It’s not all about stats, and it’s not about racking up titles and awards.
In holistic admissions, they’re trying to determine what person you are and whether they’d rather have you or one of 4-5 other very talented & accomplished applicants in their student body instead.
Now, yes, all this squishy subjective evaluation leads to mistakes and unfairness, etc. (and it’s really hard for a teenager to see the big picture and understand; and I certainly believe that URM get a bump in admissions while ORM have to clear a higher hurdle at many schools), but in this case, I’m not sure they made a mistake. These schools certainly don’t want someone who, when dealt a setback, casts aspersions on the good fortune of others. They may not want someone who either didn’t plan well and apply to the next level of colleges below the Ivies or did get in to a really good state school but would rather rehash a battle already lost instead of looking forward to opportunities at that state school (and any big school would have a ton of opportunities for a smart, self-disciplined, mature, hard-working student). And they definitely want people who have a passion for something other than entering a super-selective college, which I haven’t seen from you yet.
I genuinely feel ashamed to have to identify as an Asian male after reading OP’s post. To me, this is extremely despicable and childish to blame someone else for “stealing” your spot to an elite university because they look different from you. Yes, race and ethnicity have a huge part in the admissions process because what kind of world would this be where the only people who can advance their education are Whites and Asians? The whole point of accepting minorities is to enable others the chance to further themselves, and thereby make the world a place that fosters diverse thinking and intellect. So what if a minority is accepted at the cost of your admission? These institutions make it their mission to try to achieve exactly what I have outlined to you.
Aside from this, many minorities accepted to said institutions generally have stats and ECs that match most Asian and White applicants, who on paper, seem destined to such schools. In fact, many have significantly more merit in terms of numbers and subjective qualities whether its GPA, testing, extracurriculars, life experiences, essays, etc. Of course some my have lower numbers and such, but you don’t know what that person has had to go through be it health issues, family issues, homelessness, low income, etc. and persevere through these trials and tribulations, which can be much tougher to deal with than maintaining good academics at an Ivy League school, giving them that extra personality factor that pushes them through.
Please get off your high horse, lose your ego, lower your expectations, and stop reflecting such a bad image on people like you and me. It’s disgusting.
I think what happened is that all the Ivy Leagues you applied to figured out by your essays that you’re a conceited brat with no care for the plights of others.
I would not want my kids to attend a university where everyone was the same. Diversity is of critical importance to a good university, or at least it should be.
I do wish that universities would pay more attention to socioeconomic diversity rather than purely skincolor/ethnicity. Perhaps they do, and it’s just not transparent to me. But It seems to me that there is not necessarily that much diversity at elite campuses among white applicants, asian applicants and URM applicants when they are largely from advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. I would love to see universities attempt to secure students from all income brackets. This is a philosophical wish, however, as this would require adcoms to take income into account, which is taboo at such schools.
Man you do NOT NEED to go to an ivy. Seriously can we all please stop acting like the Ivys are the only schools worthy of “top” students. There are so many other amazing universities out there and the Ivys are not a benchmark for anything. They’ve created their own hype and we believe them. Please stop acting like they’re the best schools around because they’re not. There’s no such thing as a “best” school, period.
I need a rant too, but since I have been jailed posting here
I have absolutely no idea what I am gonna do, I have 5 waitlists from schools ranging from 30% to 4% acceptance rates and only 1 acceptance.
Waitlists- CMU(priority at 10 departments and schools in total, seriously can’t you just give me acceptance to 1 instead of waitlisting me to 10?), Berkeley(EECS, was seriously surprised expecting a rejection), UCLA, GTech(why Gtech, I loved you sooooo much ), UIUC.
Seriously if I get in nowhere, I would be seriously distraught, I realize waitlists are glorified rejections but, CMU I need you to pull through for me, take me to the most unwanted major, just take me.
Obviously being an ORM has a distinct disadvantage attached to it and in my mind the advantages given to current URM’s should be given to people who did not have significant opportunities but, it is not a perfect world.
OP, you do not have it as bad as me, ORM international talk about the mother of anti-hooks.
It’s kind of an uncomfortable situation. I am waitlisted at Harvard and accepted at Vanderbilt (my only two university options) but I am thinking of accepting the latter. But then, if Harvard accepts me, I might say that I can no longer attend Vanderbilt. It would not be fair though, but I think anyone who would be in this position would do this. What would your advice be? Thank you.
@marknash - congrats on your acceptance to Vandy - great school. If Harvard accepts you from the waitlist, why do you think it would not be “fair” to jump at it and say you can no longer attend Vandy?
I am sure Vanderbilt has a number of people on its own waitlist who are hoping you get into Harvard and open up a spot for them.
This may not be that big of a difference. The difference in class rank may be largely due to the weighting of classes. Duke ran a study of their students, and the correlation of success in college ended after 4 or 5 AP tests. Entirely possible the additional AP classes were discounted by admissions.
In this case, I agree that the Hispanic certainly deserves to get into these colleges since a 35 is definitely no joke. However, why don’t top colleges use race-blind admissions like they do with need-blind? This would seemingly get the truly top people, and according to this (http://tcf.org/work/education/detail/what-can-we-learn-from-states-that-ban-affirmative-action) article it shouldn’t lower diversity either.
The stats. Purely and simply the stats. At any number of the best high schools in my state, just check the honor rolls and find out who the top students are and ID the URMs. I’ve done that, by the way. Then check the National Merit finalists and the special groups that NM does for URMs, for AA and Hispanic scholars. It’s pretty clear what the numbers say. By just taking academic factors such as grades, test scores and course difficulty, which are more than half the count for unhooked applicants, one can see the issues right there. You think the schools like doing these special pools? Absolutely not Admissions abhors them, not only for URMs but for all of the specialty pools. But you can’t get student without the reason they are in those pools in the numbers you want without them.
I actually asked the Yale president at a talk point blank why Yale bothers with a alumni preference pool if, as he was saying, those legacies are so qualified that they are among the best candidates. I mean really, why do you think, they are so ided? So that they are given a DISadvantage. Of course not. He also could not come up with the number of legacy applicants and accepts, which I think he well knew or could get pretty easily. These schools refuse to give the absolute number of how much of the applicant pool go into flagged groups. It’s as much as 2/3 from what I can gather. so the accept rates for those in the general pool with NO hooks are even way lower than what is given out. Last year, not one single kid at three schools with data I examined, got accepted into HPYSMC without being in a special pool. Not a one. And it doesn’t look good for DS’s class this year either from the info he’s given me so far. (Caveat. insufficient info on MIT to come to any conclusions, too few kids applied there in my sampling). I’m looking at about 700 kids at competitve highschools where about half go to selective schools. At one school, that I don’t have an inside view, the numbers that go to HPYSMC are astronomical. It’s not because it’s the school, by the way. It’s because many of those kids have a hook by virtue of birth in addition to be preselected for the smarts.
