<p>The academic literature has documented an Asian penalty of roughly 75 SAT points (out of 2400) relative to Whites at the undergraduate admissions level.</p>
<p>From an old post of mine, now somewhat edited:
At most schools besides Yale and Stanford, there does exist a pair of numbers which I will call “default to admit.” (DTA.) This means that unless an applicant actually does something WRONG, he will be admitted to the school.</p>
<p>Possible WRONG things include, for example, if he applies after the deadline, or has a typo in his application, or a letter of recommendation is actually negative, or if he says something antisocial in a phone interview, or if he actually has zero extracurricular involvement, or a not-just-average-but-actually-bad essay.</p>
<p>But if nothing remarkable happens during the application process itself, he will by default be admitted thanks to his numbers.</p>
<p>There are three points to be made. First, obviously many candidates whose numbers are below DTA thresholds will be admitted. They will often have excellent essays, extracurriculars, or whatever. Second, (jonri just said this but it’s important) DTA thresholds change every year. Third, it is extremely possible to be above threshold and screw it up – many, many students do every year. DTA is not an entitlement but a retroactive prediction.</p>
<p>(Another discussion board feels that the most common DTA rejections are those who spend less than four years as undergraduates.)
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