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D’oh.
They have no way of categorizing you without you yourself confirming what race/ethnicity you are. They can’t ASSUME if you leave it blank. That is the whole point. Such a quota would only matter for applicants whom they CAN categorize…</p>
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If they were really trying to limit the number of Asians on campus, you really think you could avoid that by leaving it blank on your application? And honestly, I doubt if there is more than 1 in a thousand Asian applicants who could hide their ethnicity even on the application by leaving that line blank.</p>
<p>^ They’re trying to limit the number of Asians who are OFFICIALLY on campus. If you never report your ethnicity they CANNOT tally you under an ethnic group, no matter how likely you belong to a certain one.</p>
<p>Suppose in a randomly selected group of 100 students that 60% (60/100) are Asian. If, however, 45 of them decided not to report their ethnicity, the official data would only have down 27.27% Asian (15/55) while 45% go in their own category of unreported. Now obviously this is an extreme; if the numbers really were this distorted from people not reporting their ethnicity I’m sure something would be said about it. But few enough people do it so that the numbers aren’t all that far off from reality and that there might be a change in admissions outlook should such a quota exist.</p>
<p>Admissions officers, who always have racial quotas in mind, need only to perform the “sniff test” on race when making admissions decisions for students who check “decline to state race”. The student with the last name “Smith” has a clear advantage over the student with the name “Chang”, even if both are half-white/half-Asian. In the latter case, the student is almost certain to be at least part Asian. For the former, the student is highly likely to be all or part white. Not a bad assumption for the racially-minded Admissions Officer, who I will call “Noah”.</p>
<p>These Admissions Officers are human beings, after all, and they have been tasked with populating their “ark” (college) with just the right numbers of each “animal” (race). If more students choose “decline to state race”, why, they’ll just have to dig a little deeper. Check the last name. Look at their photograph. Verify the birthplace of parents. Reporting on race to the Federal Government is one thing. Populating their college “ark” is their number one mission, and they wouldn’t want too many aardvarks and too few zebras on their boat.</p>
<p>Why would either type of half-Asian be inclined to not state their race? </p>
<p>In addition, it seems that stating his/her race is an easy solution for the half-Asian applicant (with an Asian surname) trying to avoid being “discriminated against” by the adcoms.</p>
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I feel like I’m speaking to a brick wall here. It doesn’t matter if they are actually Asian; they only care about the OFFICIAL NUMBERS, and you can’t tally a student OFFICIALLY under a racial category WITHOUT THAT STUDENT’S OWN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF IT.</p>
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You can say this, or shout it, but what’s your reason for believing that it’s true? The colleges will all say that they don’t care about the number of Asians vs. the number of whites. If, however, you don’t believe that and think there is a secret plan to discriminate against Asians, why would the official numbers matter?</p>
<p>What if your name’s Hugh Wang?</p>
<p>Leaving it blank won’t help you out…i dont see any benefits :/</p>
<p>It shouldn’t matter what you’re counted as. Put down what you are and then the college will do what they want with that.</p>
<p>It’s conversations such as these that make me hate AA 
It makes AA seem so petty and shallow</p>
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Diversity matters because of the numbers they put down in their brochures, in data sets, etc. They care about THOSE numbers, and if your name is Hong Chen and you do not report your race, they can’t assume you’re Asian and categorize you as such; they MUST put you down as unreported and hence you do not affect the numbers. It doesn’t matter what reality is; the whole point is that they are trying to make the numbers look good (that’s how colleges say they have lots of ethnic diversity). Nobody figures out if a school is racially diverse by visiting; they instead look at the numbers, however distorted they may be through unreported cases.</p>
<p>Adcoms do not actually have a vendetta against Asians. They only want fewer of them in their data sets. And if you’re Asian and can go to a school without impacting its racial data sets one way or another then you’re probably better off. Once again, there is a difference between the numbers and the actual distribution (the latter of which includes both reported and unreported cases). Colleges only need to worry about the former.</p>
<p>I think you’ve got your conspiracy theory wrong. The conspiracy theory is that colleges want to make sure that there aren’t “too many Asians,” because this might (supposedly) discourage white students. It seems to me that the official numbers don’t matter that much. When they talk about demonstrating diversity, they mean showing that they have URMs.</p>
<p>All schools keep two sets of racial statistics: one for the Feds (DOJ/DOE) and one internally. The official (Fed) statistics are window dressing. They are required by the government, and reflect self-reported racial data. Without them, the colleges can’t get Federal money. The internal statistics reflect reality. They specify how many students of each color are enrolled in their school to the best of their knowledge. This is important information, for it provides the administrators with a view of the true “diversity” of their student bodies. Of course, the admins aren’t going to tell the public about their internal data. But they would be stupid not to closely monitor the racial background of their students as best as they can.</p>
<p>The nightmare scenario for the elite-level colleges is Berkeley and UCLA. Not only are there fewer white students than Asian students, but white “yield” has reached the point where a large majority of accepted white applicants (about 65%) now turn down Berkeley and UCLA for other schools. This “white-flight” is nearly impossible to reverse, and diminishes the prestige of said colleges. After all, how many white students want to attend Howard University or Morehouse College? Or San Francisco and Oakland (CA) public schools, for that matter?</p>
<p>The assertion that college admissions officers only care about self-reported racial data is absurd. There are quotas for everything on campus, and race is at or near the top of the list for (almost) all colleges.</p>
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Showing they have URMs through the official numbers. How else would they do it? Taking cliched photographs of multi-cultural activities being performed on campus and sticking those in pamphlets?
