> It sounds like you have some experience with the admissions process

I do. Not as an admissions officer, but in a variety of advisory capacities to admissions offices over the decades.

> if I'd gotten 300-400 points less on the SAT, I likely still would have ended up at the same school

Maybe. It depends on the state school. I certainly hope that your scores and (maybe) grades got you access to some sort of honors or scholarship program that a significantly lower score would not have. If you were not in one of these types of programs, I am curious about why that is the case.

> if I had been in a slightly different segment, e.g. first-generation immigrant of non-East-Asian ethnicity, how would that have affected my chances?

My default answer is that it would not have affected your chances at all unless someone in your application process was racist. This would most likely have happened with someone who wrote a reference letter rather than someone affiliated with the universities.

The exception would be if your different ethnicity put you into an affirmative action category (specifically Black, Latine, or indigenous people). You might get in based purely on academics, but it seems like you would still be relatively average or weak in other areas. There would be a lot of other factors to consider (e.g., socioeconomic status, school/school district, geographic area, etc.).

While a few of the affirmative action admits are merely "standard strong" (i.e., not admit and not close because so many people are similarly strong while not standing out) who get in due to their race, many/most tend to be shine in other areas (esp. community leadership activities). Affirmative action basically gives some of these folks a slightly lower curve on academic rating, but their academics are (usually) good enough, and the other parts of their application made them shine. There is plenty to debate about whether that is a good policy or not, but I think that this is a reasonable policy if a specific kind of racial diversity is an institutional goal (as it seems to be). Almost all of the folks who get into elite schools are extremely impressive in some factor that the school values.

> Is it that test scores mattered less for me in this particular case, or is it that there's generally a higher bar because of competition from peers with similar East Asian backgrounds?

Without knowing more about your specific situation, my guess is that you focused on the wrong things -- specifically SAT scores over almost everything else.

As I have said elsewhere, no "strong admit" East Asian candidates are being denied admissions to elite schools because of a quota. Zero. None.

The folks who don't get admitted who feel jilted are typically "standard strong" (good grades, great SATs, nothing exceptional, will never get in) and the threshold applicants who just miss an offer because the whole package doesn't quite add up to enough (rare, but it happens). That said, lots of White people fall into these categories as well, so I don't think that it is specifically an East Asian phenomenon.

The issue of discrimination comes up because the average SAT scores of Asians is higher than that of other races. Some people think that is a sign of racial discrimination. This can be seen in articles that claim that Asian students need ### more SAT points to get into $ELITESCHOOL (prime example of misuse of statistics around the theme of correlation does not indicate causation). Personally, I think that this just points to a focus on test prep in the East Asian community that is consistently greater than other racial communities (by a lot).

> There's a significant advantage to attending a top school - the alumni network and a generally stronger and more well-connected student body

This is true... if the students avail themselves of this network. Most folks who are not already part of that network rarely do. I have found that there are relatively few people who effectively utilize this network during school or after school who would not have had similar access via another school and/or their already-existing family connections.

I call this the dirty little secret of the Ivies -- the Ivies largely don't make people successful, they just accept a large chunk of people who are already going to be successful and let them go to school there. There are a very small percentage of people of modest background who go to elite schools and then becoming someone exceptional via the school network, but that is extremely rare (for a number of interesting reasons, imho).

Note that state schools have similarly strong alumni networks, but the scope of these networks is usually state or regional rather than national or international.

The real exception in my eyes is if someone has relatively narrow ambitions to be an investment banker, a consultant, a supreme court justice, etc. (i.e., some line of work that almost exclusively consists of elite school grads). Yes, elite schools help with this tremendously. That said, I imagine that the elite folks in GA and OH society (which I listed as top 50 state school examples) are more likely than not graduates of UGA and OSU, and certain roles like state-level politicians, judges, business magnates, etc. are disproportionately from these schools.

Feel free to ask more questions. I feel like the misinformation on this topic is abundant, and I like to dispel as many of the myths as I can (at least based on my experiences).

I made very detailed reply to a concerned Asian parent who replied to you:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33341897

Please add to that line of the thread as well if you find it interesting.