Applying Disadvantaged- Affirmative Action for UC Schools?

Seriously...apply to U of Michigan. They eat this stuff up. Being out of state and anything but a white male from Michigan gives you bonus points.

I'm a 4th yr med student with admissions experience.

It is important if you were economically or educationally disadvantaged growing up to include it in your application. Most schools have a way for you to include it--extra essay for example.

Your accomplishments should be measured not on an absolute scale, but relative to what you had to begin with. If you had to work to support your family, are the first in your family to go to college or grew up in a crime ridden impoverished neighborhood, it will affect your academic performance and casts a whole different light on your record.

If you grew up impoverished and had no educational opportunities, it may be a huge accomplishment just to get to college, stay in college for example. It's downright humbling when I think about some of the stories I've heard.

People who work 40 hours a week and go to school FT have a harder time maintaining a 4.0, doing research, volunteering, or becoming an elite triathlete and likely can't take the summer off to save orphans in Romania. Also, the quality of your HS predicts your initial performance in college.

Even though AA is officially banned, these factors are (and should be) considered. The medical profession is not reflective of the general US population (in race/ethnicity or SES) even more than 30 years after the civil rights movement. A growing body of evidence shows disparities in health and suggest disparities in quality of care for nonwhite and low SES patients.

It's important to have better representation of the general population in the medical profession--not only to provide opportunities for certain students and the care of certain patients, but to enhance the training of ALL docs and ALL patients.

If you are actually disadvantaged, feel free to pm me for more advice.

Doctor Kevin, did you elaborate in the earlier thread as to how you were advantaged? Were you in foster care for long periods of time? Was your mom a chronic and hopeless welfare case? Parents mentally unstable?

I've done some asking around in the last week or so, and unless your story is one of overcoming unusually harsh obstacles, I think it would be a bad idea to apply disadvantaged. My parents are divorced, dad has spent a good deal of time in trouble, had to work some during college, etc.....but I was told that it would be unwise to apply disadvantaged......

Schools are interested in your hardships. Looks like your family income was low but you'll probably need to elaborate on any hardships you faced. I doubt that what you wrote in your post would count as real hardship. However, since I didn't apply as disadvantaged, I'm not completely sure.

As far as UCs are concerned, they do attempt to increase their numbers of students from ethnicities underrepresented in California, esp. hispanic. Since they are not technically able to use AA, they have other means. For example, they select candidates from certain counties in California and candidates that speak Spanish. Of course, in the process they end up giving preference to some non-urms as well. Which is, at least partly, why UCs seem to have such a random selection process. I don't know how they use disadvantaged status. I'd guess though that by giving disadvantaged applicants preference, they may also increase urm student numbers.

Schools are of course also interested in experience that you may have working with underserved communities.

I have a question in this area--what exactly would qualify as unusual disadvantage, meriting extra consideration? I agree that all the "my parents are divorced and my entire college education wasn't paid for" applicants probably don't have much reason to apply disadvantaged, but what does qualify as "extreme" hardship? I probably will apply disadvantaged, and have elaborated my situation in previous posts, but basically, I did spend long periods of time in foster care growing up (between the ages of 3-16) and living with various family members due to abuse and mental instability on the part of my mother (no dad). It's just part of my life and I tend to take it in stride at this point--I've done well and come a long way without much assistance--but is this the sort of background that one would consider significantly disadvantaged? I have a strong application so far without this, so what kind of difference might I expect from discussing this in my application? I do plan to apply to a couple of the UC's as dream schools (UCLA & UCSF) although I am out of state, doubt it will make much of a difference to them but what the hell, I only want to apply once.