To the OP, the outcome will sting for a while, it is only natural. Based out here in silicon valley, I see top tier students like yourself all too frequently being denied at the “elite” private colleges, so I can empathize.
There are so many excellent posts in this thread including my favorite by @privatebanker, If I may be permitted yet another reply… You did not mention the major you are applying for. I can speak for CS/Engineering. As a SW engr in the valley for some 30 years, let me assure you that UT Austin grads are in no way disadvantaged compared to grads from the other schools where you applied. I have worked with literally dozens of UT Austin grads (undergrad, masters and PhDs), and they have been uniformly stellar. All the big companies in the valley as well as the larger startups routinely recruit at UT and UT grads are very well respected and sought after. Given what you have accomplished in high school, if you keep that effort up in college, you have a very bright future indeed. And you are going to be going to an amazing school in a fantastic city at a great price !
“It is not likely that being Asian played a role-- reach schools are reach schools for everyone, that’s why they are reaches.”
But the judge in the Harvard case said that it’s tougher for Asians to get in and some groups will get penalized (her words) in race conscious admissions, and she said the adcoms had negative biases towards Asians.
“The disparity in personal ratings” between Asian Americans and other groups “suggests that at least some admissions officers might have subconsciously provided tips in the personal rating, particularly to African American and Hispanic applicants to create an alignment between the profile ratings and the race-conscious overall ratings that they were assigning.”
Then, the kicker:
“Asian-American applicants’ disproportionate strength in academics comes at the expense of other skills and traits that Harvard values,”
“Judge Burroughs’s decision found that Asian Americans are admitted at a lower rate than white students – 5 to 6 percent of Asian American applicants were admitted from 2014 to 2017 compared to 7 to 8 percent of white applicants.”
Now 7.5 to 5.5 may not sound like a lot, but if you assume half of Harvard’s applicants are 50% white, 30% Asian, then it’s a difference of 200 less white kids, 120 more Asians, that’s a lot, especially for those kids!
Was race the reason the OP was rejected - yes, imo, is that ok because the universities wanted a diverse class? Yes, that’s what the judge said, and she was very close to saying Harvard discriminated but didn’t. I’m not sure why the OP being rejected on race is such a surprising or troubling conclusion for some. It’s called race conscious for a reason.
Thelonius, there is no way that anyone can look at a single application and determine why someone was rejected… at least at the most competitive colleges. There is no single reason why someone gets rejected, and to claim that it was racial is really stretching whatever data is available about the role that race plays in admissions.
You can look at a broad cohort of applicants over several years and draw some conclusions. But I think it’s irresponsible to tell a HS kid that race was the reason he was rejected- especially since there are so many other factors that go into admissions.
One cannot determine the order in which an application is read. You may think that your butterfly collection and your essay on Victorian Hobbies is the most exceptional thing about you- in addition to fantastic grades and scores. And you may be right. Or- you could be the 15th essay that your reader has read already about Victoriana and butterflies-- and the other 14 applications had something else- one was from Wyoming, one grew up in a homeless shelter, one spoke 6 languages fluently. So your incredible and special qualities- you’ve just been put at the bottom of the “maybe” pile, because this is a big country with a lot of talented kids and if every single one of them are gunning for the same 12 colleges with tiny admit rates- somethings gotta give. And that means rejection.
Which hurts and stings. But I’ve seen HS kids who are convinced that they’ve got 'the right list" which even a newbie to CC can predict is going to lead to heartache.
OP- you are fantastic and are going to do fantastic things in life.
Re percentages, hooked v not hooked, the greater point is…It’s much harder to get in than you think. You are not vying for a spot out of the total but rather a much narrower lane with a disproportionate applicant pool. So 8 of 100 becomes 2 of 300 or something like that. The numbers don’t really matter. It’s just ridiculously hard, and therefore you’ll have many peers with perfect scores vying for way fewer spots that exist to accommodate. It’s musical chairs and you have to hope the music stops with you in a chair.
Of course your ECs, LORs, interview, essays, all matter in differentiating you. Top grades / scores are table stakes.
