA results. And if your child really wanted UVA they should have applied ED or EA. So while your story might make you feel better it makes no sense to anyone who has gone through the process. Fwiw the 75th percentile of UVA’s entering class last year had a 4.53 meaning 25 percent had higher so a 4.61 is pretty standard for a white male applying to UVA. What was his school rank? Number of APs? National ECs? White males are a dime a dozen. The top schools are looking for the 36 ACTs, the valedictorians, the Eagle Scouts, the 1600 SATs. UVA received 56,000 applications last year. Your application must stand out - need for financial aid makes no difference at need blind schools

[Anonymous]

Apply ED from low income zip code and at least a 4.4 gpa = sweet spot to geting into UVA.

[Anonymous]

with this stat, better to try Harvard instead of UVA

Anonymous wrote:Apply ED from low income zip code and at least a 4.4 gpa = sweet spot to geting into UVA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Apply ED from low income zip code and at least a 4.4 gpa = sweet spot to geting into UVA.

Eh, the AI can suss your socioeconomic background out with all those common app fields that must be filled in

[Anonymous]

My experience with competitive Asian parents and kids is that they’re just as “racist” and exclusionary as the whites and others they bash. Asians aren’t applauding the SC decision because they’re more morally upright, but because they see a competitive advantage. That’s fine, but let’s just be honest about motivations here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So does my white son have an easier or harder time getting into UVA today?

Because that is all I care about.

Just say it.

Isn't pp supposed to care about their child?

NP. I may be cynical, but I find that most generalized arguments in the educational conext are really people trying to get an advantage for their children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My experience with competitive Asian parents and kids is that they’re just as “racist” and exclusionary as the whites and others they bash. Asians aren’t applauding the SC decision because they’re more morally upright, but because they see a competitive advantage. That’s fine, but let’s just be honest about motivations here.

Irrelevant. Go cry about it to yourself

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:with this stat, better to try Harvard instead of UVA

Anonymous wrote:Apply ED from low income zip code and at least a 4.4 gpa = sweet spot to geting into UVA.

4.5 to be safe

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So does my white son have an easier or harder time getting into UVA today?

UVA is majority White and Asian. There are only 6% Blacks and 6% Hispanics. Your white son will do just fine just like all the other white men in this country who have been doing great for the past few centuries.

https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-virginia-main-campus/student-life/diversity/

Just say it's majority White. Asians only comprise of 15% of the whole student body.

Which is more than 2x their proportion of the population nationally and statewide.

Exactly. And blacks are only 28% of the nation.

Libidiots always leave these pieces of math out.

If you compare the demographics of the state, University of Virginia has about the same or slightly fewer White students than you would expect based on state demographics, nearly double the Asian students you would expect based on state demographics, and only 1/2 of the Black population you would expect. So for all the memorials to the enslaved people who built the universities and gave labor to the founders of the universities and currently pay state taxes that help support the universities, only half as many Black students as there are proportionately in the state get to attend the flagship university.

I am not happy with the SC decision, however I was thinking UVA will most likely have a difficult time to ever match the % of Black students to their population in the state. How many top Black students choose HBCU’s over UVA? How many Black students do not want to attend a “Southern” university? How many Black students are discouraged from even applying to UVA?

I graduated from UVA in 1998 when it was 12% Black. One of the reasons I chose to attend was because the Black population mimicked that of the US. I have no idea why the percentage of Black students has fallen so much since then and it's sad, but I can assure you it's not because more chose to attend an HBCU or didn't want to attend a "Southern" university.

I was a graduate student at UVA in the early 90s. As part of our RA duties we would meet with the professor when he went over the exam grades. It was eye opening to me to see that the bottom 5-10% of the class were almost always black students, and the majority were well below average. These were anonymously graded exams. It became very clear that a large percentage of the black students simply weren’t qualified to be there. I felt sorry for the 25% of the black kids who absolutely belonged there; I’m sure people assumed they were unqualified. Of course UVA, like most “prestigious” schools, graduates almost everyone who gets in, so the majority still earned degrees. I’m curious if this kind of data caused UVA to be a little more careful in who they accepted later on.

I’m curious what kind of program this was. I read an interesting article earlier this year about a white professor who noticed a similar trend in his intro class for a STEM program (I do not remember the specific discipline). What he also discovered was that the few Black students in his class were often left out of study groups formed by their classmates. When he started forming the study groups which included the Black students, there was little to no discernible trend in student performance based on race.

Wow. I didn’t realize that study group formation was limited by race.

Welcome to America is racist, moron!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For those saying they went to UVA in the 90s, your experience is your experience. I appreciate your input but it is 2023. These are different kids raised differently and experienced different times. Please stop comparing. UVA 2023 is not the same as 1991.

But UVA in the '90s was more diverse, so in 2023 it's actually worse.

[Anonymous]

My experience with competitive Asian parents and kids is that they’re just as “racist” and exclusionary as the whites and others they bash. Asians aren’t applauding the SC decision because they’re more morally upright, but because they see a competitive advantage. That’s fine, but let’s just be honest about motivations here.

This has also been my experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH and I are both black UVA alumni. We will not advise our kids to apply to UVA or any school with a lack of diversity. A welcoming, diverse and supportive community is most important to us.

The SC ruling will result in less diverse campuses by self selection alone.

I agree.
I am a white parent with three biracial kids (white / African-American) who graduated MCPS. One of my kids applied and was accepted to UVA and, when we visited, it seemed segregated and my student rejected it on the spot. I don’t know that most white parents realize how important the race issue becomes in college - for friends, dating, etc. It can be particularly hard for biracial kids who may not fit in perfectly in schools with tiny percentages of black students. Compare this to the communities around DC where our kids grew up and are used to having friends and teachers across the spectrum of race and religion.