People that bring up Martin Luther King quotes about how everything should be “race blind” are the same ones that tend to turn a blind eye to the inequalities that still exist against minorities. Just my .02 cents
@TheAtlantic oh my god, I wasn’t ready to see that much truth. Let’s hope they listened.
UCs don’t “aggressively” recruit minorities, unless they’re athletes. Take a moment to check out the statistics for yourself. From my school, White students with 4.0 UC GPAs, 1900 SATs were accepted to Berkeley & LA whereas students of color with 4.5+ GPA, 2200+ SATs were not. Most of those white students were economically privileged as well.
In my mind’s eye, this is what Admissions teams have to say: “Foreign, wealthy students of color who’ll pay full price? We’ll take 20! Domestic students of color… we’ll pass.”
And, as far as a supposed bias against Asians goes- I feel that most of it is perceived. It bothers me how so many Asian-Americans (my family included) use Affirmative Action as a reason to push racism against other Americans of color, even though it’s white people who benefit from it…
Anyways, to privileged individuals who believe that their racial privilege, high income, whatever is the reason why they won’t/didn’t get into college, I’d like to suggest that you have bigger issues.
@SAY UC’s are not legally permitted to use Race in admissions, it would seem you are the one who should be checking facts…
@freezycool Props to YOU!!! The foreign admissions are indeed quite ridiculous. It all started back in 2008 when colleges needed the cash and then realized what a cash cow Chinese students could be. I mean no offense to Asians or Chinese in particular, but a recent study found that 90% of Chinese applicants used fake recommendations and 50% submitted fake transcripts. Colleges just overlook the rampant cheating in light of their full pay status.
People who blame affirmative action are indeed suffering from a larger responsibility issue. At many schools the total percentage of all people of color sits below the total percentage of Asian students, let alone White students. This is coming from a “Russian-Asian” My parents are East Russian, and I still have no idea what to call myself lol. I don’t benefit from affirmative action in anything really, unless first generation falls into that but just because it doesn’t benefit me doesn’t make it wrong. There are exactly three black students at my high school and on of my close friends is among them. He is very intelligent yet, when he scheduled his classes this year, in spite of having higher averages than mine, the guidance counselor told him that he “belonged” in the easier classes… He has to prove himself in ways that I, as an “whitish” looking guy, never have to. He’ll probably get into Yale, and I’ll probably get rejected but I think it has more to do with the fact that he’s salutatorian, a state recognized athlete, a medical intern and a merit scholar than the color of his skin.
Not legally permitted but they get around it quite easily. You get points if your dad is in jail, first in your family to go to college, single mom, poor school etc etc. Why do you think they ask these questions? The SAT of the chosen minorities are consistently 200-300 points lower. This can only be occurring by “holistic” AA. The fact you even question this means you have very little understanding of the UC system. This has been extensively discussed elsewhere and is common knowledge in CA. But in truth the biggest scam is the transfer rules which allows admission to 30% of the class with SAT’s 300-600 points lower. For any regular student transferring is next to impossible. UC is run entirely for the benefit of the administrators and tenured profs.
Gosh, people on this site say that many ORM have all these issues too so why the preference for URM.
So, no? Not the case? Is it not that AA mainly benefits wealthy and upper middle class ORM?
Either way, is it not pretty amazing when kids faced with such hardships manage to achieve at the levels other, more fortunate kids have?
They don’t have remotely equal credentials. If they did there would be no need for AA. This has all been very thoroughly discussed many times and is a fact well known to all.
CA doesn’t have AA.
@SAY I find it really difficult to take anything you say with a degree of merit when you come off sounding so very bitter! Even if everything you say is correct it just sounds so “blame gamey” that I find it difficult to really understand what you’re trying to say
Truth is, anymore, even being a so-called URM is not definitive of admission. Take a gander through the rejected results threads of competitive schools. There are numerous highly qualified Hispanic or Black applicants that were denied. It happens to all races. This is what happens when over half of 30,000 applicants are academically qualified for less than 2000 spots. I know an ad-comm personally at Dartmouth and she told me that it comes down to just nit picking and she hates it, but that’s how it has to be to try and whittle down the 15,000 qualified applicants to a class of 1500. If you want to be upset take a look at legacy and “special project” admissions.
Ultimately, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. If a college does not accept me, that means the admissions committee does not think I am a good fit, so I don’t want to go there anyways. This is what they do for a living, to quote some other post, “if they don’t think I can be successful there, they are probably right!” I’m not going to go around comparing myself to other people who got in or attempt to say that I am more deserving over a numbers game. Here’s a life lesson from a 17 year old who knows it very well, Don’t bother comparing yourself to other people, it won’t get you any further than they are and if you want to lead the pack, you do so by comparing your latest success to your previous failure, not to what you think you know about everyone else.
So I’m not worried about URM’s, ORM’S hook’s or whatever else is going on, I’m going to focus on my app, because lord knows, I haven’t the time to be worried about anyone else’s 
Believe what you chose but you are totally wrong and volumes have been written on this. Almost all schools use AA with Caltech one of the only exceptions. UC uses holistic admission and admits URM this way. The fact you don’t know this only shows you have much to learn about admissions. There is no guarantee of admission at the very top schools but being a URM is a major hook. Getting admitted at these schools is all about hooks. I suggest reading the Price of Admission as a start. Please take no offense cowtown but you have no idea what you are talking about as is to be expected from someone who is 17 and in HS.
