<p>Mom2Kids,</p>
<p>She doesn’t need to worry about that stuff, trust me. She was admitted on her qualifications, pure and simple (and probably is more qualified than me). The thing about the “reserving spots” - that’s for students who are just as smart but don’t show it in the numbers, not for students who aren’t as smart but happen to be black. Statistically, black students, because of class/race interactions, tend to have, for example, worse SAT scores (because they can’t afford to take an expensive prep class plus the test three times), or no APs (because it costs a school money to offer AP classes, and a school in a poor area is less likely to pay for them).</p>
<p>So all it means is that they’re willing to look twice at a student with less qualifications if they also show that they’re disadvantaged - they aren’t going to use the same criteria when it’s apples to oranges. A black student who had access to the above and didn’t use them won’t get in over a black student with the same stats but no access.</p>
<p>So if I didn’t say so already, your daughter can rest assured that she got in on merit, since a) everyone gets in on merit, not on race, and b) she’s a better student than half of us.</p>
<p>[ETA: Further, I should say that it’s not that they “bend” the rules for these students, it’s that they are hyperaware of different socioeconomic advantages and are making sure they’re taking them into account when it comes to a racial group that they feel they are not representing sufficiently.(Also, did I really just use socioeconomic and sufficiently? I need to go to bed.)]</p>