I feel truly sorry for all the students who didn’t get into the schools they wanted, however, you’re all kidding yourselves if you truly believe you can determine why another student was accepted at a particular school. I wish you would try not to take your disappointment out on other people.
Pianists need a big expensive instrument provided for by the institution, and only one person plays the thing. You play the violin, and you join and orchestra, a group, and you provide your own. Marching bad, concert band serve a lot of people at a unversity. Pianists are a dime a dozen and one usually only needs one per venue. So the demand for them is well met by supply. You want that band for all of those games and other such venues, concerts? How many musicians does one need?
A lot of the time Asian applicants have nearly identical applications. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. But here’s the thing: schools have quotas to meet for URMS AND ORMS. Let’s say a school want’s 25 Asians, 10 blacks, 15 Hispanics, 25 whites, and 25 internationals for a total of 100 students. A majority of the applicants are ORMS like Asian and white therefore making it more selective (and this is where similar apps destroy you). If 200 asians apply for 25 spots, you’re gonna need to stand out lol. But african american applicants are a minority. Let’s say that 80 blacks apply for ten spots (the selectivity is PROPORTIONAL. HOWEVER, there is less competition and variation because of a smaller sample size. Now you can see why Asians need to stand out more? It’s not because of black students, it’s because colleges don’t want clones walking around campus. So quit complaining.
Got to give it to the Hispanic on this one. The fact that he wasn’t a teenage gang-banging member of the 18th Street with a shaved head and actually picked up a book to study from instead of tagging all over it says A LOT about his character and will to get up out of the barrio. Dude, a Hispanic with a 35 on the ACT? Are you kidding me!? A 35 on the ACT for a Korean or Asian is like a complete given. There is simply no comparison.
Don’t worry OP, I’m feeling pretty hung up over the use of ‘diversity’ in college admissions too, but there’s isn’t much any of us can do to change that. It’s the same as trying to be ‘geographically representative’ - and I’m an international student btw. At the end of the day, no one’s really entitled a place at any of these schools, so if they want to try and recruit from different backgrounds, they get to do that. I was rejected/WL’d at a lot of places, but don’t think that your race is always a disadvantage - as a Korean female, I think it actually helped me at some of the LACs I applied to.
Believe it or not, schools do not have Asian detectors at work in processing the apps. The problem is that if you are not in one of the special pools, whether you are white or Asian, you have to have some outstanding thing that the college really considers important in addition to the stats. Also recs, essays, ECs have to all be up there and garner the points along with the max points for the test scores, difficulty of courses and grades. Those holistic factors make up half of the major tenets examined in the app, and a lot of top students don’t do so well in those areas. Boring recs from teachers and GCs, nothing special or useful and even downright common ECs, so the college could not care less (so what if you can play the piano so well? So can most of the student body) and the essays are usually average, at best. Get someone in there who can really knock it out of the park with an essay that grabs the attention of the admissions reader, who gets “wow” recs and has some interesting ECs that aren’t interchangeable with a thousand other apps, and maybe they have a chance.
By the way, I am also wondering the same thing as the OP is with the title of this post, not just with the Ivies, but a number of schools, where some of the numbers are looking too skewed IMO.
@AlfredoKim Isn’t that discrimination against Hispanics? You are expecting them to always have low scores, and not ever advance in life, perpetuating a stereotype that is suppose to be abolished with all this “equality”.
@TheAtlantic Well, isn’t it natural instinct for police officers to look at African Americans more, especially relative to other races, have the highest crime rate?
@emenya rock on, buddy! you’re the best.
@ZucchiniSoup
I know. Obviously, I was just kidding and have much love for my Hispanic brethren. Back in elementary school, when my Hispanic buddy Raymond and I stole some skittles from our teacher, the suspicion was cast only on Raymond just because he was Hispanic. Now it’s like someone doesn’t get into a good school and he doesn’t ask himself why he came up short but instead blames the Hispanic kid who, in his eyes, is supposed to be a lot dumber and not as qualified. Haha. That is pretty messed up man!
OP, You don’t know the full story. There were kids from my school with worse scores & grades than mine etc. and I couldn’t fathom how they got into better schools but it made sense when I looked deeper and learned more about them. Unless you were stalking him or are a good friend of his, I’m quite certain you don’t know all the experiences he’s had to be able to right him off. Sure, URM probably helped but as emenya exemplifies, schools like Yale have standards and your outrage is based on a very incomplete picture.
@ZucchiniSoup Yup! I love law enforcement and people around me making assumptions about me because of my race! It is freaking fantastic! And since it’s purely based on statistics and is not racist in the slightest, I should be okay with it! I hope you’re being sarcastic, and I hope you can see MY sarcasm, but in any case you’re drifting off topic.“Natural Instinct” =/= Justification for Racism.
