[cambalache]

You dont understand until your kids get rejected despite having straight A, high SAT scores and strong background, just because many other people whose ancestors come from a similar region on earth were as highly qualified too. So your kid is out not because of her fault but because of her race. I suppose many people are OK because deep down they think they will be in the accepted portion but still.

[CapricornNoble]

Just say that your child identifies as [insert popular identitarian group of the day] and put them between a rock and a hard place. They'll either have to accept your kid anyway, or admit that their agenda is BS and watch the facade crumble.

[grumple]

And that person will still get into a great school. It just doesn’t have to be Harvard.

[pnw_hazor]

Not necessarily. I have a niece who is a textbook A-plus Asian student, she didn't get into any top school nor did any UC-school accept her. She is in a CA community college now hoping to transfer later. (She did get into an expensive 2nd tier private college, but since Covid shut everything down she withdrew and transferred to a CC near home.)

Years ago I tried to counsel her parents into letting her do extra-curricular activities that did not fit the stereotypical Asian student profile, but they would not hear it. Piano it was, rather than sports or other non-academic work/volunteering. They did not understand that an Asian girl with a 4+ GPA and years of piano training was not going to get a fair shake when it came to college admissions.

[usaar333]

Top 9% of students in the state have UC guarantee (https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/admission-requi...) by pure test scores and grades.

Yeah, you might not get Berkeley, but an A+ student is guaranteed admission to a UC. The profile you describe is far better than the average student at UCR and would be quite competitive at Davis or Irvine.

Did something fall through here? Did she not even apply to a mid-tier "safety school"?

[cambalache]

You can say exactly the same to the candidates who jumped above her not by academic merit but by other nebulous criteria.

[grumple]

When have these schools ever said they care only about academic merit? They explicitly don’t and never have; every high school has a counselor that will tell you that you need to have more on your application than grades and a test score.

[0x00000000]

Anecdote: I had straight As in high school, took every AP class they offered, 98th percentile SAT and got rejected from every single college I applied to except for one state school which I’m pretty sure they were obligated to accept me to for being a resident