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Anonymous wrote:OP, what do you (and those in your office) think about the higher standards being placed on Asian American applicants?

It's a difficult topic. We receive thousands of applications from Asian Americans who score a 2200+ and who have a 4.0 UW or close to it. We know these students have worked immeasurably hard to achieve these goals. The reality is that our purpose is to bring people from all walks of life, and unfortunately, when Asians are already over-represented at campus, it's hard to admit more students without compromising the diversity we aim for. Our white % is already noticeably lower than the US Census; the Hispanic and African-American numbers are a little lower or around the same, but the Asian American number is much higher than the US Census. Most of our international students are Asians as well. I know that sounds hypocritical when our campus is so privileged socioeconomically, but our admit pool is ultimately a microcosm of the larger applicant pool- no matter how many adjustments we try to make- we receive a lot (and I mean a lot) more applications from rich students, we receive more applications from Asians than Blacks or Hispanics and just a few more Caucasian applications than Asian applications.

I see the value of a meritocracy similar to the UC system- admitting students on the basis of their objective measures. My personal stance is that subjectives are as key to bringing the best and brightest. Were we to rely on just numbers, we'd exclude the student who graduated summa cum laude in our college but had only a 1750 SAT from her inner city background (real story, just happened last May). We'd exclude the valedictorian who had to work full time to support their family, and thus didn't have the ability to do test prep. Relying on objectives alone means eliminating the richness and complexity that is part of these students' lived backgrounds and experiences, and we just don't want to do that. We also want to make sure the students ARE capable of handling the work, hence the minimum expectations for GPA, test scores, etc. and a heavy consideration of academic potential by LORs.

Anonymous wrote:I work at a highly regarded school with a <15% admit rate and got to learn a lot about how admissions works. Here are some things you may or may not know. Not in any organized fashion, just what I remembered. Feel free to ask any questions. Certain details omitted as I don't want to identify the school.

1. We have minimum SAT and GPA expectations of all students. If you don't rank at least in the top half of your class, or if your ACT is below a 23/SAT below a 1600 (old SAT), we won't review your application. Around 5-10% of applicants are automatically rejected based on this metric.

2. We have a listing of the profiles of applicants from each school that we receive applications from, which includes race, rank, GPA, and test scores. This page also includes applicant information from the previous year. If you're in the bottom 25% of your class by those standards, your application won't be reviewed.

3. From there, every application is reviewed in extensive detail. Regional readers start with all the applicants from a high school, looking through the school profile to understand how course rigor and grade distribution works. Even if your school does not rank, readers will try to parse a rank from the percent of students earning a particular GPA. By detail, every thing is reviewed- parent/sibling occupations or educational background, additional information, extracurricular involvement, essays, recommendations, etc.- and the regional readers summarize the highlights in an application form. They are then tasked with evaluating, on a point system, the applicant's academic merit (rank/test score/gpa), academic potential (LOR feedback), extracurricular involvement, talent/ability, personal character, writing ability, and other things.

4. From there, the reader gives a brief statement as to whether or not the candidate warrants a new review or a pass into committee. Very few go straight into committee, many receive a second read (who decides whether or not to send to committee), and some are rejected at the first read. About 30-40% of applicants go into committee. There are mini-committees in which groups of admission readers further consider which applicants to review, and then there is the larger committee for each round that decides which students to admit.

All admission readers are given a brief highlight of the strengths and weaknesses of the committee applicants, presented by the readers. They launch into a conversation about whether or not the applicant is admit-worthy. Little details, like the C in Calculus or a poor phrase in the LORs, are mentioned, and very few applicants receive all-around glowing feedback. After this discussion, each admission officers votes to deny, waitlist, or admit. If the majority votes for a particular group, they're placed there; if they receive an equal number of admits and denies, they're waitlisted, so on and so forth.

More applicants are placed in the admit pool than are ultimately admitted. Near decision release time, we review the admit pool and trim it to the strongest applicants we want to admit (we calculate based on anticipated yield). Those who don't make the cut are waitlisted, but they are given a special tag in our system as being in the admit pool. They are the applicants we look to in admitting waitlist students.

