I was just wondering if biracial (asian and white) is considered an urm?
<p>With that particular mix I'd assume no.</p>
<p>I'm Asian and white, too.</p>
<p>We're so unlucky.</p>
<p>urm is only for "colored" people. native american, latino, african american.</p>
<p>the NAACP hates you.</p>
<p>i was just wondering because i saw a wellesely stat and they had biracial and multiracial under the minority category, and technically, i'm biracial b/c i'm of two races.</p>
<p>You have the wrong two races. URM stands for UNDER represented minority. Asian is a OVER represented minority. At least in theory, marking white/asian should not help or hurt you. This may be true, but some people feel that marking asian may actually hurt at colleges having a large percentage of asian students. Colleges do want to have diversity. If an asian student's last name doesn't give it away, they might be better off not marking the box at all. Then they would fall in the white category instead of the asian category.</p>
<p>There was a recent article in the Wash Post saying that a record portion of the students taking the SAT, 25 percent, had not indicated their ethnicity. This has led some researcher to say that the gap between white/asian and black/hispanic test takers may not actually be closing since it appears that whites/asians are not identifying themselves as such. The College Board has redesigned the website to make it more difficult to skip the question, although you are not required to provide the info. Sorry, this is off topic.</p>
<p>well, i have a "white" last name. will it be best just to check white instead of asian, or should i check both on the college apps? any advice?</p>
<p>what if i'm white and latino?</p>
<p>If you are white and latino, mark both boxes. You will be considered an URM because you marked the latino/hispanic box.</p>
<p>Noel,
Here's how wikipedia defines hispanic:
"Hispanic, as used in the United States, is one of several terms used to categorize native and naturalized U.S. citizens, permanent residents and temporary immigrants, whose background hail either from Spain, the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America or the original settlers of the traditionally Spanish-held Southwestern United States. The term is used as a broad form of classification for this wide range of ethnicities, races, and nationalies who have historically used Spanish as their primary language."</p>
<p>Personally, I would not check "other" unless there is a box that specifically says "mulitracial" or "biracial". You are "hispanic". You might also check with your counselor to make sure that is how your highschool has you classified. You want your college apps to agree with your school records.</p>
<p>African Americans, also known as Afro-Americans, Black Americans, or simply blacks, are an ethnic group in the United States of America whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to West and sub-Saharan Africa. Many African Americans also have European and/or Native American ancestors.</p>
<p>Darn it! I wish asians were a URM =(</p>
<p>lol</p>
<p>Nobody is going to check your family tree or ask for birth certificates. Basically, you want to be a URM and you can mark the box so long as you have reasonable cause to do so, and you can show up on campus and face somebody on the adcom without guilt or fear. If you are a URM, I'm sure you know who you are. YoMama made a good point about checking with your GC to see what is on the high school transcript.</p>
<p>The official race codes are maintained by the Census Bureau, and there are hundreds of them. Whatever boxes they have on the application are approximations of what the Census Bureau tracks, and the boxes may be labeled differently from college to college.</p>
<p>Schools in rural areas such as Bowdoin, Middlebury, and some southern schools where Asians area a small minority look very favorably upon their Asian applicants. A few years back, Amherst made a point of upping their Asian population, although I don't know if they still are. Look at the statistics of the schools you're interested in and see if they have a small number of Asians. If so, you may find it an advantage.</p>
<p>Schools often will count asians as minorities when it comes to reporting stats about diversity--but do not usually consider them minorities for URM purposes.</p>
<p>Some schools will treat asians as URM if they are underrepresented (note at schools with lots of asians they aren't URM, because while M they are not UR.). We know a 1/2 asian 1/2 caucasian who was treated like URM by Grinnell (given a free ticket to visit). Also merit aid but that could be because he is an extremely high performing student.</p>