Yes, I noticed that too, @happy1, but since it’s only been just over 24 hours since he first posted, let’s give him a chance to see if he returns. Definitely some tough love here, but I know we are all trying to help as best we can.
One last thing…hang tight because the coronavirus will impact the waitlist in a positive way. Colleges will likely be worried about their yield and how many people will accept. But I would tell you this before the virus hit…I wouldn’t go into major debt for any school, including Yale, Northwestern, Duke, or Cornell. Your goal should be to graduate with as little debt as possible.
If you are going to splurge, do it on grad school (and I wouldn’t necessarily encourage that either.) Student debt is an albatross that will hang around your neck, and keep you from doing and buying what you want after graduation. That’s where the tremendous advantage of UT in state tuition comes in.
Many colleges consider many of the same criteria, even though they may weight them differently. So their decisions cannot be considered independent of each other. For example, if an applicant’s recommendations did not indicate top categories for each multiple choice question of the counselor / teacher, or were otherwise less than outstandingly good, then that is something that will be a drawback at any super-selective college using recommendations.
Incorrect. The poster was back last night to respond to the lack of ECs he had with a full and better list. This was JUST posted 24 hours or so ago. Seconds apart from my post about his application being EC Lite
@happy1 & @CollegeOdyssey2001 per @BenniesMom1 ^^.
His listings of his ECs were in post #13. They seemed quite good.
@ucbalumnus, I feel that’s a little too reaching and speculative, but thanks for the reply.
Did you ED to a school? If not, that may be part of the reason. Many of the schools on your list take a large percentage of their class in the ED round(s). UT Austin is a great school, and as many others have said upthread, Austin is a great town. Go on to the UT page on CC and read how many students rejected from UT would gladly take your place. Hold your head high and “Hook Em.”
I have not read the whole thread. Students that apply to only reach schools should expect this. Maybe the essays could of been better+ Who knows… But UT is awesome and a reach for many students also.
Do NOT blame race. Your intelligent. Lots and lots of Asians etc at all the schools you mentioned. They got accepted. There is no quota per se.
In life sometimes you have to relish the wins not the losses. Also It is not the school that counts. It’s what YOU do while your there!!
You now have some motivation to prove them all wrong. Go for it!
All of these schools have a 5-10% admissions rate. If you play the odds, you’re going to get rejected from all of them. It has nothing to do with race. Plus, you’d be better off going somewhere more affordable anyway. There’s a big recession happening, and you don’t want to be caught somewhere expensive if a parent gets laid off.
@CollegeOdyssey2001 The OP posted the question on 3/28 and was last on CC 3/28 (I didn’t say the OP never came back…just that he/she hasn’t posted since the date of the first post…in fact the OP logged onto CC twice). http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/profile/khuman
The is the OP’s only post on CC. It is likely that he/she came here to vent and either did not get the response he/she hoped for or made peace with the rejections (as a long time CC member I’ve seen this happen many many times).
Certainly anyone is free to chime in with comments…but IMO it is unlikely that the OP will be back.
@firmament2x The OP’s ECs were fine (but nothing earth shattering) and we can never see LORs and essays which are critical parts of the application.
Anyway, I wish the OP all the best. I don’t think the application list was crazy as long as he/she would be happy attending UT-Austin which should be an auto-admit.
It’s not really speculative. As @hebegebe pointed out, hundreds of kids get acceptances from the majority of HYPSM each year. There are many many more who get rejected from all of them (and all of the Ivies/equivalents) each year.
“The fact that your GC OK’ed that list of reaches, and then told you that you were likely to get into one of them, and did NOT make sure that you matches and safeties which you would be happy to attend, makes me think that your GC may be the reason that you are not being accepted to a college that you would be excited to attend.”
OP’s safety was UT Austin (auto admit) and match was CWRU, maybe Emory, his stats and ECs are above the average there. No way GC could predict yield protection if that’s what happened. The list was fine, saying he or she would get in would be an issue, I agree.
“Do NOT blame race. Your intelligent. Lots and lots of Asians etc at all the schools you mentioned. They got accepted. There is no quota per se.”
It’s not just race, but geography, gender and major, if the OP is a male applying for STEM. There’s definitely a soft quota.
My numbers are guesstimates following how many unhooked spots per gender are available. It’s 250 to 300 total per year. Total spots. For all ethnicities. Geographies, personalities and areas of study. That’s it.
My percentage was of the 300 remaining spots. It’s much lower if you break it into areas of study. They aren’t letting in 100 percent of x academic focus.
Obviously there are hooked Asian applicants too. Athletes. Children of staff. Wealthy donors, international students and legacies.
The OP stated they were unhooked. So I only considered the remaining spots. That is the true opportunity set for applicants. And many look at total admission stats and do the math. You compete in your lane. Any other rationalization is incorrect imho.
Well, it doubles the odds of winning over buying one ticket.
I enjoy your contributions to CC, but I have a both hard data and suggestive anecdotal information that suggest your numbers are off.
Harvard itself says that it admitted about 500 Asian-Americans, roughly half male, or about 250. Yet you say that only 30 of them are unhooked, which would require that 88% be hooked. The math doesn’t work.
Anecdotally, through my son’s activities, I think he personally knows over 30 Asian-American males that were admitted to Harvard this year, and he’s pretty sure most of them are unhooked.
My guess is that the unhooked percentage at top schools is around 50%. But the lane for the unhooked seems indeed getting narrower every year. This year, for example, Harvard raised the percentage of 1st gen from 16% to 19% and low income from 16% to 19% too. Its not just OP’s race, his classmates who were admitted to top Ivies could be in the FG/LI cohorts too.
For most middle income non-hooked families few would opt for CWRU at $70k over UT Austin at $20k anyway. That means that for those students, besides the state flagships, its either tippy tops or nothing, which is the story we see here on CC every year.
It is very hard for kids to assess their friends degree of “hookedness” IMHO. You have a kid wearing the typical grubby fleece jacket and beat up jeans whose maternal grandparents endowed several chairs in neurology (different name, but when a 7 or 8 figure gift comes in, there are people who get paid to know who the offspring are). You’ve got a friend who is a local- he or she is likely not advertising that dad is an archivist at the university library, or that mom is a nutritionist with food services. Faculty kids? yes, everyone knows. But staff kids? They fly under the radar.
I don’t think it matters for the OP-- but just to correct the record when one’s kids claim that their friends are all unhooked… it’s really hard to know. When I went to college, there were several kids on campus named “Kennedy”. It was the '70’s, and they were a big deal. But there were kids with bigger hooks than being the children or nieces of an assassinated president… we just didn’t realize it at the time.
Many years later- aha, the light bulb goes off…
OP never asked what everyone thought of his college list. He asked whether being Asian was a reason he didn’t get any of his reach schools given his stats and EC.
It is not likely that being Asian played a role-- reach schools are reach schools for everyone, that’s why they are reaches.
No outsider (to the admissions offices of the colleges) can say for sure one way or the other.
FWIW, there’s a brand new poster, an African-American woman, who has been accepted to 12 fairly prestigious colleges including at least two of the Big Three (I noticed her because of her multiple posts on various fora including Wesleyan’s) and her stats are instructive. If I had seen nothing but her board scores I would have waitlisted her. But, her ECs! I mean, they were the kind that get an Ivy adcom’s attention.