Ethnic cliques?

Student Lounge College Life
1

<p>I'm a Korean-American girl, but I know close to nothing about my heritage. I've always fit in better with non-Asian kids, since Asian people tend to look down on me not knowing much about Korea. However, I've heard that at some colleges (Duke was one that stood out,) people tend to stick with their ethnic groups. I guess what I'm most worried about is people mistakenly taking me as a hardcore Asian and being put off by that. I understand that most people wouldn't purposely associate only with members of the same ethnicity.</p>

<p>I'm most interested in hearing about the experiences of people who attend Brown, Cornell, Wash U, Penn, Northwestern, Middlebury, Johns Hopkins, Amherst, and Dartmouth (since I applied to all those colleges,) but input from anybody is appreciated.</p>

2

<p>I go to Dartmouth. I think there its fairly easy to do either: some people seem to only be friends with people like them, but many are friends with people from all groups. Most of my best friends are the people I live with, regardless of their backgrounds.</p>

3

<p>I go to Cornell, and, yes, there are ethnic cliques. However, I can definitely tell you that the cliques are "self-formed" - for example, the Korean group doesn't all hang out with each other because no one else will; rather, they hang out with each other because that is wwho they feel the most comfortable with. I definitely have friends who are Asian, black, Indian, etc. whose main group of friends in not a majority of their race.</p>

<p>It's a personal choice.</p>