<p>“The Asian students also tended to participate in Mu Alpha Theta, National Honor Society, Model U.N., swimming or tennis team and possibly also play a classical musical instrument, particularly piano or violin.”</p>
<p>It sounds like a good list to me. In my personal experience (i.e., based on my children’s membership in these activities) Mu Alpha Theta members tutor other students who might do poorly on the ACT or SAT or fail their classes; NHS organizes food drives, helps at after-school programs, does health education for young women, mostly poor ones; Model U.N. I’m less personally familiar with, but it sounds like something we all could do with more of; swimming and tennis are activities one can pursue for a lifetime, sounds good to me; violin and piano, both beautiful instruments requiring huge time committment and intelligence and perseverance. What on earth is wrong with this set of activities? Oh, and heaven forbid, they want to be doctors and engineers; most of us have considerable use for doctors, computers, bridges and skyscrapers that don’t fall down when the earth shakes. </p>
<p>I won’t dispute that many cultures put considerable pressure on their children to be and behave just like their parents, and I don’t defend that. However, most universities admit prospective students with the expectation that many will change their minds about their career goals. Do they have different expectations for the “Asians”? Hopefully, admissions committees and alum. interviewers are not adding to the students’ problems with their families by blaming them for their parents’ aspirations.</p>
<p>I am not going to wade into the thick of this, but let me tell you about the one Princeton applicant I knew this past year:</p>
<p>2160 SAT, high grades (top ten percent,I’m sure), the best singer our town has ever had–starred in every production in the HS for four years and in many other productions in the area, extraordinarily good trombone player (Regional Jazz BAnd) and plays professionally, extremely committed to long standing community service through our church and through the school. Was recruited by Princeton for football, though ultimately turned down.</p>
<p>Oh by the way, he is also Hispanic. If the bar was that high for him, they are not letting in “unqualified” URMs.</p>
<p>"I’ve seen many posters on many threads claim that the Costa Rica charity mission is so overdone that it’s a turn-off to admissions officers. Is that true? "</p>
<p>It probably depends on the college and the student.</p>
<p>A student who comes from a rural area where most people don’t venture more than an hour from home may stand out by having the guts to do a service trip abroad. A student also may stand out if s/he raised the money to go abroad, and if the experience clearly fits into the students’ passion such as if the student has gone of of their way to pursue opportunities related to the country’s culture or language. This particularly would be impressive if the culture/country is not that of the student’s parents or ancestors.</p>
<p>A student who comes from a sophisticated area and comes from a well traveled, highly educated family probably would be far more impressive if he or she started an effective service project in a needy local area. Creating even a relatively small local service project takes a lot of work , creativityand leadership skills and typically is harder to do than to get involved in a service program abroad that is organized by someone else.</p>
<p>"However, most universities admit prospective students with the expectation that many will change their minds about their career goals. "</p>
<p>That’s true. At the same time, however, LACs and places like Harvard aren’t going to admit a class that is 90% prospective biochem majors. The overwhelming majority of students whom I interview for Harvard plan to be doctors and major in biochem. This is true of all races.</p>
<p>Consequently, the students who plan to major in the arts, humanities, and even the social sciences are at an advantage.</p>
<p>Even though Harvard knows that many students will change their majors when they attend college, it’s not likely that a student who planned to major in biochem is going to become a linguistics or classics major. Yet, to continue to offer a variety of majors, Harvard has to make sure that there are students who will be majors in fields like the humanities.</p>
<p>"But unfortunately it only helps recent immigrant from africa whose parents tends to be well educated too or parents who are very well off. It does not really help a kid who reallly need most help say a inner city student from LA or Chiacgo or NY City. AA also helps relatively well off AA students whose generation have been in USA. "</p>
<p>Do you have any support for these statements?</p>
<p>well I have proof through - Prep schools Records, people who work with me and their kids and and I think northstar mom have a thread about it in past.</p>
<p>I did not see many “prep for prep” funded inner city kids at prep school going to elite colleges.</p>
<p>This is so not true, at least in the area I am living. In my area, there is a maganet program (advanced GT program ) running from elementary school to high school; starting from middle school, maganet propram is divided into two program, one for humanities, one for computer and science. At least for this year, only less or about 1/3 of the computer science middle school asian kids choose to go to high school science program, I know is becasue my kid is in that program. many others choose to go to humanities program, and some choose to go back to their local school.</p>
<p>As far as matching band, football, and basketball, trust me, a lot of asian kids tried when they were young, and they quickly realize either that they don’t like it, or due to their physical size, they can’t compet well with other larger size ethinic in football or basket ball, so why not concentrate on developing things that you like and have a better chance to do well…no one has time and energy to do everything. But that doesn’t mean asian don’t do those things at their spare time, asian men and boys play a lot of basket ball at home or their get-together, just not good enough to make them to the team to be noticed.</p>
<p>Yes, midmo, it <em>is</em> a good list, but if adcoms are seeing all these ECs, then they must differentiate further. Did that student win a national contest playing the violin? Did he/she work as a congressional page? Is he/she nationally ranked at the sport? Just doing these activities is not enough. The “old” list of ECs (as in, the kinds of activities that were seen as fabulous in my generation) look bland next to what today’s applicants are doing. The competition is so fierce as to be almost unbelievable. </p>
<p>I do alumni interviews for another Ivy League college, and I’ve met kids who are professional musicians, who spearhead causes that end up being taken nationally, who have their names (in high school!) listed on scientific papers, who do environmental field work, who have published creative writing, who . . . well, you get the point. They have already accomplished at age 17 what many people would be happy to accomplish by age 50. Some fantastic applicants get accepted, and some fantastic applicants don’t. I can rarely tell why one student is accepted and another not. And yes, I’ve seen Asians and Caucasions and Hispanics and African-Americans rejected. In fact, most applicants ARE rejected.</p>
