@ucbalumnus Perhaps, but it relies on a lot of stereotypes and assumptions which may not be remotely true. It must be very challenging to be an AO.
Maybe there are a few situations where a first-generation college, low-income student’s academic achievement is not significantly more impressive than the equivalent academic achievement of an affluent classmate with highly educated parents. But I’ve never seen them. The relevant “stereotypes and assumptions,” in my experience, are right on.
I often contrasted my son with a high school friend of his. They were both very high performers at an academic magnet school. They had consecutive class ranks (5 and 6), with a weighted GPA that was .01 different and the most AP-level classes possible at their school. My son had somewhat better test scores, but both were over 1500 (old SAT). My son’s EC’s were more extensive and involved real leadership, although the friend was a (not very competitive) varsity sports team member. The friend spent a great deal of non-school time working in an off-the-books family business. Although he was (is) an American citizen, his parents and older siblings were undocumented.
If all you did was look at their stats without context, they were two peas in a pod, easy substitutes for one another. But they weren’t really remotely similar.
The difference between them? My son was one of literally dozens of academically successful, affluent Jewish kids in the region, many of them legacies at one or another (or several) highly selective colleges. They all had equivalent grades and test scores, and they all had meaningful ECs. There were at least two others in the top 10 at their school alone, and two or three more among the top students at every school in the area that might send students other than recruited athletes to highly selective colleges. His friend was clearly the #1 Hispanic academic performer in the city where we live, and among the top few – quite possibly the very best – in the whole region. There was no other Hispanic student in the top 10% of his class at his school (he was top 1%), and only one other in the class behind him.
More importantly, my son – who was and is a wonderful person, intellectual and ambitious – at the time had done absolutely nothing beyond responding to his family’s expectations of him. He was following in the footsteps of both parents and an older sister, not to mention grandparents and uncles and aunts, and he got daily prompting, encouragement, and sometimes correction along the way. My son’s next truly independent achievement would be his first. The friend, by contrast, had been operating beyond the expectations or experience of anyone in his family and anyone he knew in his community since 6th or 7th grade. He had lots of love and support (and guilt about what it would cost his family if he stopped working for them), but no one had any idea what he was doing in class or in his research projects. The friend’s next truly independent achievement would be whatever he did tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.
@JHS What is your opinion about poor chinese or korean kids who are over achivers. One or two parent may have gone to college in Asia but due to language barriers and family obligations did not attend college in USA and could not get advance in their careers. Family makes money to live frugally but works hard to uplift their kids.
Similarly poor rural kids who may or may not have family support. Kids are own their own but working very hard in school.
To be honest my all three kids got full need based aid from prep schools and two kids fot full need based aid from college also. I am just curious.
Colleges (HYPSM + UCs) and scholarship programs (Gates Millennium) can be impressed:
@JHS Your example is excellent and I don’t disagree with anything you said. It is precisely why the holistic review is so important, and why stats never tell the whole story. And I would agree, that for some groups,stereotypes about the barriers faced to obtain those stats are going to be accurate across the board. There are, sometimes, issues, like crime, domestic violence, health and disability which impact students and families in ways that are not obvious to an outsider for other groups as well. (And it goes beyond this thread, but there are often tremendous barriers after admission too. So getting in and staying in is even more impressive)
@nynycasino1234 I have tons of admiration for poor, high-achieving Chinese or Korean kids. The big difference between them and the kid I described, though, is that they are lucky enough to grow up in families and in communities where educational achievement is valued, expected, and modeled by others. A studious Han Chinese kid growing up in a Chinese community isn’t ever going to feel like he’s all alone and no one understands his desire to learn. And a parent who went to college in another country is a parent who has more academic knowledge and more academic orientation than one who at 16 dropped out of a school where no one ever learned to read above a 6th grade level anyway, and math didn’t get all the way to algebra.
That’s why, most of the time, we don’t see singleton high-achieving Chinese or Korean kids. They tend to come in packs, because they are an expression of their community. And the mere fact that they are good at school work doesn’t tell me anything about their character, because – just like my own kids – in most cases they are responding to myriad family and community cues, not forging their own paths. That’s not to say that smart, achieving Chinese or Korean kids don’t have strong, independent characters. Lots do, some may not. It’s just that the mere fact of their academic achievement doesn’t tell us much about their characters; one has to look elsewhere for that sort of information. By contrast, with African-American or Hispanic kids from low-income communities, or reservation Native Americans, more often than not they come from families who are supportive but who lack any history of academic achievement, and they come from communities that actively discourage academic achievement. As a result, high achievement is a lot more rare, and more impressive when it shows up.
@JHS While I totally agree with you, I feel the urge to mention that one of my son’s friends was also an academically successful middle-class Jewish kid with highly educated parents. The only difference was that his parents came from Argentina and thus he could presumably claim to be Hispanic and probably have an advantage in admissions. As it was, we never found out because the parents moved back to Argentina where the kid goes to the best university in the country absolutely free while getting a second degree from a smaller private school part-time for a ridiculously small amount of money.
@JHS love your response.
