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How do you think race actually impacts admissions now?
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Anonymous
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What is true:
1. Applications no longer have a "race" box. 2. Race is still quite evident (for some kids) in their extracurriculars, essay answers, etc. 3. Colleges continue to DESPERATELY want racially diverse student bodies--i.e. they want minorities. 4. Colleges use holistic admissions. There aren't GPA or testing cut-offs. It would be hard to prove that a college took candidate 2 over candidate 1 because they were a minority. It could be because candidate 2 is from TN vs. KY or worked at a camp vs a donut shop or got a more glowing recommendation or a million other things. You could only really prove that it race was the deciding factor if all other aspects of the 2 candidates were the same. So how does this now actually work in the practical sense in the trenches of admissions? Anyone know? |
Anonymous
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I have no doubt at all that applicants are doing whatever it takes to signal that they are URMs and that colleges are paying attention to this.
Colleges that have spent decades eagerly recruiting URMs are not just going to stop and go "race blind" just because the court says they have to. |
Anonymous
| After going through it last year, with a biracial (wasian) kid with unusual (non stem) interests, I think being mixed race actually helped at some schools. |
Anonymous
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In my experience, Asians have a very hard time with admissions. One interviewer at an ivy told my child that she was “just too Asian” and recommended she play the drums instead of a string instrument. !
However, there are still schools out there who don’t care and see the whole student -not just their race. |
Anonymous
| Which schools don't care? Certainly all the ones we have looked at do. The court case hasn't changed anything IMO, except colleges have to be a tad more subtle than Harvard was, giving all Black kids the highest scores for "character" and all Asian kids the lowest. So dumb of them. |
Anonymous
MIT is very numbers driven |
Anonymous
| MIT is definitely a special breed. |
Anonymous
| I think colleges are finding ways to consider it. I expect another lawsuit at some point. Once a school has to pay a real settlement, the practice will end |
Anonymous
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Many colleges are almost certainly illegally engaging in covert racial discrimination when they can get away with it, because they are ideologically driven to do so.
It’s likely less overt than before… has to be subtle enough to withstand future lawsuits. Hopefully the practice will end one day but we’re not there yet. Sorry to the PP whose kid was told they were “too Asian.” Disgraceful behavior but not surprising. |
Anonymous
But are colleges now actually getting a count of the racial demographics of their admitted class? Are the new matriculants ever asked their race? |
Anonymous
| Most top schools still have a ton of special summer programs that are designed exclusively for minorities and first gen kids. Others need not apply. So I imagine they still care about race a lot. |
Anonymous
The Common App still includes the race and ethnicity checkboxes for this purpose. Colleges are required to report this information by the federal government. The checkboxes are not a data field included in admissions review of applicants. |
Anonymous
| Underrated method of disclosing race: including in your award section a College Board National Recognition Program Award, with the specific minority group named in the title. |
Anonymous
funny, at our private hs in nyc, MIT has the lowest range of accepted SAT scores out of all the T10 colleges. I think they want to see high-ish math scores (750 and up) and then they care about personality more than you think. And kids already used to a lot level or rigor |
Anonymous
| isn't that why my kid is trying to come up with a "what's special about your culture" essay for all these schools now. |