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<p>Did you ever consider that Berkeley is admitting these URMs, but they’re choosing to go to Harvard et al? In fact, admissions officers at Berkeley and UCLA have corroborated this: they have stated that they lose a huge portion of their URM admits to private competitors. One year, UCLA had only 1% or so black students, and the ultimate conclusion - besides a switch to more holistic admissions - was that most of them were choosing to attend a private university.</p>
<p>thebioguy has 0 experience with admissions. He rails against affirmative action, and goes around putting down minority students on these forums. Ignore him.</p>
<p>I too used to have the view that URMs were less qualified, that race was too important, that admissions should drop AA, etc. I was quite ardent about it. (I’m Asian if anyone is dying to know.) Then I spent my undergraduate years studying socioeconomic diversity in higher education from a scholarly standpoint. Without going into too much detail for anonymity’s sake, I can say that I was privy to some rather sensitive data from Stanford admissions, and that was what changed my views drastically - what I thought I knew was just plain wrong. Race is really really not an important facet of your application; but your background is *very *important. The two can’t even compare. This was for Stanford but I can’t imagine it would be any different for Harvard and the like.</p>
<p>My views were solidified as I watched the admissions policies shift in response to the poor socioeconomic makeup of elite universities student bodies (and the studies that showed even URMs were relatively well-to-do). They have changed a lot - which very few on CC appreciate - and the shifting socioeconomic makeup of the student bodies has reflected this: insanely higher numbers of low-income and/or first-gen students, not just at Stanford but at its peers as well. (Some have even doubled in Pell Grant recipients.) This has been much more heavily discussed in higher education within the past 4-5 years, including at AAU meetings.</p>
<p>Conclusion: at the elite universities which get tens of thousands of applications, race matters very little. Your background and the opportunities of that background are far more important and provide context for the rest of your application. This idea of ‘merit’ is intensified, because it’s viewed with respect to what you were afforded.</p>