I would generally stay away from politics and religion in the admission application. For example if you mention the current conservative position that you want to take meals on wheels from senior citizens and they need to take care of feeding themselves that could seriously hurt you in the application process
I don’t think an admissions officer will SAY that is why they don’t want the student. But the bias could creep in for sure. Recently I helped interview for a position for someone I will be working with closely for the next year or so at my client. The person had some political credentials on their resume that were off-putting to me (the job is in IT management, nothing to do with politics, but they had some experience that showed up on the resume in the past). I told my client she could do the job and I didn’t see anything wrong with her credentials, but I was secretly hoping they would not hire her because I didn’t really want to spend a lot of time with someone with that affiliation. I was relieved when the client futzed around a little and this person got a different position at another company. If the decision had been just up to me, I wouldn’t have hired her. I think that person would be better off leaving that off what was already a very robust resume – and I would say the same about any political affiliation these days, honestly. They could have listed the position with fewer details, and it would have been fine.
That is the issue. Lots more people now than before equate “conservative” with “racist” and hence not worthy of any respect. (And it goes the other way that liberals are more despised as well.)
The result is that partisan political views are more likely to trigger negative stereotyping now than before. Even if someone tries to hold it back, it may still affect actions, much as subliminal racism affects things like people who are not actively racist perceiving black people as more threatening.
OP, I wouldn’t worry about it… I was very conservative in high school/first year or two of college and was involved in a variety of conservative and politically active groups. It didn’t seem to bother the Wellesley admissions staff too much!
It also depends on what you mean by conservative. An economic conservative will get along fine with most people in a very liberal school, while a social conservative will find it more difficult.
Schools like Oberlin actually want more conservatives to add to the political/ideological diversity. However, most Oberlin applicants/students, especially back when I attended tended to be a very self-selecting group for the most part because of the college’s reputation.
That’s not been my observation from what I’ve seen of conservative HS classmates and what I currently observe at Columbia. Conservative students there tend to be just as loud and obnoxious as their liberal counterparts.
Also, many HS classmates who were prominent members/officers of the young GOP/Ayn Rand Objectivist societies ended up graduating from nearly every Ivy except Brown*. None of them had any issues and several now have Ivy/peer elite MBAs or other graduate degrees to match.
Additionally, I knew several fundamentalist evangelicals who were deeply conservative and yet, attended and graduated from Ivy/peer elite colleges. Most were unabashedly open about their political/religious beliefs and regarded any challenges from other students as opportunities to debate/discuss/make a case for their political/religious beliefs.
Heck, I even knew a couple of fundamentalist evangelical classmates at Oberlin as well though admittedly, one will be really isolated in some ways due to the fact most of their co-religionists would go out of their way to avoid applying or even denouncing fellow co-religionists who even expressed any interest in applying/attending Oberlin if they knew about its radical lefty reputation.
- Mainly due to self-selection as Brown had the reputation of being the most radical lefty Ivy which meant students who applied there also overlapped with colleges like Oberlin, Vassar, Smith, etc.
This thread is really starting to drift off topic. The question is whether membership in YAF, and how it’s presented, will impact admissions chances. It’s not about whether conservative students are loud or obnoxious or like to debate their political or religious beliefs.
That doesn’t say that the 2 readers who provide “lead scores” are temp employees, though, does it? But more importantly, Berkeley is a very special case: It’s huge, it’s very selective, it has budget problems, and it’s subject to some CA-specific laws about admissions. I guess UCLA is its only reasonable comparison.
UC is a different sort of example. And that report is 2005.
Strikes me how we consider ourselves reasonable thinkers, in our personal and professional lives, but can’t fathom extending that to adcoms.
It’s not that hard to research. At the source beats media or other hype. And really, if you want a top college, be that sort of inquisitive.
And you missed the main point of that post which is plenty of conservative students who are open about their political beliefs and participation/leadership in conservative HS clubs like YAF get admitted and attend Ivy/peer elite colleges without getting dinged…
^Unless you read their essays, saw their LORs, saw what clubs they listed on their apps, and know what was discussed in their interviews, then you don’t know how they were presented to the ADCOMs.
