Could this be worth mentioning to admissions?
No.
Dude, practically every white person in the US has a small percentage of Native in them. You’ve never identified with them before, so why do it now?
Like HappyAlumnus said, no.
Harvard listed Elizabeth Warren as a URM faculty member with 1/32 native american.
http://m.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/05/elizabeth-warren-is-part-native-american
^ Someone is grasping at straws for diversity.
Don’t fall for this, please. Too obvious.
You mean harvard faculty?
OP, are you registered with a tribe? Most colleges will ask for that information if you plan to claim Native American ethnicity.
I’m skeptical. Legally, checking the box is optional and a college MUST use whatever is checked.
Moreover, they do not ask for support from other URMs, so not sure how it would be legal to ask for information only from Native American’s. And I would think that to be discriminatory.
btw: for a perfect example, HLS obviously did not request “information” from its prospective faculty member when she applied for a job.
Here is an “Ask the Dean” article in this:
http://www.collegeconfidential.com/dean/000293/
And the college has to report what is checked, but I don’t think they are bound to treat certain checks as hooks. They are free to follow up, as Yale is described as doing in the article.
ok, then perhaps your use of the word, “most”, was incorrect and ‘some’ would have been more appropriate?
My guess is that most top colleges do ask. If s college isn’t very selective and lets most applicants in, then why bother following up (the concept of “hook” doesn’t matter). So I will concede that “some” is more correct in the context of the full pool of colleges, but that it is more likely at a highly ranked college.
As that post confirms, many don’t ask for anything else, but they could if they wanted to. Neither here nor there if you just answer honestly on the apps and with any follow up. Each college approaches diversity differently and will decided if 1/16 by itself is meaningful to them.
From the liberated guinea pig’s link:
It’s starting that Yale admissions acknowledges it as an admissions hook but doesn’t bother to verify so long as the candidate “identifies” w that background. What other hooks do they admit by such arbitrary standards? Recruited athletes? Development cases?
I helped a NA student go through the app process with a few top colleges. Not one asked. I think the most accurate statement would be that any college could ask and some do. Yale does based on that post. If an applicant answers honestly on the app and any follow up, what is the debate here? The applicant answers truthfully and the college decides. If OP is 1/16 then he is entitled to check the box if there is not any qualifier listed for the question that would prohibit him from checking the box. College admissions committees should be smart enough to see through the rest of the application as it relates to diversity. It seems the bigger debate is about what should be considered diversity.
Not really recent, but this article has examples where Dartmouth, Cornell, and Stanford asked for some validation. Harvard did not at that time (but it was 2005).
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2005/2/10/native-americans-question-admissions-some-fear/
@bluebayou My kids applied as Native (registered) and white. The only school that asked for more information was Penn on an optional form. Neither of my older kids applied to Yale so I don’t know what they do. None of the other schools they applied to requested more information.