Odds of Getting In
Sadly, discrimination is rampant in arboriculture and almost all other horticultural industries. Many college-educated arborists need to find jobs in other industries while the good arborist jobs go to those who are ethnically appropriate, even if completely unqualified. It's still a mystery how so many people who can barely read or write in any language can pass the arborist certification exam.
Those who are not ethnically-appropriate can't escape discrimination as groundsmen. It may be somewhat more tolerable to climbers. Yet, it never goes away, and can even be a bother to consulting arborists who are often expected to be bilingual, as if studying the Latin names of trees in college was not already enough.