But I would add that we also know few poor white first generation kid whose family are total dysfunctional and kids have no support at home.Some time these kids were homeless or moved from one foster care home to another. Despite this tremendous odds they have attended elite colleges. These kids also show tremendous character as outlined by you. My salute to these kids of whatever race they come from.
Yes, absolutely. I admire character, not race.
I believe, by the way, that poor, white high achieving kids such as you described get lots of attention and love from college admissions personnel.
And, at the same time, I don’t think they pay as much attention to the mere fact of race and ethnicity as people often think. Sure, checking the Hispanic box is not a negative, but I don’t know how much of a boost it really gives. Admissions people can tell the difference between kids who have overcome legitimate cultural barriers and kids who have Hispanic last names. And while the latter may count in some percentage reported somewhere, no one is going to feel like he did a good job if that’s all he accomplished.
As it happens, I am closely related to some millennials who are clearly legitimate “Hispanics” – their father was Chilean, they all have recognizable Spanish names and something of a “Latin” look – but were raised as rich kids in a ritzy town in Westchester County. Their American-born, Jewish mother went to Rice; their father, grandfather, and all their uncles had US undergraduate and some graduate degrees. If any of them ever got a boost in college admissions, it would be awfully hard to tell. Taking this thread back to its origin, the oldest was the first person I ever knew who was not accepted by any college to which he applied. (And, believe me, his application list was not over-ambitious.) He went to one of the CCNY colleges after a gap year. Brother #2 started out at a community college in California, and wound up at a tiny, rural, religious LAC with an 80% admission rate, then essentially re-did his education by getting a vocational masters at a public university. Brother #3, the most academic, started out at a different religious university with an 80% admission rate, and later transferred to a campus of his in-state public. (None of them was religious in the least, by the way.)
My D was shut out of every single digit admit school and she is Hispanic and a legacy at an Ivy. She was waitlisted at the legacy school but that is not an acceptance and probably will not lead to one.
I don’t think being hispanic makes a difference if you have college educated parents and a high SES.
Re: #388 and #389
It does seem common on these forums to overestimate the effect of race and ethnicity in college admissions, probably because it is easy to measure and compare like GPA and test scores, but unlike essays, recommendations, and (to some extent) extracurriculars.
@ucbalumnus I’m sure that’s true…but I can’t tell you how many results threads I’ve read with the student getting into multiple top schools only to read at the end that they are first gen or a URM. CC is a small sampling for sure but it’s what I’ve seen here over and over.
@homerdog AA males with good GPAs and decent ECs do very well in all top college admissions.
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Update. We did the Admitted Students day at Maryland yesterday and my DD left rather liking it. She ran into a kid from her high school that she likes who is also a prospective student and she got to see two recently birthed foals (one born the day before) at the Campus Farm which we took it upon ourselves to visit having overhead a conversation about the foals earlier in the day. We also had lunch with a friend’s daughter who is a sophomore there who gave my DD the skinny on all things UMd (it helps that they share the same major).
I think she can now appreciate a little bit better that for the most part your college experience is what you make of it and that it’s possible to be happy at multiple colleges. While she hasn’t made the official “I’m ready to commit” it certainly looks like she is leaning towards Maryland and doing so not in the “I guess I’ll go here because I have no other choice” mind-set but in a “yea, this is a pretty nice place” mind-set.
She will remain on the waitlist at Lehigh. Our GC did speak to the admissions rep who indicated that there was a 14% increase in number of application (in fact the number of RD applications they got this year was more than the total number of applications last year) and quality of applicants was up. He said given the quality of the applicants on the wait list they intend to use the waitlist to build the class but I think all that means is that of course, like in any year, they will use the waitlist to supplement under-enrollment or fill in gaps. I’m not getting too excited about that statement.
I am feeling much better about how my DD is feeling as I truly anticipated her being completely miserable and depressed for the next few months. I think that will likely not be the case. We also continue to hear from others that for some reason a lot of kids in our HS (which is a high-performing public) didn’t get the results they expected. I’m not sure if that is simply indicative of a national trend or if there was something unique to our HS. But in a way it does help my daughter to know that she is not the only one who faced more rejections and waitlists than expected.
^^ I am so glad to hear she found things to like about UM! I am sure she will do amazing things at either UM, or Lehigh if that pans out.
@adlgel It is great to hear such a positive report. I really think that school visits help cememt a feeling for kids that they can “see” themselves there (or not as the case may be). Having a peer to talk to about the programs is a huge bonus. Not just for the info provided on the day of the tour, but as a potential resource down the road. Your high school isn’t alone. We are hearing the same thing at ours, especially with respect to in state admission results at our state schools.
@adlgel UMD is a great school! My DS committed (engineering) last week after coming back form the admitted students day. We visited Penn State also but didn’t apply because my DS preferred to have a city nearby.
UMD has a good reputation in environmental science and engineering, one reason being the Chesapeake Bay.
Well as of this morning - it’s official. Fear the Turtle. We now have a UMd Class of 2022 commit. Already ordered her some t-shirts. Unlike most of our friends whose kids bought t-shirts at every school they visited, she, like her brother, refused to buy any college apparel until she had committed to a school.
@adlgel Congrats!! Mine is following the T-Shirt rule too. Get a car decal too. And celebrate that deposit.