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<p>Again, that can only be true. The admission rate at Cal must so much higher for Asians than it is for Whites. By the way, how does one calculate the acceptance rate? Is it still number of admitted students over number of applications. </p>
<p>Does anyone know how much higher the admission rate? According to all the statements made in this thread by well-informed people it must be higher by a substantial margin.</p>
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Not that much, I don’t think.</p>
<p>But even then high scores weren’t guarantees. Elitor Spitzer scored 1590/1600 and was rejected by Harvard. I scored significantly over those averages and got rejected too. Maybe it was AA. :)</p>
<p>Or discrimination of some kind… @@@ </p>
<p>When did the race boxes get put on the Common App? On any apps?</p>
<p>On a side-note- is there a well-understood way to signal SARCASM? How do you folks do it? I am seeing some that is getting missed by others LOL</p>
<p>Even though this a Parents Forum, I am liking the direct questions we are getting from the students here!!!</p>
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<p>I thought we disposed of this question pages ago. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I think the conclusion was that Asian and White admission rates were about equal, but the yield for Whites was much lower, which is why there are so many more Asians than Whites at UCB.</p>
<p>Bovertine - </p>
<p>“Maybe it was AA.” If I may suggest - It must have been love! They knew you were not a FIT and would be unhappy at Harvard. :p</p>
<p>@3444:</p>
<p>thank you, Bay. I’ve said all along, this thread needs an index page. :p</p>
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<p>Yes, I know. My answer was to take at stab at the lunacy of some in using numbers. And the fact that correct numbers have been provided does not stop people from posting pure non-sense as this post: </p>
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<p>Whites are admitted at a 25.5 rate a Cal and 24.9 at UCLA. Asians are at 26.8 and 26.5 at the corresponding schools. </p>
<p>This is the same narrow band that is probably reversed at the private highly selective schools. Yet, people won’t stop yapping about Asian academic superiority and discrimination, or even advance delusional claims of an entitlement of about 50 percent at highly selective schools.</p>
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<p>Performermom, I kind of felt this way too when I was starting my application process. There were the kids with the helicopter parents that had been grooming them for years. They had already written 10 essays the summer before senior year with their private counselors and all applied to 20+ colleges. Most of these kids were very bright and had high class ranks/gpa’s. Not one of them got into an elite college (not even UCB). I truly believe they didn’t get any higher than they would have without all that overinvolved parenting. I think there was something about them that set off a red flag to adcoms.</p>
<p>On the flip side my cousin (white male) who only wanted to go to UCB all his life, got into MIT. An adult at his high school suggested he apply at the beginning of his senior year because of his strong interest in math/science. He had no help from his parents in filling out his application or “packaging” himself. He did, in fact, send in an application with grammatical errors (we were sure that was the end of him when we saw it lol). </p>
<p>He is a really smart kid that did what he wanted and was never concerned about how what he did would look to adcoms. He just happened to be interested in so many things and did them all really well (sports, music, leadership). He never competed in a science bowl, fed the hungry in Africa, or did any of the other crazy things parents on this forum talk about; he just did the regular stuff (but, like I said he was very good at all of them). I think the adcoms could tell that he was genuine and participated in the things he did because he was passionate about them. He did have a lot of 4’s and 5’s on AP exams but had SAT scores <2200 and a 32 on his ACT (too busy to prep for those).</p>
<p>So I have to think that there is hope for the regular smart kid that truly follows his/her passions and doesn’t make an elite college their life goal. I think those that obsess about it are wasting a lot of time that could be spent doing something interesting.</p>
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<p>But “critical mass” is Constitutional! So don’t call cmarmon’s proposal a “quota.” Call it a “target” for “critical mass”!</p>
<p>They didn’t need a race box back in the 1970s because back then they (sometimes at least) asked for you to put a picture of yourself on the application. I think Massachusetts specifically forbade it though.</p>
<p>Regarding xiggi (#3447) and Bay’s recent posts:</p>
<p>"According to Thomas Espenshade, the author and a sociology professor at Princeton, elite private schools are far more likely to reject Asian American applicants than students of other races. The professor discovered that white students were three times more likely to get admitted to an elite school than an Asian applicant.</p>
<p>Espenshade drew this conclusion after examining the admission records of seven highly elite (unnamed) schools from 1997. While the admission figures are admittedly old, higher-ed observers suggest that these admission patterns are still in place.</p>
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<p>I know you have no way of knowing this, but the Epenshade study has been analyzed, dissected, and disputed to death on this website. I bet there are 1000+ posts devoted to it, with incredible amounts of actual statistical analysis and interpretation of the findings.</p>
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<p>Haha. Let’s go back to the first pages of this thread, and start all over again!</p>
<p>The references to Espenshade in this thread shed absolutely no thoughtful light except to leave the facts as they are (on objective stats of attending students, Asians score higher).
On another note, many Asians come from education systems where subjectivity is non-existent. You take a grueling exam, get ranked anonymously by score and the top X% get taken. Such a system produces “oboe players,” debaters, singers, drummers ad infinitum. You don’t need subjective criteria to produce a diverse and interesting class. It will happen because skills are randomly distributed. This subjective stuff is bemusing and of debatable social value and has counterproductive consequences (how would one view a URM HYPS attendee etc etc). I think there is definite discrimination against Asians for three reasons: (1) plain ol’ tribalism, most admissions officers are not Asian (2) no admission officer wants to bring in 40% of his region as Asian for diversity reasons (3) most Asians don’t self-reflect in their essays because their culture is not really about the self. On (3) it would help the Asian cause if they truly self-reflected on their goals starting in grade 9 and thought about which colleges are good fits for them. A complaint often heard is that they simply apply to HYPS+next seven on US news list and don’t reflect enough.</p>
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I think everyone agrees with this.</p>
<p>But it is amazing you’ve read every post on this thread. </p>
<p>Now you can scour the rest of the site for the other 10,000 posts about Epenshade.</p>
<p>^Don’t worry, I’ve read the book too. I also deal with tribalism every day as an educator. I know it exists. If my social circle consists mainly of Caucasians, then the bar for rewarding outsiders will go up. It is obvious. Mostly, it is about that. If you talk to Asian professors in certain research fields they will tell you the same thing about publishing papers and getting ahead in academia.</p>
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<p>Why would it be safe to assume that?</p>
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<p>All the concerns about racial segregation in the pre-Civil Rights era are then hogwash, as Africna Americans could simply have gone to places that accepted African-Americans.</p>
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<p>Private institutions do not have to be race blind. A better question is where is AA in Ivy League athletics?</p>
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<p>Pretty much everywhere else in the real world is looking for skills as well.</p>