5. The vast majority of essays received are bad, if not awful. It's really a case of splendid essays that make a difference for the admissions process. Also, we ponder at the sheer number of college confidential chance me posters who rate their LORs as 9/10 or 10/10. The average is in fact 5/10; the LORs at our college tend to be glowing in the first place, so we are looking for not just strong students, but those who show initiative, creativity, and compassion. Anecdotes mean more to us than blanket statements. We encourage students to share stories with their writers, and we encourage them to be not just A students in the classroom, but leaders, questioners, and active learners.

6. For URMs/low income students, we are trained to understand their percentile ranks for various tests (here is one such source: https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/sat/sat-percentile-ranks-gender-ethnicity-2015.pdf). The 95% mark (700 for whites, 750 for Asians, 600 for African Americans, 650 for Latinos/Native Americans) is the benchmark we use. Obviously, those from a lower income background will not be held to as high a standard as those who are higher income; we can deduce income levels from essays, LORs, and subtle/explicit things in the application (we don't get actual income info- that goes to financial aid. Need blind means not that we don't consider it, but rather that asking for aid won't hurt your chances). Also, even though we do lower our test standards for certain groups, academic metrics are just as stringent- we want students in the top 10%, ideally top 5%; we want the most rigorous course-load possible, and we want good letters of recommendation. While URMs do have a slightly higher admit rate, the overwhelming majority are still rejected.

7. Being from an area we don't have many students from (Wyoming, West Virginia, certain countries, etc.) will not make up for poor academic performance, even if admitting those students won't harm our SAT or rank profile. As much criticism as we get for admitting lower-standard applicants, our top priority is to ultimately admit students who can handle the coursework and contribute vibrantly to the community. We receive applicants from all states and dozens of countries, but we don't admit someone from every state, even if it may look good for our admitted student profile.

8. The overwhelming majority of our ranked students rank in the top 10% of their classroom- and we parse that out best we can even for those from non-ranking schools, as mentioned above. If you're not in the top 10%, it gets much harder to be admitted. The exceptions we make come from rigorous high schools or have clearly demonstrated outstanding intellectual commitment and potential.

9. We do have a tag for certain applicants. These include powerful alumni connections, influential people, donors, etc- I'll term them VIPs. VIPs are not reviewed by readers but rather the higher ups in the office. In general, if VIPs meet a certain academic standard, they are admitted.

10. Applying early will not increase your chances. The early pool tends to be much stronger than our regular profile, and a number of the applicants are varsities who have been pre-read and selected by our coaches. Our standards are still very much the same, and if you are a non-hooked early applicant, don't expect an increase in admit rate. The reason we offer this is to give students the option of an earlier decision.

11. Athletics- our coaches have a limited number of spots that they can give to pre-read athletes. We give coaches a minimum expectation of what we want- generally near a 4.0 UW, 30+ ACT, 2000+ SAT- so that they can relay this information to prospective athletes. Coaches have some leeway with those expectations if the applicant will be noteworthy for the program, but not much. Once we receive a positive evaluation, we tend to admit the student if they don't have glaring flaws in their application. They don't go to committee- they are simply admitted. A coach may not designate a strong applicant to a slot, but rather another category based on how they think they'd fair for the athletics program; those applicants are reviewed normally.

12. Yield protection- this school is not HYPMS, so we're often asked this. No, we do not engage in yield protection. We want to bring the strongest applicants to our school. We can tell from certain students that they will be admitted to every college they apply to. We will not turn them down because they haven't showed interest, or because their whole family went to Harvard. We have had students who have turned down HYPMS to come to us- not many, but we know what to anticipate based on past trends. We want our admissions process and school to speak for itself.

The reality is that almost 80% of valedictorians and those with 2300/35+ are rejected. We receive so many qualified applications for so few spots that we have to make excruciating decisions at times. Having those credentials will not guarantee you, nor will it be noticeably distinctive for our process.

13. We do recognize differences in ethnicity. For instance, being Hmong or Uzbek will mean you are reviewed under a different light than if you were Chinese or Indian. At the end of the day, all of these groups will be reported in the same census group, but we are tasked with bringing a diversity of students, and that means people from all ethnic backgrounds. A case in point- we had an applicant ranked #4 who was Chinese and another ranked #13 who was Vietnamese; the former had higher test scores and more extracurricular involvements, but the Vietnamese applicant was low-income and the strongest STEM student in their school. We admitted the latter, not the former; we receive so many qualified Chinese applications, but not many Vietnamese ones.

