<p>I'm Vietnamese. Recently, my counselor who used to be an admissions officer told me that certain Asian ethnicities (is this the correct term?) such as Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Flipino (generally small south east Asian countries) get considered differently from the chinese, indian, korean, and japanese type. Is this true? Please I'm not here to be bashed; my stats and credentials are good enough to get into any college w/o AA...just a quick question cuz it's extremely different from the rumors that I've heard.</p>
<p>Yes, it is true. Southeast Asia is usually separated from the much larger pools of Chinese, Korean, Indian, & Japanese. Vietnamese & Cambodian are certainly considered URM's still. In my region, a Filipino might be well- or even over-represented at certain colleges I can think of, but definitely not Vietnamese.</p>
<p>I have read that Vietnamese applications probably aren't as docked as much as Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Indian/etc. applicants but they are not considered URM's really. I don't know if it will really help, but most likely it will probably hurt if anything since Vietnamese people ARE Asian.</p>
<p>warbler: I don't really understand the point of the statistics</p>
<p>so there is not definite answer to this?</p>
<p>The point of any statistic is to interpret it the way you like.</p>
<p>You could e.g. say the average admitted Vietnames (1170-1380) is "less qualified" than the average admitted Chinese (1320-1480) and even the plain white guy (1300-1460) at Berkeley.
You could interpret that as an advantage that Vietnames have over normal whites or other Asian groups and call it AA.</p>
<p>You could also say that the table only lists SAT scores and not grades and that Vietnamese score worse on average because the SAT is biased and because Vietnamese don't have access to the kind of test prep American or Chinese students have.</p>
<p>Or you could conclude that the best Vietnamese don't have the money to attend Berkeley (which does not award fin aid to internationals) or simply don't want to because they can go to Harvard instead.</p>
<p>shramleon, my post was intended to show that colleges do differentiate between different Asian ethnicities. The extent to which this would help you (or hurt you) will vary from one college to the next.</p>