Universities Record Drop In Black Admissions

poetsheart
Mon, 13 Dec 2004 00:40:38 +0000

BGgoUSC, have you already concluded that you haven’t a shot at admission to Harvard? If you have, I think that’s a darned shame, given the fact that you seem to have so much going for you—I assume that you’ve proven yourself an exceptional student in many ways, despite less than optimal economic and social circumstances. If you can clearly demonstrate this to the Adcom, I’m sure that your application would not be considered lightly. Your SAT scores are perfectly respectable—especially given the fact that you’ve not been able to afford the test prep options many affluent families readily employ. And, despite the fact that test scores are virtually the only thing that matter when the topic of discussion turns to AA, schools like Harvard have ALWAYS held that test scores are NOT everything. It is not all that uncommon for the adcoms to reject a white male with a 1600, yet grant admission to one with a 1450. LOTS of factors go into any single admission decision. Don’t let bitterness toward AA make you think in purely simplistic terms.

By the way, there are MANY minority applicants who are in situations similar to your own. I personally know of one who is a star football player at his public high school in Maryland. He is one of two being raised by a single (schoolteacher) mother. His bedroom in his inner city apartment is so small, he has to get in bed by crawling in from the foot end. He is an Honor Student who, during his junior year, scored a 1430 on his SAT. I assure you that he is well aquainted with the library. I find it depressingly familiar that you are among no small number of people who assume that his ilk is not qualified for admission to some of the best schools in the country, Harvard among them. Funny thing is, long before there was any such thing as AA, the attitude commonly expressed concerning minorities at schools like Harvard is that “they don’t belong”. The objection to AA is now just the latest convenient justification for this long standing attitude.