OP, you have a right to be upset, but you’re really misplacing your anger, and AA is not the reason you didn’t get in. I personally believe that unless someone is willing to say 'This person got in, and I deserve it more than them" they should not attack individuals when it comes to talking about admissions.
This post needs to be immortalized people please. I was accepted to amazing schools, Val wasn’t. URM with a 35.
But nobody except my Englush teacher basically know I was temporarily homeless. I do t have the luxury to spread that around, so if I say I got in some places there is more to the story.
More URMs get rejected than admitted. I think one of the legacies of racism is that trope of the “articulate” minority especially blacks. If you’re white or Asian being smart isn’t atypical to people, but when you’re black or whatever you stick out like a sore thumb and people are prone to notice you so when you get in it’s unexpected.
@TheAtlantic But everyone makes assumptions of everyone. In fact, one can argue that stereotypes are necessary for humans to provide them context of situations, especially when they are completely foreign or quick decisions need to be made.
@ZucchiniSoup So you want me to be happy about it? You want me to be cool with the fact that “stereotypes” exist, and that the’re natural. I’m going to be cool with the fact that people were told not to hang around me because I’m a “***** black kid”, that I shoudn’t be helping them with their classwork because I’m not smart enough? I’m going to be cool when my dad gets spit at by cars on the highway. I’m going to be cool when teachers ask me if I even know who my father is? I’m going to be cool being the target of racist jokes and derogatory slurs for a straight week that culminated in that same person assaulting me for no reason? I’m then going to believe it was “necessary” that administration doing nothing about it, because I “probably had something to do with it”. I’m going to be fine with the racial biases prevalent in the justice system because it’s a necessary evil? In the event of a crime, I’m going to be okay that I will serve 20% more time for the same crime a white person commits. I’m going to be ok with the slanted depiction on my race in the media that plays off of stereotypes. People threatened to move away from my county when school redistrictings caused the majority black and majority white school to merge. They said it was a “punishment” that the had to go to school with kids like me, despite the fact that I was running science olympiad, the academic team, and had top grades. Sorry, but no. You don’t get it, and it’s no my responsibility to make sure you get it. People treat me based on my stereotype, and you thinking I should be cool with that as a necessary evil in any facet (including law) is ridiculous, because this isn’t about black people, this is about ME.
In fact (moving back on topic), this inability for people to understand what “being black” is means that the rush to being upset when issues such as affirmative action are discussed, but not issues of institutonalized racism against the minority. College admissions has such a little impact on one’s life that at the end of the day, contextualizing your experiences is what matters.
@TheAtlantic I don’t know how much is exaggerated and how much is true. But a common problem is for blacks to believe that they only believe racism occurs to them. I went to a majority black middle school, and on the 3rd day of PE an African American girl attempted to punch me in the face because I’m “white” and a “cracker” out to murder her because she is black. Such Nazi crap is the exact opposite of what I stand for, especially as a Russian whose family sacrificed their lives to see Nazism destroyed. I faced much more hostility for being white, often the only white male in my classes. However, just as my mother, an immigrant. told me, I kept my chin up and continued to focus on my academics. Anger is a waste of energy that only makes one appear as a fool. Ignore the taunts, and continue to study so you can achieve the American dream.
The ability to rise ourselves up through the ranks through our persistence is what makes this country so great.
It’s all true but you can believe what you want…
Lol how are you going to say that blacks should be ok with racial stereotyping as a necessary evil then say that blacks act like they are the only ones experiencing racism? If you honestly think that what you said has any relation to what I just posted, then I’m going to be shocked. And don’t tell me to “rise above” as if you have some higher position that gives you the ability to bestow advice onto me.
I don’t want to further derail this thread, so you can PM me if you want.
No, OP. You are pushing it too far with your shortsighted analysis of ivy league admissions. I mean, minorities account for less than 25% of the student body at these schools! You are competing for the other 75% of the spots.
For every one student admitted, the schools you listed typically have to reject about 10 other students, maybe more. You got rejected. Get over it. I have not one iota of sympathy for you.
“The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have as much as them.” - Louis C.K.
One of my ASIAN classmates got into an Ivy League recently, but she didn’t have a 4.0 or a 2400. Hmm. Maybe she lied about her ethnicity so she could have guaranteed admission? 
edit: I feel like this is the 900th thread I’ve seen about someone whining that a URM took their spot.
@iwannabe_Brown From everything I’ve seen on these forums, a 34 is no different from a 35, but I’d think a 9 AP, .23 and 50 class rank difference is big.