I am wrong because I don’t criminalize the admission of URM’s? Personally I have no interest in the UC’s to attend given their instate versus out of state policy. If being a URM is a major hook, then why is it that every URM I have seen admitted is every bit as qualified as any ORM? You act as if minorities depend on affirmative action to be admitted and that is plain not true and even if it was, the fact that you are up in arms over the minute percentage of minorities benefitting from affirmative action after decades of racism yet have made no mention of the legacy status, which makes up about 20% of an Ivy class, or special projects who are literally guaranteed admission, or Athletes who are often admitted to schools that they cannot compete at academically and end up washed out after the University has wrung them dry of the cash from college athletics, or overseas ORM’s who buy their way in with Full pay, fake transcripts and recommendations speaks a lot to your issues here. Why so angry about URM’s when they make up such a small percentage of any class? as opposed to legacies and other traditionally “white” leg ups?
I find that everyone complains about affirmative action, god forbid a BLACK student be admitted or be given even the slightest advantage in life, yet those same people have little to say when the system unfairly benefits them or something they identify with.
Elite admissions has ALWAYS favored the wealthy, and particularly the white. That has started to shift a teensy bit in the past decade or so, Yale admits a class of 9% black students and everyone loses their minds. Everyone is trying to make a URM scapegoat here, to blame for their own failure to get admitted and I would like to see where you got your data stating that admitted URM’s have significantly lower scores. While it is common knowledge that as a whole racial group blacks and Hispanics tend to have lower scores, it is also common knowledge that the VAST majority of these students do not end up in even mid-tier institutions.
cowtownbrown You just don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Numerous books have been written on this subject and the data is not remotely controversial. I am not up in arms about anything but merely stating the facts as they exist. My children all were accepted to elite schools in part because I took the time to understand precisely how the admission game works. There are also threads on CC that go back many years that discuss this topic in great and painful detail. I will give you a polite pass because as a 17yo HS student you can’t be expected to have a comprehensive knowledge about elite college admissions. Your tone is another matter but I will leave that to other posters.
…do you see the irony in posting this on a thread that has reached 125 pages? Of course it’s controversial and of course many people disagree on it or this thread wouldn’t exist.
The facts about how schools admit students are not controversial. Admission to elite schools is about finding a hook(major hook= recruited athlete, poverty/single parent, URM, major serious award, major cash donation, child of famous or powerful person, child of powerful alumnus-- minor hook=legacy,small donations, partial URM) Whether it’s fair or proper I leave to you and others.
I do not disagree that the most selective schools, once they have screened for whatever they consider to be good-enough grades/scores/recommendations will go to hooks such as those you describe. And to desired ECs (the classic “we need an oboe player and a soccer goalie this year” scenarios).
As to whether URM is a “major” hook, well maybe at some schools, not at others.
That’s rather different than what you said, though. In fact it’s remarkably similar to what cowtownbrown said.
URM is a major hook at every school but at the top 4-5 they have a lot to choose from. Simply being a URM is not remotely a guarantee of getting into HPYS. The admission rates for URM’s at the top schools are far a far higher than for non-URM’s with the same credentials. But the best thing remains to be the child of a major donor or a recruited athlete. cowtownbrown is making a progressive political statement not discussing the factual issues about elite admissions. Go back and read the claims about how UC doesn’t use race in admission. This is completely false. This topic has been discussed so completely elsewhere I’m not going over it again.
UCs don’t use race in admissions. Your point earlier that “father in prison” or “single parent household” etc are used as a stand-in for race is absurd. I understand you aren’t the only one making that charge, but the UCs deny it and there is certainly plenty of room for disagreement on the issue.
Kids who have a parent in prison or a single parent or are first-gen or whatever and still manage to get great grades and test scores and ECs and teacher recs ARE, IMO, more interesting and accomplished than kids who get the stats without those obstacles.
So asserting that it’s “completely false” is erroneous. UCs assert the opposite.
http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/which-way-la/uc-institutes-comprehensive-admissions-review - skip to 6 minutes in.
You are free to believe what ever you want but that doesn’t make it true. The URM at all top schools consistently have 200-300 point lower on their SAT’s. Your link completely supports what I said at UC since the main thing stressed is the “adversity essay” which allows a completely subjective evaluation. All UC has done is ban the open use of race and then do everything they can to get around it. I strongly suggest you read the Price of Admission which helped me understand just how the process works. At UC as I said the bigger issue is the transfer process where kids get into UCB and UCLA with SAT scores 400-600 points lower than standard freshman admits. For my family the process is over but the purpose of this site is to tell people the truth about admissions not argue about the politics or fairness.
hehehe I’m sensing some last word syndrome here…
Who are you to determine that 200 points on the SAT (if that is indeed the average difference between URMs and not-URMs) should count more in admissions than achieving great grades and scores in spite of adversity?
No, not the main thing. That’s not what was said AT ALL. It is one of many factors used to differentiate students once they have passed the bar for academic standards.
PS: I’ve read The Price of Admission and probably 15 other college admission books, and been on this site reading and posting for more than 5 years. The book is primarily about legacy and wealth, not race. And I’m not sure what makes Daniel Golden the last word in all things college, unless perhaps that is the ONLY college admissions book you’ve read.
There is nothing here to argue about. This whole crazy admission discussion only concerns about three dozen schools. Among those 36 schools there are 5-6 additional tiers. I the very top tiers the majority of every admitted student has some sort of hook. These are the schools that routinely turn down students with perfect or near perfect grades and scores. Knowledgeable parents have figured this out and hence the explosion in travel team sports, private tutors, music lessons, and the myriad of extraordinary EC’s. I make no judgements about what should or should not count more but it helps no one to not explain exactly how things work. All things being equal URM is a major hook though as I said recruited athlete or child of a donor is even better.