Does Race Matter?

[Chief56]

<p>Does one's race/ethnicity really matter to colleges?
And if it does to what extent?</p>

<p>I ask this because I am Native American and people said it would help me get into my dream school, Stanford, while I don't really think it will matter.</p>

[ArtOfMind_21]

<p>It will help you barely, don’t consider it your ticket in though.</p>

[hpa10]

<p>it helps. and native american is probably the most helpful.</p>

[Old_College_Try]

<p>It does matter to Stanford. We are part native american, and my four cousins got accepted by Stanford. Only one graduated, however. None of my cousins were great students in high school, but they weren’t idiots either. I lived with the one who graduated last summer, and she assured me that Stanford looks very favorably upon native americans when it comes to acceptances. She was a B student in high school, and she has a hard time with standarized tests, but she’s a talented writer, so I’m pretty sure her essays were great.</p>

[glassesarechic]

<p>Yeah, it will definitely help. Affirmative action’s a tricky subject, but it’s a reality. And being Native American is, like someone else said, probably the most helpful race to be. That’s not to say that a failing student will get in because of race, but it’s a hook like any other (athlete, legacy…) that will get you noticed among piles of outstanding applicants.</p>

[Chief56]

<p>Well I have good grades (3.9 UW GPA) in mostly honors/ a few AP and good SATS (2100)</p>

<p>The only problem is that I am lacking on ECs, with only honor society, german club, select soccer, and being in a band with a record label. I hope that last one will help with the whole “be passionate about anything” spiel given by admissions officers.</p>

[dchow08]

<p>Colleges around the country are trying to diversify their campuses. Not too many top colleges, for instance, have a good percentage of black, Hispanic, and Native American students, and they’re really seeking those out. Two African American students at my school got into Stanford, but something tells me that if they were white, they wouldn’t have gotten in…</p>

[darthk]

<p>Not This Again!!!</p>

[3365]

<p>it is very helpful </p>

<p>“my four cousins got accepted by Stanford. Only one graduated”</p>

<p>that makes me feel better about affirmative action cause eventually only the creme of the top rises</p>

[2G1C4L]

<p>ArtOfMind is on crack or something of that nature. </p>

<p>Quote of the millenium –> “It will help you barely.”</p>

<p>Congratulations, Chief56, welcome to Stanford! Listen, if you don’t get into Stanford, I am willing to intentionally contract AIDS.</p>

[fabrizio]

<p>[This</a> thread](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/441477-fastest-growing-ethnic-category-great-colleges-race-unknown.html]This”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/441477-fastest-growing-ethnic-category-great-colleges-race-unknown.html) is long but has all the answers to any question you have regarding this subject.</p>

<p>The short answer has already been said - yes. It does matter. That is a fact. Whether it should or not is a matter of opinion.</p>

[little_galaxie]

<p>Don’t make those kinds of promises to yourself, 2G1C4L!!!</p>

<p>D: D: D:</p>

[Invoyable]

<p>It will help you. I too think you’ll be into Stanford unless you’re like a total…<em>insert word here</em>, which you are clearly not.</p>

[Silverzc413]

<p>kinda unfair when asians need almost perfect stats to get in lol</p>

[TomHirschfeld]

<p>NOTICE, PREPARE FOR THREAD HIJACK BY TOKENADULT TO THE “HUGE ETHNIC SELF IDENTIFICATION THREAD”</p>

<p>now, I thought that no colleges in california could use AA due to the California supreme court ruling recently, or something like that, or is that just the UC system?</p>

[collegealum314]

<p>@Ettubrutus: How many people who check the native American box to Stanford actually lived on a reservation?</p>

<p>*EttuBrutus: "BUT FOR THE PREVIOUS 300 YEARS IT WAS ABOUT THE SAME THING. RICH WHITE MEN HAD ALL THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION THEY NEEDED UNTIL THE GI BILL in the 1950s!!! </p>

<p>IF WE WANT TO TALK ABOUT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION LETS TALK ABOUT THAT."*</p>

