Post Affirmative Action : Asian American Families are more stressed than ever about college.

[Reactionary Libertarian]

Is it just me or has the admissions rat race become really turbocharged just in the past couple years?

I graduated high school and started college in 2015, but I'm not convinced I would get into my university if I'd applied this year. Even schools like BU, NYU and USC, which were seen as clear backups for the Ivies/equivalents in the early/mid 2010s, now have acceptance rates that are in single digits or very close to it. Imagine what the kids being born today will have to go through.

The Ivies will stay single digits but the tier below will become much less competetive due to shrinking birth cohorts. Like the UCs should become much easier to get into.

UC Berkeley and UCLA are the only hyper competitive UCs in the system.

The rest have around a 35 percent acceptance rate.

And the newest one UC Merced has an acceptance rate of 87 percent.


It should also be noted that the reason why UCs are so competitive is because there’s a lot of out of state applicants.

I expect them to get less competitive. I think colleges like NYU, UChicago that shot up in competitiveness in the 2000s will come back down to earth while Harvard, Stanford et al don’t.

[Arson Plus]

Out of curiosity, why did acceptance rates drop exponentially within the past few decades? A relative (who went to a good public school in western Long Island) got into Yale and Dartmouth in 2006 and back then and the acceptance rates were 13% and 17% respectively and now the admission rates are 4.35% and 8% respectively. In 1990, Yale's acceptance rate was 20% and Dartmouth's 26%.

[jojoju1998]

Is it just me or has the admissions rat race become really turbocharged just in the past couple years?

I graduated high school and started college in 2015, but I'm not convinced I would get into my university if I'd applied this year. Even schools like BU, NYU and USC, which were seen as clear backups for the Ivies/equivalents in the early/mid 2010s, now have acceptance rates that are in single digits or very close to it. Imagine what the kids being born today will have to go through.

The Ivies will stay single digits but the tier below will become much less competetive due to shrinking birth cohorts. Like the UCs should become much easier to get into.

UC Berkeley and UCLA are the only hyper competitive UCs in the system.

The rest have around a 35 percent acceptance rate.

And the newest one UC Merced has an acceptance rate of 87 percent.


It should also be noted that the reason why UCs are so competitive is because there’s a lot of out of state applicants.

I expect them to get less competitive. I think colleges like NYU, UChicago that shot up in competitiveness in the 2000s will come back down to earth while Harvard, Stanford et al don’t.

The other part is that some of the CSUs in California have actually gotten MORE competitive than the UCs.

Think CSU Cal Poly.

[Arson Plus]

Out of curiosity, why did acceptance rates drop exponentially within the past few decades? A relative (who went to a good public school in western Long Island) got into Yale and Dartmouth in 2006 and back then and the acceptance rates were 13% and 17% respectively and now the admission rates are 4.35% and 8% respectively. In 1990, Yale's acceptance rate was 20% and Dartmouth's 26%.

The odds of getting into a good school haven't changed that much, but many many more students blanket the top schools now. As students apply to a longer and longer list of schools, each school's admissions rate drops and your odds of getting in to any particular school decline. The logical response for students is to apply to even more schools, which causes a spiral. Attempts to eliminate admissions requirements like the SAT makes this process even worse; money is basically the only cap on admissions now.

Wouldn't the logical thing be to limit the amount of colleges one can apply to (or would that be too unfeasible to implement)? So should the SAT be eliminated, how exactly would schools account for people getting easy As in certain schools (I assume private because people want their kids tuition to count) while in more harder/competitive public schools where getting Bs is more common?

[Reactionary Libertarian]

Out of curiosity, why did acceptance rates drop exponentially within the past few decades? A relative (who went to a good public school in western Long Island) got into Yale and Dartmouth in 2006 and back then and the acceptance rates were 13% and 17% respectively and now the admission rates are 4.35% and 8% respectively. In 1990, Yale's acceptance rate was 20% and Dartmouth's 26%.

The dramatic drop over the past decade or so is due to the Common App.

[Del Tachi]

We have done a great disservice in making education some prestigious status symbol, instead of educating everybody who wants to be educated and meets a very minimum standard.

Most American kids attend non selective public universities.

The

Those haven't been expanded to meet demand. Just look at University of California system and the admittance rates compared to the 60s and 70s.

Expand to keep up with demand?  There total number of four-year institutions of higher learning has almost doubled since 1960.  “Legacy” public institutions like the UCs have been able to become much more selective because newer institutions, mostly more teaching-focused and suburban, exist for below average students.

