From my experiences and what I have been reading here, if Admissions wants you, they won't hide it from you.
Sure, there are little things that show they "sort of" care about you, such as that even in the Spring, they were waiting for my Fall transcript and still hadn't dropped me at that point. And, it would not be amiss for me to suggest that if they really don't want you, that they will tell you this, also. An unfortunate student will find that the Academy doesn't play games when it rejects him or her for having SAT scores too low on the preliminary questionnaire, for example.
And then, we see that the Academy will go all out trying to recruit those students it thinks are exceptional, making the "caring attitude" described in the previous paragraph seem like the formality it truly is.
When the Academy actually wants you genuinely--as opposed to genially--they will be the first at your door. And, they seem to be more willing to to battle for quality candidates than any other college in the United States. Moreso, infact, than seems necessary.
Whereas many good colleges do not give merit-based aid, the United States Naval Academy is already free. When almost every college is busy recruiting athletes, the Academy is even more busy as they also send BGO's to recruit people for the color of their skin. What other college does this? This emphasis on minorities seems strange, when the minority proportion to whites is already one of the highest in the country for four-year colleges colleges, at 25%. This emphasis would be better directed at females, who come nowhere near making 50% of the class as they do in other colleges in the United States.
There is no correct solution for the admissions process, but it does seem funny that the Academy tries to get as many minorities as they can to match the enlisted makeup by population of minorities and non-minorities in the Navy, while completely lacking the ability to recruit as many women as to have a makeup of about 50/50 to men, as is in the population.
In other words, the Academy's solution to the fact that enlisted sailors are more likely to be poor minorities than rich non-minorities, due to reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the color of their skin but with their economic conditions, is to decrease the admissions standards somewhat for minorities regardless of their personal economic conditions, or whether they had to overcome any obstacles at all.
Look, I wish I knew about the Naval Academy when I was in high school, but I didn't and I had no way to know. The local BGO was obviously doing just what the BGO Guidebook wants him to do--to spend considerable time looking for minorities and attending high schools with a lot of minorities there.
1) The BGOs should try to visit all high schools, regardless of the racial makeup of the schools. 2) There should not be brownie points for recruiting minorities. 3) Admissions SHOULD take into consideration that an applicant is a minority--if there were poor economic conditions, deaths in the family, or residence in a racist community, and other things like that attached--just like with any other candidate! But admissions should not simply go Ga Ga over a candidate who checks the Minority check box because they are 1/16th black or hispanic.
So Wink, tell everyone to apply and treat everybody the same. We must reform the schools to use economic affirmative action instead or racial affirmative action!
http://www.tcf.org/Publications/Education/carnevale_rose.pdf