That would have been difficult for the HS classmates* and current undergrads who were prominent members/leaders of conservative oriented HS clubs to conceal considering the GCs writing the secondary school reports would mention all notable HS club affiliations/memberships and officers are known to the HS administration as part of the condition for being a recognized HS club.
And the GCs at my public magnet and several others I know of would find it quite odd and suspicious if a HS senior asks them to leave off the fact they are a member of a club…especially if they were the leader/officer of the club.
It was a near impossibility at my public magnet with a student population of ~3000 and I’m betting it’s much harder at smaller private high schools.
Not to mention red flags are likely to go up for an applicant whose application omits such info and yet it’s on the GC’s SSR report and/or is found by adcoms finding out about it from publicly available info on the high school’s website and/or the student’s own social media page.
It’s at least going to make them wonder about the resilience and degree of self-confidence of an applicant who felt the need to hide such info when there’s no need and in most cases…would usually enhance the applicant’s overall profile.
The impression of the applicant’s lack of resilience and degree of self-confidence in his/her own beliefs rather than the content of such beliefs WILL sink an applicant’s chances at most elite/respectable colleges.
- It also would have been contrary to their personalities....they were out, proud, and loud about their conservatism/Ayn Rand objectivism......
I personally know many students who were admitted to these and other schools who had conservative clubs and activities prominently featured in their apps. This isn’t the black box it may seem to be.
http://www.oregonlive.com/finance/index.ssf/2012/08/a_cal-berkeley_admission_offic.html says that “Cal hires 30 to 60 outside readers annually to review applications.” Of course, application volume is higher now than it was in 2012, so the need for readers has likely increased since then.
Application volume at some much smaller schools like Harvard is in the tens of thousands; even if automated screening eliminates some no-hope applicants on GPA and test scores, that still likely leaves a huge number of applications to read.
Increased volume of apps doesn’t ensure they increased extra readers.
These folks are called second readers (among other titles) for a reason. Most will be continuing seasonal hires, some will be other U employees, or have admissions experience at other schools, sometimes faculty. Not man off the street. You simply don’t get to do this, at a top school, with no frame of reference.
Yes, a huge number of apps to get through. A burden.
Ucb, you said, “the legions of temporary admissions readers hired to give thousands of applications their preliminary scores…” No, not these extra readers. Yes, they exist, but not for “lead scores” or decision making.
And not work study or high finaid kids. It’s much too serious for that. And there are privacy considerations.
Yes, the wife of a close friend used to adcom at Harvard. She said app season was very busy. But fortunately Harvard has pretty deep pockets.
I wrote a pretty political essay for Boston College and it was pretty moderate but it leaned more right then left. I got in. I think they care about you having your own thoughts/views/passions for something-- whatever it may be.
My own opinion (and I’ll admit, I haven’t read the whole thread) is that yes, showing conservative leanings may have negative repercussions with ad coms. I could be wrong (and I hope I’m wrong) but I don’t think I am-although I’ll concede most people don’t think they are wrong. I would be cautious.
And, of course, it depends on the school to which one applies.
Can anyone be completely confident that an employee will always follow employer policy with respect to such things as political neutrality when employees in many other situations go against employer policies for their own possibly political reasons? Example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/03/19/a-california-waiter-refused-to-serve-4-latina-women-until-he-saw-proof-of-residency/ (and not just waiters, but other types of employees like police officers). Are admissions readers at colleges somehow “better” than others at keeping their own political opinions out of their work?
According to a poll, http://www.browndailyherald.com/2016/10/17/clinton-receives-85-percent-student-support-trumps-1-8/, Trump and Gary Johnson combined received support from a little more than 4% of eligible voters among Brown undergrads. Zinhead already posted the data for Harvard. Maybe, conservatives don’t like to respond to polls or maybe students become more liberal after attending an Ivy, but the data suggests conservatives are a very small minority on Ivy campuses. Perhaps, there’s some selection bias. Still, showing a small number of conservatives got admitted doesn’t answer whether that aspect of their app was helpful, hurtful, or neutral in how their app was scored.