14. On boarding schools and elite high schools- we like to admit at least one student from these schools, but we receive 50+ applications (some, 100+) from these schools and can only take a maximum of 5 (no strict quotas, but this is the unstated understanding given the diversity we aim for). The chances of being admitted from an elite school are often lower than our total acceptance rate. Just keep this in mind.

15. On interviews. We take on-campus interviews (admission officers, senior students) and those from very recent graduates more seriously than alumni interviews. If you are not seen as a good fit for the school based on an interview by a current student, recent graduate, or an admissions officer, your chances will be noticeably hurt; this is not really the case for alumni interviews. Our institution has changed over the last few years; we want to bring in students who will thrive in the community that is present, and the first group is a better judge of those (they are also trained to be impartial; we can't really host training for alumni). Few students have an interview that is so strong that it will noticeably help them for admissions.

16. Ultimately, the process is subjective, but we try to balance it out by having a diverse admissions team. Invariably, we have some applicants who we fall in love with individually or even in the mini-committees, but they are not admitted in the large committee. The reality is that most of our applicants would meet the academic standards. 30% of them at least would contribute meaningfully to the community. But we can only admit so many students. We want students to know that we are being sincere when we say that being rejected is not indicative of much. Our institutional priorities mean we just can't admit every student. Different schools have different priorities, so one should not be too surprised to be admitted by HYPMS and not a school below.

Anonymous wrote:+1 "The entire admissions system is broken". What I dislike most is the waste of time and effort on the college process during their last years of HS. The common app has created total chaos.

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Anonymous wrote:Yawn. White privileged folks prevail as usual w/ alumni connections and donations.

Of course, if you happen to be white and have parents who never graduated from high school and Dad makes less than $15 per hour with a SAHM, no special interest group cares about you and you are totally screwed....

Totally wrong -- you're a highly coveted "first-gen" student who will get a free ride if you have the credentials to get into HYPS. Doesn't mean it'll be easy -- if you fall in this category, you aren't likely to have had the educational opportunities and developed some of the academic skills that UMC kids have, and you may experience a real cultural schock, struggle financially (or cause your family to), and may not have the support you need at home. But college admissions officers do care about you and you are not totally screwed.

Actually the PP was correct. The majority of poor high performing students are white and the vast majority don't go to top schools.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/education/scholarly-poor-often-overlook-better-colleges.html?hp

"Only 34 percent of high-achieving high school seniors in the bottom fourth of income distribution attended any one of the country’s 238 most selective colleges"

And

"Among high-achieving, low-income students, 6 percent were black, 8 percent Latino, 15 percent Asian-American and 69 percent white, the study found"

Doesn't make the PP right -- PP's point was that poor whites were ignored/screwed by elite colleges. They are not -- there's an active campaign by top schools to find/attract these kids. But if you don't apply, you can't be admitted. And if you are admitted but your family needs you to work PT and live at home, you may not be able to go. As I said, it's not easy, but the opportunities are there. And we do kids in this situation a real disservice to say no one cares about your education rather than pointing out these opportunities to them.

Well, if anyone cared about their education they would probably make the effort to tell them. If these kids were majority black or Hispanic there would be a lot more effort made to pair them with the schools where they belong.

Given your use of "them," I'm guessing you're not the parent of a high achieving low income white kid. Just somebody looking for an anonymous forum where s/he can spout racist BS.

NP--state the reality that it is easier for urm's t get into selective schools that Asians and Caucasians isn't racist. It is reality. People can disagree with whether this practice is good or bad, but reality is reality and that isn't racist.

Except that wasn't the claim. The claim was low-income high-achieving white students are screwed and no one cares about them. That's not true. There are outreach programs and the top privates offer enough FA to make cost of attendance minimal. It's racist (as well as factually inaccurate) to turn a discussion of that issue into "URMs get all the breaks in college admissions."

except urm's will get in with lower stats than other races low income or not...

