<p>If they do, that's just stupid.</p>
<p>Perhaps prefacing your statement with some anecdote as to where you heard this, and then perhaps someone is able to prove otherwise, but just making a blank statement out of the blue is not effective.</p>
<p>Fair enough...on the thread "what really goes on behind the admission doors," somebody made such a statement.</p>
<p>i dont see how they could cuz on on some stats I saw that like apporx. 10% leave ethnicity blank... so what woudl they do with those people?</p>
<p>^^^^Assume they're white. Any non-white person smart enough to apply to Harvard would put their ethnicity down.</p>
<p>^ or asian</p>
<p>They absolutely tag ethnicity.</p>
<p>oh yeah? if this is infact true, how specific do you think they get, like eastern european, or down to specific countries?</p>
<p>Harvard uses the Common Application, and the Common Application (and Harvard Supplement), which I just looked up, </p>
<p><a href="http://www.commonapp.org/common2007_PrintApp.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.commonapp.org/common2007_PrintApp.pdf</a> </p>
<p>make clear that answers to ethnic identification questions are optional and can be entirely omitted. Read the questions on the Common Application form to see what categories are listed on the checklist. Federal law in the United States requires colleges to make a good-faith effort to track some of this information, both for applicants and for enrollees, but some applicants choose to leave off this information. (I think the Common Application categories are more fine-grained than the federally tracked categories, probably at the request of some colleges that use the Common Application. My children, "biracial" as they are, don't fit the categories well, and in our family we much prefer to emphasize common humanity over ethnic differences. I'll leave it to each of my children to decide how to fill out those forms.) </p>
<p>Bottom line: don't worry about it. It's late in the day to recategorize yourself.</p>
<p>I think the OP's post is really just asking for yet another Affirmative Action debate. I mean, OP said that tagging ethnicity is "stupid" - and I guess it would be in the eyes of someone who is opposed to AA. For someone who supports the institution of AA (or thinks of it as more of a necessary evil like myself), tagging the apps. is just a practical means of implementation.</p>
<p>What it comes down to is if it really matters if they "tag" the apps. In the end, they are still going to look at race and it is still going to play a role in the process.</p>
<p>See </p>
<p><a href="http://www.collegeresults.org/mainMenu.aspx%5B/url%5D">http://www.collegeresults.org/mainMenu.aspx</a> </p>
<p>for a site that displays data gathered through United States Department of Education tracking of college outcomes of different ethnic groups. </p>
<p>Harvard </p>
<p><a href="http://www.collegeresults.org/search1a.aspx?InstitutionID=166027%5B/url%5D">http://www.collegeresults.org/search1a.aspx?InstitutionID=166027</a> </p>
<p>has high graduation rates for all students.</p>
<p>Tokenadult, here's a fact: race plays a role in college admissions. How much? None of us can say for sure. Is it right? That's open for debate. But the reality is that DEFINITIVELY, AA gives an advantage to minority students. The fact that selecting ethnicity on the CommonApp is optional proves nothing.</p>
<p>I would say that the problem here is that people categorizing themselves by ethnic group forfeit the opportunity to emphasize common humanity. There is historical evidence (from Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia) that people take ethnic differences deadly seriously when those ethnic differences are built into government statistics in a pervasive way. </p>
<p>The OP's question was whether Harvard will "tag" an application according to ethnicity? What does that mean? Harvard is required by the federal government to be generally aware of the ethnic self-identifications of applicants, and that means that in general applications are acted on in an ethnicity-aware environment, but what an individual applicant can do about this when it's time to apply is mostly just be a strong applicant. </p>
<p>There is a seasonal pattern here. I see threads about this issue pop up like mushrooms just before decision time every year, as applicants who fear rejection propose any face-saving reason they can why they might be rejected. But rejection might just as well be considered nonadmission, because when a college has the impressive excess of applicants over spaces for admission that Harvard has, the majority of applicants will not gain admission under any set of rules for dealing with applicants. </p>
<p>Best wishes to all of my fellow human beings for finding a suitable college program.</p>
<p>Token:
1) "What does it mean?" Tagging the apps means that they place application in piles according to the reported ethnicity and then compare application ONLY within that ethnicity group. </p>
<p>This is not an AA debate. This is different from AA. What I'm saying is wrong is NOT AA, but simply the fact that even if they do take race into account, they should red all apps in relatino to all the other apps because if your'e looking at an asian app and then you compare it to all the other asians apps, you'll lose sight of what's really important. instead of just comparing it to the general pool, you're so focuse don saying "oh this asian was better than that one..."</p>
<p>They don't do what you are suggesting above.</p>
<p>that's not what ''tag'' means billsfan. tag means basically writing MINORITY on the applicants folder.</p>
<p>Virtually every university in the US will tag minority applications, in the sense that the pieces of paper that move through the admissions readings and committee meetings all have a box to be checked or color coded tags or something similar, that immediately indicates the minority status of the applicant. A black applicant with a generic name might be able to prevent consideration of his application as "minority" by not checking any boxes, but an applicant with a Chinese name may not be able to escape racial disadvantages in this way. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Harvard has high graduation rates for all students.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>A rough calculation from those statistics show that people who don't graduate within 6 years from Harvard are about 50% white, 45% black or hispanic, and 5% Asian. The non-graduation rate is quite unequal between groups, as is the distribution of majors.</p>
<p>so being an Asian is not very advantageous compared to being an Puerto Rican? ....remember that Chinese and Korean are not the only Asians...there are Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, and Nepalis, etc too....they're not considered minorities?</p>
<p>I read in A is for Admission that most Ivies tag only their minority applicants. And by minority I mean Native American, Hispanic, and Black (and probably another one that I'm forgetting). The lady who wrote the book said that they color code the folders.</p>
<p>I don't think Asian counts as a minority unless you're Filipino or something. Correct me if I'm wrong?</p>
<p>Asians don't count as minorities because at colleges, statistically, they aren't minorities. The reality is just that there are so many Asians applying in large numbers and with such great qualifications that colleges do not need to lend a helping hand or implement Affirmative Action to make sure Asians are represented on their campuses.</p>