Well there, you said it yourself. They don’t tell the public about the real numbers, and what is the purpose of diversity again? To convince the administrators to stay at an institution because that place is racially diverse? No, to convince the public that they are diverse, and for that you only need the public numbers.
I see the point you’re making but there are a couple of things wrong: 1) admitted students will usually look at the public numbers to determine whether the school is a “racial” fit anyways, and 2) the current prevalence of applicants of unreported races isn’t nearly enough to turn any Ivy into Berkeley Asian-wise. Also, I challenge the notion that a school’s prestige is lowered as a result. We are looking at apples vs. oranges here, public schools (which as a whole have been declining in prestige) vs. privates. I doubt a white-flight could really occur at an Ivy League school.</p>
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What other examples can you really think of? Colleges keeping track of who’s taking what major (which, once again, incorporate public numbers)?</p>
<p>The nightmare at Berkeley and UCLA only happened because the UCs were compelled to do away with affirmative action. If that were to happen at the Ivies, it would most likely be the result of a court ruling which could be applied to all private schools in America, thus softening the effect it would have on us because there are only so many qualified Asian applicants, and each one of them can only matriculate at one school. In other words, our Ivies don’t really need to worry.</p>
<p>“white “yield” has reached the point where a large majority of accepted white applicants (about 65%) now turn down Berkeley and UCLA for other schools.”</p>
<p>WHAT “white flight”? This is news to me! Maybe “black” flight, because black kids with choices may not choose to be one of 2 or 3 percent, but I don’t meet many white students who won’t go to UC’s. OTOH, I’ve heard of some “Asian” flight at certain UC’s, but only here on CC.</p>
<p>jamescchen, do you have a link with yield by race? </p>
<p>Even with that, I would suspect that at this point, it’s so hard to get into UCLA and Cal, that the same students have some very competitive options.</p>
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<p>To the ambitious URM college applicant (myself included), this is a negligible difference.</p>
<p>^edit: ORM, not URM…=D</p>
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<p>This is unlikely to happen at the Ivy’s for a number of reasons. California makes up about 40% of the Asian population of the US. The reason so many Asians attend Berkeley and UCLA is because it’s more than just a good school, it’s a good school with a relatively inexpensive price tag. The Ivies on the other hand, cannot offer this privilege, nor are there are as many Asians in one concentrated place on the East Coast. Furthermore, there are eight Ivies compared to the two UC’s you claim experience “white flight”. The dispersion would lead to a smaller Asian percentage.</p>
<p>In addition, I am at a complete loss as to what Asian population has to do with the prestige of a school. If Asians have high-stats and are generally achievers, I fail to understand what that has to do with school prestige? How does having a high percentage of a certain race dim the prestige of a school? </p>
<p>Finally, I have not found, amongst my friends at least, that UCLA or Berkeley’s prestige have been at all harmed by the high Asian population. These are friends who are white. I have yet to meet anyone who did not consider UCLA or Berkeley very prestigious.</p>
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Perhaps you are not following what I’m saying. And think of it this way: ORM means overREPRESENTED minority. If you are not represented under a certain racial group (by leaving the race box blank) you are not counted amongst their data sets (at least the one that’s pertinent to this thread).</p>