<p>Obviously, Mr. Li had excellent grades and scores, or he wouldn’t have been accepted by Yale and the others. But was he discriminated against by Princeton? I don’t think we can ever know. Maybe he was waitlisted because it came down to him, or someone who had similar ECs and scores but who held a US patent. Or maybe they needed someone who had a passion for foreign languages or art. Who knows?</p>
<p>Stockmarket,
I did post a thread about, I think, a NY Times story about how a disproportionately high number of blacks at top colleges are African and Caribbean immigrants or have parents who were.</p>
<p>Now that the colleges have noticed this, some colleges like Harvard are trying to reach out to African Americans who came from backgrounds that were affected by the U.S.'s historic discrimination against black people.</p>
<p>I noticed that last year when my son got invitations to fly-in programs for URMs, some of the applications asked where his parents were born or asked other questions to determine whether he was Afro-Caribbean, a black student from Africa or with African parents or whether he was U.S. born with U.S.-born parents.</p>
<p>Of the three black students from my area who went to Ivies in the last 12 years, two have Nigerian parents and one has a mother who is bi-racial – black and Asian.</p>
<p>Among the people at Harvard who noticed the disproportionately high numbers of black students who came from immigrant families (and also who had white parents) were Harvard law professor Lani Guinier, a Harvard grad from the 1970s whose mother was white and Jewish, and who’s father (who was a tenured Harvard professor) was black and from the Caribbean.</p>
<p>From a legal perspective for this case: if an admission officers does not see while reading about the applicant : the race, applicant name, and their home address on the form and are provided with only social security number - would they select the incoming class while still marinating similar race/geographical distribution – I have doubts. </p>
<p>If universities claims yes they would claim similar results, then I would say that these questions should be abolished. It would lead to removal of any bias as no one can claim any more discrimination. If not so, then we got a problem.</p>
<p>However, it does not solve the problem which is root cause of the problem. I still think US government needs to put resources in inner city school as it will benefit the masses and it is a better policy than building prisions.</p>
<p>Well then it that case NY Times and Harvard people made it up. I am just citing the way I see it.</p>
<p>I feel that as a US citizen we must use policies which uplift more people and that is why I am worried that inner city lacks resources such as good math, science tecahers, too much influence of tecahers union, lack of program which excite kids etc. … These kids and their parents needs to be told why through education their life can be changed. And how these new educated inner city kid would be used as programmers, engineers and dcotors etc. and not have their mind which are equally gifted being watsed. They in turn will excite other inner city youth to strive hard and excel through education.</p>
<p>"Yes, midmo, it <em>is</em> a good list, but if adcoms are seeing all these ECs, then they must differentiate further. Did that student win a national contest playing the violin? Did he/she work as a congressional page? Is he/she nationally ranked at the sport? Just doing these activities is not enough. The “old” list of ECs (as in, the kinds of activities that were seen as fabulous in my generation) look bland next to what today’s applicants are doing. "</p>
<p>Very true. For instance, my area is a powerhouse of Mu Alpha Theta (MAO). Probably at least half of the people who apply to Harvard from my area have won state awards in MAO. Probably a quarter have gotten some kind of MAO national award. As a result, being a MAO champion isn’t going to make a student stand out in my area.</p>
<p>With violin, the students all over the country who make All State orchestra do not stand out in Harvard admissions for that achievement because the top musicians who apply are already being recognized as professional musicians. Yoyo Ma is an example. He already was a well known cellist when he applied. His older sister (who also attended Harvard and is now a physician) was a violinist who was playing concerts at Carnegie Hall with her brother when she was in high school. </p>
<p>With things like NHS, it’s no big deal to belong to it or to even be the school’s president. To stand out in an Ivy pool, one would probably have to be something like the national president or vp of NHS.</p>
<p>Similarly, getting to Boys State or Girls State isn’t going to make one stand out in the pool. Being the Boy’s State or Girl’s State governor might (though keep in mind that there are 100 governors each year, and many will apply to Ivies).</p>
<p>“2160 SAT, high grades (top ten percent,I’m sure), the best singer our town has ever had–starred in every production in the HS for four years and in many other productions in the area, extraordinarily good trombone player (Regional Jazz BAnd) and plays professionally, extremely committed to long standing community service through our church and through the school. Was recruited by Princeton for football, though ultimately turned down.”</p>
<p>I don’t see how this student is exceptional in the Princeton applicant pool.</p>
<p>No, he wasn’t. That’s my point. Despite being a professional level musician and a standout football player, as well as very bright and accomplished academically of course. He was definitely qualified, as were many other applicants that were also turned down. But being Hispanic didn’t change the outcome.</p>
<p>Li’s complaint will serve him well. I don’t think grad schools would consider him an arrogant jerk. If anything, they would see him as someone who risked his academic career to fight for what he believed in. None of you can’t deny that his concern is legitimate. At worst, grad schools will consider him immature (if details of this story later reveal that his claim is unfounded), but they will also know that he was only 17 when he filed this complaint. They are likely to forgive him, because I’m sure that Mr. Li will learn at least something from this experience.</p>
<p>“No, he wasn’t. That’s my point. Despite being a professional level musician and a standout football player, as well as very bright and accomplished academically of course. He was definitely qualified, as were many other applicants that were also turned down. But being Hispanic didn’t change the outcome.”</p>
<p>But the bar you speak of is not high at all. Only if he accomplished something at the national level, was in the top 1% of the class, and scored a 2400 and was still rejected despite being Hispanic would I consider the bar high.</p>