<p>If your argument is that minorities deserve reparations, then fine. Otherwise, I don’t think any of the rich white men over 60 are applying to college right now. Also, you sweep with a pretty broad brush when you talk about the advantages of being white over the past 300 years. Some white people (Italians, Greeks, etc.) were considered minorities until the late 60’s–namely, until affirmative action was born and you actually got some advantage out of being a minority. Perhaps when you say “white” you should specify “white anglo-saxon protestants” because those are the only people who have been accruing wealth over the past 400 years in America at the expense of other ethnic groups. In fact, while it’s obvious why African-Americans and native Americans are considered URMs due to the extreme nature of their treatment, it seems arbitrary that latinos attained URM status while Italians did not. Certainly when affirmative action was put in place, the discrimination encountered by Italians was significant.</p>

<p>Now, I am not saying these forgotten minority groups should have URM status. But I don’t think it is too much to ask to leave them out when you are complaining about all the preferential treatment they got for the simple fact that it didn’t happen.</p>

[Buckeye9013]

<p>im Indian… i fall under asian i believe… I get screwed the harder than white people… i believe it should be based on how much money you have… but thats not the system that is set up… Native Americans get the biggest boost… you are pretty much set because u are Native American and very obviously intelligent and have very obviously put in work for your education.. you are probably top 20 college material as a white person top 10 as a Native American </p>

<p>Stanford is a match if you keep it up but don’t by any means ever consider it a safety</p>

[Cervantes]

<p>2G1C4L, do you go to Stanford? I guess not. Thus, don’t be presumptive enough to “welcome him to Stanford”. To the OP, if you think like this (will my race help me), I’m not so sure you’re going to get admitted. Like others on this thread, I think you certainly have a good shot at Stanford, but by no means are you are a sure-fire admit. I’d say raise your SAT scores and do something impressive over the summer to increase your chances at Stanford.</p>

[fabrizio]

<p>EtTuBrutus,</p>

<p>Who said that Native Americans have a “social” advantage in this “world”? I thought we were talking about college admissions?</p>

<p>In his essay, “The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules,” Justice Antonin Scalia gave a simple but strong example of what it means to be fair.</p>

<p>

And one of the most substantial of those competing values, which often contradicts the search for perfection, is the appearance of equal treatment. As a motivating force of the human spirit, that value cannot be overestimated. Parents know that children will accept quite readily all sorts of arbitrary substantive dispositions – no television in the afternoon, or no television in the evening, or even no television at all. But try to let one brother or sister watch television when the others do not, and you will feel the fury of the fundamental sense of justice unleashed.

</p>

<p>You criticize whites for feeling “sooooo disadvantage [sic].” But, you are forgetting that a fundamental sense of justice has been violated. That is a fact. Whether or not it is right is up for discussion and indeed has been discussed to a great extent in [this</a> thread](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/441477-fastest-growing-ethnic-category-great-colleges-race-unknown.html]this”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/441477-fastest-growing-ethnic-category-great-colleges-race-unknown.html).</p>

<p>I question your two statements, “Affirmative Action has not recently just been about race. For the last 40 years, it is about gender, class, first generation college students.” Affirmative action in its modern sense started in 1969 with the Revised Philadelphia Plan, which required government contractors to hire on the basis of race. Bakke, decided thirty years ago, was about racial quotas, not gender, class, or first-generation status. To suggest that affirmative action has largely been about things other than race for the last 40 years contributes to the ignorance you decry.</p>

<p>Regarding “affirmative action for whites,” I quote Jonathan Yardley’s review of When Affirmative Action Was White:</p>

<p>

The congressional Southerners weren’t affirming anything; they were denying blacks – Southern blacks most specifically – the benefits of federal programs that, had those benefits been extended to them, might have helped them overcome generations of discrimination and move into the American mainstream. The language of late-20th-century diversity engineering is irrelevant to what they were doing, and to cast it in that language is to distort it beyond recognition.

</p>

[Old_College_Try]

<p>EtTuBrutus:</p>

<p>With all due respect, you’re an idiot. One of the things I dread about college is the mind-numbing liberal mindset. If someone disagrees with a liberal, they are labeled a “racist.” Liberals claim to want diversity, but heaven forbid that someone has an opinion diverse from their own. I spent a month at Berkeley last summer, and I have never seen a more close-minded campus. If you don’t embrace the far-left dogma, you’re considered a racist neo-con. College liberals remind me of those who embraced Nazism in Germany in the 1930s. Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia agree 95% of the time. Do you consider Justice Thomas a racist, too?</p>