Again, I would like to make the same point I made earlier in this thread. Yes, in aggregate Asians face longer odds for admission - and by extension face higher standards - than other races, including whites.
Nevertheless, unhooked Asian applicants enjoy some relative advantages over unhooked white applicants, as a higher percentage of the white admit pool is reserved for legacies, athletes and special interest (donor and/or politically influential) than that of the Asian admit pool.
Of course, these schools all have soft quotas by race and by other characteristics - it would be impossible to believe that they did not.
But, of course, it goes without saying that no individual Asian applicant can know for sure if race was the deciding factor in her rejection.
If I correctly understood the applicant’s statement, he is an extremely highly qualified applicant (top rank, very high SATs, did charity work) who didn’t get into ANY highly competitive college. He is Asian-American. If he had been an underrepresented minority he probably would have gotten in anywhere he applied. The person who replied that her daughter got wait-listed at ONE of the top schools she’d applied to, and was devastated, relates an irrelevant anecdote. This young man’s college rejections list is perfect evidence of an anti-Asian quota, exactly the same as the anti-Semitic Jewish quota of the 1920s to 1950s. The recent lawsuit that found that Harvard was applying a personality score, for which NO Asian student received a high rating, was perfect evidence of it, not that it was needed - it was clear from the significant disparity in grades and SATs between Asian students, White students, and underrepresented minority students. This young man came here hurt, asking for the truth, and he deserved to have it given to him. I told him the truth, that he was discriminated against, and the further truth - that he will still be able to achieve his life goals going to a state school, just as the thousands of highly qualified brilliant Jewish young men from NYC who were all rejected from the Ivy League because they were Jews, were able to create their own “Ivy” at CCNY, and went on to become their generation’s leading scientists, legal minds, physicians, writers, political thinkers, leaders in practically every field and aspect of American society.
Don’t patronize him by telling him that lots of valedictorians with near perfect SATs didn’t get into the top school of their choice, or by telling him that he didn’t do a good enough job of making himself look less Asian by virtue of the extracurriculars he chose. The plain truth is that he is the victim of anti-Asian discrimination, and he can still achieve his life goals, even if he winds up at a lesser flagship state school (which I sure hope he applied to), because he’s going to be an academic superstar there, just as he was in high school.
khuman, I am so sorry for what happened to you. It is not fair. But you will be an absolute superstar at UT Austin. I am sure that you will set the world on fire with your achievements. Best of luck to you in all your future endeavors.
It is mathematically so that if preference is given to a certain category of students, that those not in that category will be disadvantaged. So, yes, giving URMs an admissions boost, does impact those not in that category. Fewer spaces left which means lower admit rate.
This works with those who are not in other categories that receive an admissions boost too. Development, legacy, celebrity, connections, all get a boost in admissions. Those with resumes that do not stand out and end up in the over represented stack do have lower odds.
However, being over represented means that more of such applications do get accepted, by very definition which leads to that over representation.
When you apply to too colleges, your application is not labeled by your ethnic group,…unless you are URM. That does cause an implicit lowering of spaces available. However, that is not the specific reason you are denied anymore than the fact that you are not an athlete or a development candidate is why you did not get accepted. You are in a pool where more candidates like yourself are accepted, however, making you … well, run of the mill for particular schools.
You did not stand out from too many applications so similar to yours is what happened. You need to stand out in order to get accepted to the most select schools is what it amounts to.
Jewish students , white students with the same application package face the same challenges in differentiating their applications when applying to highly selective schools. They, too, are not URMs, so do not have that hook. If they do not have other hooks, their applications are indistinguishable from a large category of highly accomplished, high performing in the academics students; so many in that category that there are insufficient seats at the most selective schools.
I live near a very well known school district where the majority of the students are Asian or Jewish, and well to do. It’s the hallmark of this school. The students there are accepted to top universities at phenomenal rates as compared to most any school. Right up there with the top private schools.
Yet every year there are the barrage of complaints of kids at that school not accepted to the very top ranked (USNWR list usually is the gold standard there) but URMs at in other school districts , in NYC schools with less curriculum difficult, lowers test scores getting into those universities. It’s a bitter pill that many take each year.