[RilakkuMAGA]

Asian-Americans should actually just start considering going to undergraduate college abroad, at least if they are trying for a lucrative major that US admissions offices deliberately try to steer Asians away from. From the racial harassment, explicit racism, and overall prohibitive cost, the winning play is to go abroad and then come back to America for less racist and less expensive grad school

[GP270watch]

Asian-Americans should actually just start considering going to undergraduate college abroad, at least if they are trying for a lucrative major that US admissions offices deliberately try to steer Asians away from. From the racial harassment, explicit racism, and overall prohibitive cost, the winning play is to go abroad and then come back to America for less racist and less expensive grad school

 One of my mom's work colleagues sent his daughter to medical school in India(they're Indian) directly out of High School, she ended up becoming a doctor faster and for way less debt than if she had gone to undergrad and med-school in the USA.

[RilakkuMAGA]

Asian-Americans should actually just start considering going to undergraduate college abroad, at least if they are trying for a lucrative major that US admissions offices deliberately try to steer Asians away from. From the racial harassment, explicit racism, and overall prohibitive cost, the winning play is to go abroad and then come back to America for less racist and less expensive grad school

 One of my mom's work colleagues sent his daughter to medical school in India(they're Indian) directly out of High School, she ended up becoming a doctor faster and for way less debt than if she had gone to undergrad and med-school in the USA.

My mom knows an Indian whose son did the same thing, except they went to medical school in China and it was the same, combined UG and medical.

[jojoju1998]

We have done a great disservice in making education some prestigious status symbol, instead of educating everybody who wants to be educated and meets a very minimum standard.

Most American kids attend non selective public universities.

The

Those haven't been expanded to meet demand. Just look at University of California system and the admittance rates compared to the 60s and 70s.

Expand to keep up with demand?  There total number of four-year institutions of higher learning has almost doubled since 1960.  “Legacy” public institutions like the UCs have been able to become much more selective because newer institutions, mostly more teaching-focused and suburban, exist for below average students.

Many CSUs are hyper competitive for engineering fields though.

[Arson Plus]

Asian-Americans should actually just start considering going to undergraduate college abroad, at least if they are trying for a lucrative major that US admissions offices deliberately try to steer Asians away from. From the racial harassment, explicit racism, and overall prohibitive cost, the winning play is to go abroad and then come back to America for less racist and less expensive grad school

This is my home. Why should I go to a country abroad for an education where I have never lived in and have nothing in when I could receive a perfectly good education at a state school?

[RilakkuMAGA]

Asian-Americans should actually just start considering going to undergraduate college abroad, at least if they are trying for a lucrative major that US admissions offices deliberately try to steer Asians away from. From the racial harassment, explicit racism, and overall prohibitive cost, the winning play is to go abroad and then come back to America for less racist and less expensive grad school

This is my home. Why should I go to a country abroad for an education where I have never lived in and have nothing in when I could receive a perfectly good education at a state school?

Well, you might live in a state with crummy state schools and out-of-state state schools are prohibitively expensive.

The other issue with state schools is many of them have separate admissions processes for different majors - and it's clear that many of these schools engage in deliberate racial balancing within majors.

You can't assume that a bright kid simply gets into a good state school lol, they don't take EVERYONE. Yeah, UC whatever might have a high admissions rate, but the engineering department is going to be much harder to get into.

Even if it is your home, the people who run it don't seem to think so.

[jojoju1998]

Asian-Americans should actually just start considering going to undergraduate college abroad, at least if they are trying for a lucrative major that US admissions offices deliberately try to steer Asians away from. From the racial harassment, explicit racism, and overall prohibitive cost, the winning play is to go abroad and then come back to America for less racist and less expensive grad school

This is my home. Why should I go to a country abroad for an education where I have never lived in and have nothing in when I could receive a perfectly good education at a state school?

Well, you might live in a state with crummy state schools and out-of-state state schools are prohibitively expensive.

The other issue with state schools is many of them have separate admissions processes for different majors - and it's clear that many of these schools engage in deliberate racial balancing within majors.

You can't assume that a bright kid simply gets into a good state school lol, they don't take EVERYONE. Yeah, UC whatever might have a high admissions rate, but the engineering department is going to be much harder to get into.

Whether it's your home or not, the people who run it don't seem to think so.

In California at least, the CSU's have a very simple admittance standard. The A Through G requirements. No extra essays. No Extra stuff. ( Some of the CSUs by the way are very very competitive.... Some CSUs are more competitive than UCs). https://www.calstate.edu/apply/freshman/getting_into_the_csu/Pages/testing-requirements.aspx

For campuses that have impacted majors, or campuses that are fully impacted, the CSUs have additional crate including a local area admissions policy. https://www.calstate.edu/attend/degrees-certificates-credentials/Pages/impacted-degrees.aspx


As for UCs, there's a program called the TAG program that allows one to transfer from a community college to UC Davis, UC Merced, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC Santa Cruz, and perhaps UCLA/Berkerely as well through a defined admissions process, provided that you follow the rules.



It should be noted that in California, the CSU's Train half of California's engineers. Employers like hiring CSU grads because CSU's focus more on practical job skills while the UCs are more focused on theory.