Do colleges look favorable on students applying to unpopular major or are part of a ethnic minority? In my case, does it actually matter that I’m a Filipino girl pursuing computer science? Obviously computer science isn’t unpopular, but does being a minority in general give you a leg up?
It does, if you are a right kind of minority like Native American, AA or Hispanic, being Filipino makes it harder.
It depends on the college. Some colleges do use broad racial categories like a blunt instrument, lumping all Asians together into one mass. Other places may take a more nuanced look and recognize that not all Asian students are advantaged. (I’m pretty sure that Filipinos are underrepresented in tech and science, as are many other Central and Southeast Asians like Afghanis, Cambodians, and Laotians. When people discuss Asian overrepresentation in tech it’s really more East Asian and South Asians that are.) It’s hard to know which place is which.
And it matters for the school, too - some schools only do numerical admissions (public universities are more likely to do this) while others do holistic admissions.
One suggestion to you might be to write a short supplemental essay about the differences between Asian ethnicities and why you think being Filipino makes a difference here. It might open the eyes of some folks, if nothing else.
Also, I learned something new today: Tagalog is the fourth-most spoken language in the U.S., after English, Spanish, and Chinese.
Oh okay thank you. And that statistic is really interesting. I guess I just assumed that Filipinos were less common that other Asian races where I live.