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</p>
<p>based on? What college actually says this? Tony and Warblesrules both bring up valid points as </p>
<ol>
<li>While some schools may wink at your SAT scores, they are not winking much and you better have other areas to make up for it, a good GPA, recs, ECs, work, etc. URM status will not make up for a poor academic record.</li>
</ol>
<p>2.Because the admissions process has become more competitive, everyone has to bring a stronger game to the table. (Got hrough the admissions decisions at some of the “more selective schools” as you will see that there are some posters, who others thought were a shoo-in for various schools that ended up being rejected/waitlisted.</p>
<p>What does this mean overall for URMs; every one has to step up their game as being a URM is still going to be a tip factor at the elites because they are not going to be at a loss of applicants and a hook at other schools, the pool in this population is going to be more competitive, whith more choices given to those that bring the overall “A” game to the table, as the pool is also participating in more rigerous courses offered by their school.</p>
<p>according to the JBHE:</p>
<p>***Black Students Are Beginning to Seize the Early Admission Advantage ***</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.jbhe.com/features/43_early_admission.html[/url]”>http://www.jbhe.com/features/43_early_admission.html</a></p>
<p>just an excerpt… read entire article</p>
<p>At the nation’s highest-ranked colleges and universities, the percentage of college-bound blacks who apply for early decision has always been far below the black percentage of the total applicant pool. The reason that college-bound blacks generally shun the binding commitments of the early admissions process is that their acceptance commitment cuts them off from the process of negotiating a favorable financial aid package from competing universities.
But JBHE statistics show that black students are now beginning to apply for early admission in much larger numbers. </p>
<p>In past years college-bound blacks have been much less likely than whites to seek early admission to the nation’s highest-ranked colleges and universities. African Americans have avoided making the binding commitment to enroll if accepted because the rules of early decision eliminate their chances to “play the field” and consider a wide range of financial offers from competing universities. As a result, blacks have not been able to take advantage of the fact that early decision applicants generally achieve a much higher acceptance rate than applicants who choose to go the regular route. </p>
<p>Black Participation in Particular Advanced Placement Courses: </p>
<p>In 2004 more than 78,000 African-American students took Advanced Placement examinations. Blacks now make up 5 percent of all Advanced Placement test takers nationwide. For both blacks and whites, English literature, American history, English composition, and calculus were the most popular AP courses. Blacks were 6.9 percent of all students who took the AP test in French literature. This was the highest participation percentage for any of the 34 AP subject tests. Blacks were also at least 6 percent of all test takers in the subject areas of English literature, world history, macroeconomics, and French language. </p>
<p>The lowest level of black participation was on the Spanish literature test. Only 56 black students nationwide took the AP test in Spanish literature in 2004. They were only 0.6 percent of all test takers in this subject. Blacks were also less than 2 percent of all AP test takers in the subject areas of electrical and magnetic physics, Spanish language, computer science, and German.</p>