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He would hate Yale. Huge culture shock. Everyone wants him for their "diversity" count. He'd feel more comfortable at Columbia. I wonder what kind of an aid/scholarship package UC Berkeley offered him. There's nothing wrong with UC Berkeley. At least he wouldn't freeze his rear off in winter. UC B has a great law program.
How do you know he would hate Yale? You're making major assumptions.
I am from NYC (and Black) and I went to Cornell. I am very happy I went to Cornell undergrad.
But let's just say, for the sake of argument (and simplicity), that the bottom 35% of students admitted to the Ivy league schools were admitted with an SAT score of 2100-. If he had a 35% chance of getting admitted to each school, that would give him an overall probability of about 0.02% of being admitted to all eight Ivy league schools. You still want to claim that race wasn't a factor?
Bitterness? If he had a 2400 you'd still claim affirmative action, wouldn't you?
Yet you can be sure a fair number of his fellow students in those exclusive schools would remind him regularly that he doesn't really belong. Just look at some of the reactions on this thread. Even at public universities, the Black students get attitude from White students based on assumptions they got in on some special dispensation.
Nobody at Cornell ever told me I didn't belong. It seems like you guys are projecting your own prejudices onto other people without even KNOWING anything about what it's like at these schools.
And btw, it only takes 4 years to get an undergraduate degree. A degree from a top school is still a degree from a top school.......
Most likely not at Brown and probably not at Columbia but at Yale, yes, definitely.
It is not necessarily the coaching as much as it is the knowledge that standardized tests are predictable and as such, coachable. Or that the local (or school) library does not stock SAT prep books on their shelves...
This is absolutely ridiculous. Whether they choose to take advantage of them or not, those wealthy white kids are going to have access to resources that the poor kids will not.
Did you attend Yale to know this for a fact?
You psychically know what all students at Yale are thinking?
Or is just a projection of your own assumptions and prejudices?
I never had anyone say anything of the like to me at Cornell, and I'm Black and from NYC.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. There were some 4.0 students from our kids' high school (they did not weight grades) that took a full load of pretty easy classes so they could get that 4.0, compared to kids that had 3.8's and took 10 or more AP classes.... We don't know what his course load was or what he got on his AP tests so without that information, he looks like your typical good student, but not really a standout student by any means.
Just to add a note here, the real divide in superstar achievement is not between black and white, or black and Asian, but more often between native-born kids and immigrant kids.
The sons and daughters of African immigrants -- and to a lesser extent West Indian immigrants -- are typically over-represented in almost any cohort of high-achieving, black US high school students. These first and second generation immigrant kids are often not hobbled by a legacy of white hostility toward them, in or out of school. After all, many of the oppressors in their home countries were black themselves. So they come here with a less-jaundiced view of the education system and see it as the surest way up the socio-economic ladder, working hard to take advantage of the opportunities they find. (And of course some do get a leg up because they come from highly educated or professional families in the first place.) The same dynamics hold true IMO for many South Asian and East Asian immigrant families.
Interesting thing though is that I've read that after a generation or two in America, the offspring of these overachievers revert to the US norm. Their kids are typically no more or no less academically talented than the typical American kid whose family has spent a few generations here.
Oh there are plenty of Black Americans with excellent educational backgrounds. Condoleeza Rice, ever heard of her? Michelle Obama, ever heard of her? CEO Oprah Winfrey, ever heard of her? Richard Parsons, former CEO of Time Warner? E. Stanley O'Neil, former CEO of Merrill Lynch. Current CEO of Xerox, Ursula Burns? Ruth Simmons, from Louisiana, former President of Brown University and first Black woman President of an Ivy League university?
By now there really isn't a way to a job with benefits (particularly retirement) for people who don't have a good education, and this is something people of all races and ethnic backgrounds in the US are well aware of. With just a high school diploma enjoy working in retail, the service sector, or construction. Not much manufacturing left.
I wouldn't assume that. I don't think Harvard, Yale or Princeton would be good for the OP. Columbia would be good. Cornell, too, if he can deal with the winter up there. We don't have a complete list of where he was offered admission and scholarships. He should think this over carefully, and not go for the fanciest name, necessarily. He should go where he'd fit in better.
The OP did the work of getting into all those schools. Only he can determine which one would be good for HIM.
It is irrelevant where you think is good for him. Perhaps he does want to go with the fanciest name. It's his choice.
Michelle Obama, from a working class south side Chicago family went to Princeton and then Harvard for law school. I'm sure she has no regrets.
I doubt that any of the ivy league schools take just the common app though. I would hazard a guess that all of them also require a supplemental application that would take some time and effort to fill out.
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