"Race" in College Admission FAQ & Discussion 10

<p>There’s no reason why a black or native american student should have any advantage over a white student. There’s also no reason why a white student should have any advantage over a black or native american student, but they do in the absence of affirmative action programs.</p>

<p>Usually the black people or the native Americans don’t have good education. These universities are trying to motivate and learn citizens of America to understand the power of education.</p>

<p>Then shouldn’t AA favor the financially disadvantaged, regardless of race, rather than just certain ethnic demographics? It doesn’t make sense. Also amarkov, I would love to hear how whites have advantages over blacks nowadays in absence of AA</p>

<p>Should I mark White or White and Asian??</p>

<p>Hi, I am was born and raised in America to a white father and a Chinese mother. So I have a white last name which can hide my Asian heritage.</p>

<p>We all know that Asians get discriminated against in the application process, because of the stereotypical “Asian genius”.</p>

<p>I was wondering should I put White on the application or just check White and Asian.
There is no “Other” box for the Common App.</p>

<p>I really don’t associate to my Chinese relatives, all of them mostly live in China and I only see them once every few years, and I speak a little bit of Chinese. I honestly consider myself more white than I do Asian.</p>

<p>However on the application process, if I put White I know that it will be slightly easier to get in. However if I put White and Asian, they might consider me for a minority scholarship.</p>

<p>Any advice please?</p>

<p>BTW, my SAT scores aren’t that great I got an 1820. My GPA (unweighted) is around 3.8 or 3.9 and my weighted GPA is 4.2.</p>

<p>You can do either. Or, as tokenadult mentioned in the opening posts, you can also decline to self-identify (i.e. leave the box blank).</p>

<p>^^^Would not putting anything be more beneficial? Would I still be able to apply for an Asian minority scholarship?</p>

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<p>Well, for instance, [black</a> men and white felons get job callbacks at about the same rate](<a href=“http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/09/study-black-man-and-white-felon-same-chances-for-hire/"]black”>http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/09/study-black-man-and-white-felon-same-chances-for-hire/), even if they are completely identical otherwise.</p>

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<p>You’re not an “underrepresented” minority, so you’re not going to get any racial preferences. How you choose to answer the question - white, white / Asian, decline to self-identify - is completely up to you. As for “Asian minority scholarships,” you’d have to check the fine print of the scholarship.</p>

<p>^^^Yes I know, but what would be more beneficial for me?</p>

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<p>If you’re concerned or suspicious about the use of racial classification in admissions, either check white or decline self-identification. You yourself have said that you identify as white more so than Asian, and all applicants have the option of declining self-identification.</p>

<p>Question:</p>

<p>Is there any difference from an admission official’s point of view if a white person is American (not native) or European? I am eastern European FYI.</p>

<p>No. In the US, eastern European people just get lumped into “white” the same way western Europeans are, because honestly they’re not treated much differently here.</p>

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<p>The solution to stereotypes that blacks are poor workers is to change workplace discrimination policy, not to change college admissions policy. How, exactly, would college admissions preferences that fix the issue? It has nothing to do with the issue. You’re trying to fix problem A (workplace discrimination) by boosting blacks’ chances at B (college admissions). That’s like trying to fix problem C (sports teams’ stereotypes that Asians are not good at sports) by boosting Asians’ chances at D (getting recruited into college sports teams).</p>

<p>That’s not the point. The point is that even when people think they’re not considering race, they are. So in the absence of affirmative action, admissions are not fair and race-neutral; they’re biased in favor of white people.</p>

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<p>Do you have any evidence to support this?</p>

<p>I don’t have anything specifically for college admissions, but it seems like a pretty big stretch to think that college admissions officers are immune to the racial bias corporate hiring staff has. What is different about either the process or the people running it that would eliminate that bias?</p>

<p>Most employment is done by personal interview, where it is easy for undesired types of discrimination to creep in and hard for the organization to police its employees (on an individual basis) on. You can gather statistical evidence of racial discrimination over a large number of cases, but will be unlikely to either prove or disprove it for a given individual case.</p>

<p>Most* four year college admissions is done by just plugging some combination of grades, class rank, and test scores into a formula. This does not leave much room for racial discrimination at the admissions office; should racial discrimination affect the process, it affects it in changing the inputs (i.e. influence on grades, class rank, and test scores).</p>

<p>*Most four year college students attend moderately selective state universities, not super-selective schools with opaque holistic admissions processes that are commonly discussed on these forums.</p>

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<p>Isn’t it widely repeated that an asian score needs to be lowered by X points to be equivalent to a white score, and similarly a black score can be boosted by Y points? How do we know that isn’t a factor? Indeed, that is “changing the inputs.”</p>

<p>Also what most of us are concerned with are the “super-selective schools with opaque holistic processes” right? (Someone correct me if I’m wrong here)</p>

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I think that I’ve heard this before as well. Malcolm Gladwell.</p>

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<p>You’re referring to the [Espenshade</a> and Chung (2005)](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/Opportunity%20Cost%20of%20Admission%20Preferences%20Espenshade%20Chung%20June%202005.pdf]Espenshade”>http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/Opportunity%20Cost%20of%20Admission%20Preferences%20Espenshade%20Chung%20June%202005.pdf) study. None of the selective universities that practices racial preferences denies that racial classification is a factor. What they will not publicly reveal is how important it is.</p>

<p>Re: #119</p>

<p>The “admit by formula” state universities may have had in the past lower threshold scores for specific desired-by-the-university racial and ethnic groups (they did not rescale the scores by race or ethnicity), but these were eliminated in more recent years as such policies became politically unpopular. (Nevertheless, it is still widely believed that there are preferences even when there are none at specific state universities where they are banned.)</p>

<p>It is at the private universities with opaque holistic admissions processes where race and ethnicity can matter, but the opaqueness of the process can mean that how much is matter is not knowable from the outside (and may not even be all that consistent from one applicant to the next at the same private university).</p>