<p>toughyear: No need to rehash the oft- discussed “poor me, AA hurts me”.</p>
<p>You can think it’s BS or whatever. The fact is the top colleges are the so-called “top colleges” because they carefully craft their incoming classes to be a good mixture to the benefit of the entire student body. Want to see a completely meritocratic admissions system? Well guess what. About 80% of American colleges admit students solely by merit. </p>
<p>But what rubs us wrong is that very few of those 80% are in the top 10%. Kinda ironic, no?</p>
<p>Should HYPSM to admit solely by merit? Then why shouldn’t their reputations plummet? Do we think that their formulae to date has failed them?</p>
<p>Sorry. I don’t see it like that. </p>
<p>Is it screening by race? I say it’s a multitude of non-unique applicants. How many Chinese or Indian, violin and/or piano and tennis playing math/sci whizzes with SATs north of 2100 does my local school district puts out? Tons.</p>
<p>But even as you read my stereotype, I know that you can probably think of a half dozen kids who fit that description in your kid’s own school. Do you see why that’s not appealing to schools like HYP? It’s not that they’re Asian per se – it’s that they are so uniform. Sure they are high achieving. And they’ll be rewarded for that with solid collegiate educations and good careers afterward. But that doesn’t automatically qualify them for the most difficult admissions in the country.</p>
<p>My half-Chinese, half-Italian straight A daughter will have a legacy at one of the HYPs. If she makes it, great. If not, still great. I’ve been recruiting for over 20 years and I witness to legions of great kids turned down. If my alma mater turns her down, we’ll be disappointed. But I’ll turn around the next year and be recruiting just as hard and donating just as much.</p>