It does happen that kids at that school get rejected at every single highly selected school on their list. It Does not happen that those kids don’t get into other very good, still very selective schools. The bitter pills are over comparisons of who did get into those much coveted top schools over their kids, and the words that come up are reverse discrimination.
The system overall clearly favors these students from Scarsdale at every turn. These students get top curriculum, have college counseling staff that are very familiar with competitive school admissions, have parents who can not only pay for college , but pay for activities to make these kids top candidates. Tutoring, private counselors, directed activities to enhance the resume are all the norm. These kids are going to gain acceptance to some great colleges. But they are not all going to go to the HYP et al schools and that’s where the resentment is and the discrimination claims.
@happy1 and @PurpleTitan . . . a little too much post-period editing taking place as far as I’m concerned…
But by our not knowing about LORs, etc., aren’t those here who’ve determined OP’s fate because of a presumed lack of quality LORs make it speculative?
I don’t want to do my part in dragging out this thread any longer, but didn’t OP run his applications packages past his counselor who gave the go-ahead?
And wouldn’t there be others from his school who were advised by this same counselor who was able to help others get into the elites?
@firmament2x Not sure what your objection to my post is.
The schools the OP applied to should be considered reaches for all unhooked applicants -- I stand by that.
There are more well qualified applicants than there are spots for schools that have single digit acceptance rates - I stand by that
Essays, LORs recommendations can help to distinguish some applicants -- I stand by that. We on CC cannot see the entire application so there is no way of knowing the quality of the OP's essay, teacher LORs, any other recommendations etc.. I did not say (or mean to infer) that any part of the OP's application was lacking in quality so please do not put words into my mouth. I'm just saying it is impossible to judge an application by academic stats and ECs alone. FWIW an application can be uniformly excellent and the student still may not get into any hyper-competitive schools.
Please do not post further about this as debates are not allowed on CC. I just want to clarify what I said and what I didn’t say.
@hebegebe Agree that Case should have been considered a match. However Case does appear to practice yield protection and does consider the level of applicant’s demonstrated interest. We did not see the entire application and we don’t know if the applicant demonstrated interest in Case by visiting or anything else so it is impossible to opine one why he/she did not get into that (or any) particular school.
And I put Emory in the “reach for any unhooked applicant” category - the university rejects more than 3 out of 4 applicants.
I think we all wish the OP well. Hopefully he/she will either get into a preferred school off of a waitlist or go to UT – wherever he/she ends up I hope the OP has a wonderful college expereince and goes on to do great things,
Schools with 30-35% acceptance rates like Case are still rejecting way more students than they accept. “Match” does not mean “definitely getting accepted”. That’s a safety in my book.
Emory has a 22% acceptance rate. I consider any school with under a 25% acceptance rate to be reach.
At this point, OP needs to move on and get excited about UT. It’s a fantastic school that many would be thrilled to attend.
I know a number of Asian kids with high stats (one had 36 ACT and was offered a 120000 merit award) that got into Case this year. I think at this point no one can properly speculate about it.
@happy1 . . . just a point of clarification…per your quote:
I’ve never once debated with you on the three points you listed in your post #92, so you must be mistaking me for someone else. Most of my involvement was just general observations, wrt speculation, etc.
@firmament2x I have put you on my ignore list so I am unable to read your posts. Please stop tagging me. I have zero interest in continuing this conversation or your PM.
Hopefully we can agree to wish the OP the best and leave it at that.
@merc81 Lol. Ok on the powerball in which assumes you choose different numbers.
The student here is presenting the same exact number multiple times in essence.
Also Applying to different schools is a completely unique set of individual lotteries.
If you could apply to the same school with twice it would be a statistical improvement. If the process was uniform. It’s not.
In the case of two or 100 independent lotteries. Ie schools. Your odds do not improve at all. They remain unique to each school in each case, of course
theres also the main difference is that lotteries operate without subjectivity, where they select without this interference the probabilities are clearer.
schools don’t have a uniformity of process even within the selection process itself, it’s impossible to really calculate.
The story of the ivy adcom who admitted to a writer that she declined all her candidates one day because she had a stomach flu is an example.