Based on my personal experience, 1st generation college students get a preference regardless of race. I understand the temptation of a two-fer - URM AND low income, but the fact is that white students regardless of income or parents' education tend to score higher on standardized tests. The other fact is that URMs, regardless of income and their parents' education still score lower on standardized tests than white students. See the Shaker Heights study in Chicago where black parents moved to the suburbs and better public schools but it did not accomplish what they wanted - to raise their kids' scores and grades.

Plenty of arguments can be made - the least accurate IMO is that AA's are just not that smart.

The other arguments that I find more plausible are

a) the kids are not treated in the district the same way the white kids are - they are discouraged by teachers and low expectations in general, including being treated like snowflakes for infractions
b) there is a tremendous amount of peer pressure both in Shaker Heights and back in the old 'hood not to become an oreo (black on the outside, white on the inside), and that is directly associated with high academic achievement
c) their parents and peers simply lack the vocabulary and knowledge to make the "a rising tide floats all boats" theory come to fruition
d) the fact that they are high profile minorities in their own schools somehow adversely impacts their academic performance and psychological well being

This is a known phenomena
Conservative have said that it proves that "just because you take the kid out of the ghetto, you cannot take the ghetto out of the kid" - actually not conservative, flat out racist

But in my experience, there is a huge difference between a kid rising to the top in a single minority population school district - all Latinos for example - and when you mix it up.

While it is true that the NAEP testing gap between minorities and white kids remained stable from 2003-2013, the gap between higher and lower income kids widened to the point where it was almost equal.

Make of it what you will, but recent studies at Ivy League institutions show that URMs who come from severely economically disadvantaged backgrounds get equally as good jobs as long as they excel (and much more of an effort is being made there) and graduate (ditto).

I have NEVER interviewed a white kid who is a member of the Questbridge program, FWIW

not offering answers as much as asking questions, but DCUM seems to be a very white UMC population anyway

The scores on the standardized tests match scores in IQ tests. It's really just as simple as that.

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Anonymous wrote:Yawn. White privileged folks prevail as usual w/ alumni connections and donations.

True - it is the kids of these white "First Geners" who are now UMC who are screwed!

Well (I'm the PP you're agreeing with and a quasi-first gen myself), not exactly screwed. My UMC kid has directly benefited from the upward mobility that Harvard educations gave her parents. Harvard was a life-changing experience for me, but it'd be more of the same for DC -- she was born into that transformed life. Doesn't it make more sense to give access to the kids for whom Harvard will make the most difference vs. kids who start out with so many advantages that they're going to do well whether they go to Harvard or not? I get why legacy preferences exist (($$$)), but I wish they didn't.

Interesting position. I went to HYP as a distinct non-legacy (most of my family has traditionally chosen, and been accepted to, a different part of the alphabet). But I am completely UC (if you do not measure it in dollar terms). I met my husband at college, and he was the product of an economically severely impoverished environment that ABC extricated him from. He is also not white. The schools in this area are good enough that we had not considered packing off our children. But honestly I do kind of hope that what the college created (the progeny of an ultimate WASP and a very poor minority student) will help our kids get the same education we got (we cannot afford, and have never entertained, the possibility of any of our kids attending private school here because we think the public environment is much more healthy). Our donations are pro forma at this juncture because we believe that ABC and our church deserve much more money.

We have moved back to my home city (DC) where I did not know a single kid who went to public school (except kids who came from Mann to NCS). Now private is the exception. Our kids had no alternative. We never had family money just prestige and my husband has taken the option of working for the armed forces despite his Ivy education (which I firmly support). Honestly I think legacies are more than just about money, but it is possible that some legacies are more likely to hit the financial jackpot and donate to the university than others. This is in contrast to those legacies who already come from not only wealthy but prestigious families (or maybe just wealthy - that is all that seems to matter now) We would donate substantially if we succeeded, but if not perhaps our children or grandchildren would score an economic coup, and we owe our university a great debt for creating our family. The brains and intellectual prowess my kids have come much more from my husband, and I realize that. Furthermore my extended family is much more partial to another Ivy. I hope they give us a shot, but we will see how far legacy preference goes when all you have is the legacy and not the money (but of course they took a chance on my husband who is a minority and given that my children are treated as such I have no qualms about which box to check on the forms)