The Native American one is harder than the other ones in terms of trying to get an effect for college admissions or scholarship purposes, since many colleges want tribal enrollment documentation of either the applicant or a recent ancestor.
The end.
LOL…an ancestryDNA ad appears at the top and bottom of this page.
Hate to say it but yes I know of a top 10 school that flies out URMs and these kids were told by alumni in a presentation that their group will have a 50% acceptance rate. This was from a school with a sub 5% acceptance rate. My DSs grandpa is AA so I always thought I was half. Took the ancestry DNA test and am only 30% African. My mother emigrated from Germany and we have family records back 200 years, so obviously some hanky lanky or rape going on, on my dad’s AA side. Most of my Caucasian friends would have a heart attack as even those families have plenty of African in them. What’s the right answer I just don’t know.
Even if the kids in question don’t “look black” today, the fact that their parents, g-parents etc were considered black by the law in their lifetime could mean that they were prevented from owning property or otherwise accumulating wealth that might have been passed on in the family, or suffered from our policies around race in other ways.
23and me only gave me info on my mother’s side. Says my brother would have to do the test (he wont). Does ancestry give info on both sides of the family if the person doing the test has no Y chromosome?
I agree with “The Dean” on this matter. And this applies to any ethnicity, not just Native American.
Wondering about the implications for adopted kids. In some cases, such as many international adoptions, it’s known to be a transracial adoption. We adopted our D2 domestically. She’s understandably curious about her background which is pretty unknown to us but I would guess she has some Hispanic background. She’s expressed an interest in the 23andme test for her just for the sake of her own curiosity. In the college app context I think this is interesting and I can see arguments in different directions. Does it depend on how much you “look” like a certain racial or ethnic group? Seems like that could start to get pretty subjective. I don’t know what the right answer is. I don’t see D2 aiming for highly selective schools so I don’t see it affecting her college apps, but it’s an interesting question in general.
The girl who won the National Hispanic Merit award the year my oldest son graduated was the grandchild of someone who had spent about one month in Cuba on the way to US after escaping from Germany in the 1930’s. She had no Hispanic blood and my son attended her Bat Mitzvah. To me, that was so disingenuous. At least the friend of my cousin’s from HS whose mother legally changed his name from Schwartz to Rodriguez (not the real names, but you get the picture) had the right to do so - his father, who had zero involvement in his life and who was the Rodriguez, was Hispanic. I heard that after college (an Ivy), he changed his name back.
As for the DNA testing, it’s interesting. We have always had a story in my family about a traveling salesman from a specific culture fathering my grandmother’s mother. When I did my test, I came out 94% Ashkenazi Jewish, 2% Italian and 4% the traveling salesman’s ethnic group. I have no clue where the Italian comes in, but it is my favorite cuisine. My H, OTOH, had to hang up his leiderhosen and put on a kilt, to quote the commercial. He had zero German even though his grandma was born there!
I knew a girl in law school who had checked off Eskimo. She was a Jewish girl from NYC. My law school was her second. She had been discovered in the first week at her original school and compelled to return all of her loans and expelled. She wasn’t prosecuted because she claimed it was an accident and the school couldn’t prove otherwise. Once I got to know her, I came to believe that her having checked off Eskimo was deliberate and intentional.
As for NA, my oldest son’s gf is 1/2 NA. Her father was adopted off a reservation days after birth, back in the days when that was considered a good thing to do. He was raised Jewish in NY and even had a Bar Mitzvah. Genetically, any children my son and his gf might have would be 1/4 NA, but they would be culturally Jewish NY’ers. I don’t know that they would be the kids the schools are looking for and unless they were somehow immersed in the culture while growing up, it would be wrong, IMHO, to take advantage of money meant for kids who grew up on reservations.
People who try to purposely beat the system and lie/cheat like that deserve to be expelled. JMO
Ugh! It’s my personal opinion that if you live “white” you are “white”! So even if my kids took a DNA test that showed them as Native American, I would never allow them to check the box. I’m pretty sure they would come back significantly NA because I’m Cherokee on my maternal side & Sioux on my paternal side and my DH has NA on his mother’s side. However, they have never participated in their cultural heritage or had any “disadvantages” associated with being NA - IE living on a reservation or facing discrimination based on their appearance. Trying to game the system is dishonest and takes opportunities away form those who actually need and qualify for these opportunities. I’m most significantly Cherokee, but my ancestors who walked the Trail of Tears married “white” and did not register with the tribe ( Would you register your kids after surviving the Trail of Tears?). My Grandmother would have gotten reparations from the government and qualified for NA status had she been registered. Oddly, I am often mistaken for a light skinned Hispanic - literally if I am in a high Hispanic area (Texas) people will speak to me in Spanish! I speak about 7 phrases so that’s pretty awkward 
My DD has a hispanic grandparent…for the National Hispanic Recognition Program requires you to be 25% Hispanic…my DD identifies as hispanic so she put down she is hispanic. My other DD does not identify as hispanic so she did not.
It may depend on whether the college is looking for check-box diversity or wants to actually consider whether someone’s race or ethnicity may have played a role in his/her previous experiences (including to the extent that they may have affected how much achievement s/he could show in the traditional areas).
It is certainly possible for an adoptee who grew up in a family and community of predominantly a visibly different race/ethnicity from that of his/her birth to have “interesting” experiences as a member of a visible minority group, for example. Of course, such experiences are likely to differ from that of other members of his/her birth race/ethnicity. Such nuances may be relevant to anyone considering individual experiences, but not for someone looking for check-box counts.
When I was in college I received a small scholarship each year from the National Hispanic Scholarship fund, I had to show two grandparents of Hispanic decent for that, or 50%.
Hilarious. Maybe affirmative action benefit should be given to only those kids of any race who come from poor families. Oh wait, I have 1% Native American blood in me, so I am all for affirmative action now. 
Well, one has to be an eighth black to be considered to be African American. So if he fits your description, I bet he’s less than 12.5% black. Also, it will help him a bit in the admissions process for URM. Gotta fill that diversity quota. Especially, if he has a high socio-economic status, then colleges will see a minority that they won’t necessarily have to take a risk on accepting.
That is sad. When we told our younger kids they likely had some African ancestors, they asked if they could claim being African American for college admissions. The answer was a firm no.
It is an interesting aside that native American ancestry of 1/16th or less was specifically excluded from the “one drop” laws that determined where black folks (for whom ANY amount of black ancestry meant they were black) could eat or live, who they could marry, etc because so many white Americans had it.
It’s interesting to me that colleges want evidence of NA ancestry/involvement (see http://www.collegeconfidential.com/dean/000293/ ) but not of Hispanic, black, Asian, etc ancestry. I wonder why that is.
Here in California there was a recent case of a little girl 1/64th NA removed from her foster family and placed with another family under the Indian child welfare act. According to the tribe she was a member, even at only 1/64th.
A lot of misinfo out about all this.
Whether a kid needs tribal registration depends on the school (usually a state school) and its area, how many NA are in those areas, to be fair to them. And some connection to that heritage and/or culture, and usually, the SES realities. 1/16 NA is by no means the minimum. Some tribes take it to 1/64, depending. But the blood quantum results are no longer the definer for tribal enrollment, too many issues found with that. Instead, it’s the actual tracing to an ancestor on the Dawes List.
As for calling oneself AA, with zero connection, that’s no magic. None of this is as simple as checking a box. For holistics (and especially top schools,) there’s a whole app/supp to prove yourself. Or not.