Hey! I’m a junior this year, and a competitive applicant for all the Ivies and such. Perfect GPA, 1550 SAT, great writer (so great essays) and diverse yet focused extracurriculars with a lot of volunteering. Of course, we all know that doesn’t really matter because the college admissions process is a crapshoot at this point.
However, I am Native American. Not the 1/32 Cherokee Princess kind of way, but bonafide half and half. How does this affect my prospective admissions? I have a good friend who is also half native like me, and she got into my dream school Yale last year, but I know that could be because she’s amazing. How will this factor into my decisions at schools in the top 10?
Also, I want to know if me being one of the 10 original organizers for the Atlanta MFOL and helping at the national level with activism will help at all.
well . . . I think it all depends on the college. It’s much less of a hook on average for Ivies compared with athletics, apparently. Dartmouth has a history with Native American heritage. It might be relatively more interested, if your interest is in Native American studies especially. other schools will have their own wants and needs and values. I would think that your stats are great, and your ethnicity is probably somewhat of a hook. How much of a hook depends on what the individual school finds important for adding to its class.
I strongly suggest not relying on it exclusively but rather, as with unhooked applicants, finding out why that instition is a good fit for you.
It will help but you need to show how your connected to your tribe. If you have none it won’t help that much. It helps the most for those who have grown up on a reservation.
At colleges that may consider it, tribal enrollment or documentation may be requested.
However, super selective colleges should still be assumed to be reaches generally. Opaque to the applicant factors like essays and recommendations are typically quite important to distinguish between many high stat applicants.