<p>By law, they are not allowed to do so explicitly. There was a statewide proposition passed a few years back to negate their ability to do this.</p>
<p>0_o thats a good thing</p>
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<p>Why would budget cuts have anything to do with ethnic targets for enrollment? A quota for each race would be PLAINLY illegal under the Bakke decision, a Supreme Court case the UC system lost a long time ago.</p>
<p>The case for cultural diversity in institutions of higher learning may be reinforced by scientific research that is beginning to reveal that culture affects the way the brain processes information and the way we think.</p>
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<p>I would tend to think the differences in brain function by culture stated earlier is greatly diminished when the student of a different race is raised in the US. East Asian kids raised in the US have a lot more in common with other US kids than their counterparts living in Asia with respect to individual versus collective feelings. What I’m saying is that if someone is looking to get this flavor of diversity, they’re probably not going to get it by recruiting east Asians who were raised in the US.</p>
<p>Wait, so if colleges do consider race in admissions (this thread has thoroughly confused me as to whether or not this is true), is it more advantageous for a white person to say that she is white, or to not identify her ethnicity at all?</p>
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<p>Most colleges self-report (by responses to Common Data Set question C7), </p>
<p>[Common</a> Data Set 2009-2010](<a href=“http://www.commondataset.org/docs/0910/CDS2009_2010.htm]Common”>http://www.commondataset.org/docs/0910/CDS2009_2010.htm) </p>
<p>that they give some consideration to the “Racial/ethnic status” of applicants. Common Data Set question C7 lists a lot of other academic and nonacademic factors that colleges may or may not consider as they choose applicants to be admitted. It is unclear, even when colleges list “Racial/ethnic status” as a “very important” factor, how that factor interacts with all the other factors a college considers. </p>
<p>Because it is hard to know how colleges use ethnicity data about students, it is also hard to be sure just how advantageous (or possibly disadvantageous) different reported ethnicities might or might not be. When I have looked at a few colleges that report detailed admission rates for subpopulations of applicants, I THINK (but I may be mistaken in my recollection) that some colleges report admission rates for “race unknown” persons, and those persons seem to have about the same base admission rate as the general applicant pool. But I don’t have figures or a link at hand, and I may have gained this impression from another source. I’m 100 percent sure that this issue varies from college to college–but so far my own son is consistently declining to check any boxes on the optional ethnicity and race questionnaire, come what may.</p>
<p>Hey guys, I’m asian, so should I put my race as “unknown” so as to not have muyself at a disadvantage? applyingto harvard and princeton</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>The question of whether Asians face a disadvantage relative to equally qualified whites is quite contentious, although as a [phenomenon[/url</a>], it is [url=<a href=“http://www.advancingequality.org/files/kidderarticle.pdf]well-documented[/url”>http://www.advancingequality.org/files/kidderarticle.pdf]well-documented[/url</a>]. There is [url=<a href=“http://www.nacacnet.org/EventsTraining/NC10/Baltimore/educational/Documents/C313.pdf]some”>http://www.nacacnet.org/EventsTraining/NC10/Baltimore/educational/Documents/C313.pdf]some</a> evidence](<a href=“http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=707624]phenomenon[/url”>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=707624) suggesting it to be true, but for now, like always, there is nothing certain.</p>
<p>If you are concerned about any possible disadvantage, feel free in declining to state your racial classification and ethnicity. As tokenadult’s opening posts show, many selective colleges report not insignificant percentages of students whose racial classification was unknown. In the case of Princeton, the last two years saw more and more students opting not to answer.</p>
<p>^ ^ Applicants don’t report their “race” as “unknown” (presumably most applicants know what set of races would be possible for self-description, by the sometimes ambiguous federal rules), but simply decline to answer an optional question. See [post</a> #4](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063506721-post4.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063506721-post4.html) of this thread for a list of several colleges that admit quite a few students who decline to self-report race, and see [post</a> #6](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063506742-post6.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063506742-post6.html) for the Association for Institutional Research statement that colleges aren’t expected, and can’t be expected, to guess student ethnicity if that is not self-reported by the student.</p>
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<p>That may fool them until the personal interview. What’s your plan for the interview?</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>But did you consider the possibility that had he been “forthright” all along, he never would’ve gotten a personal interview?</p>
<p>Kalpen Suresh Modi’s friends told him that his name made it harder for him to get callbacks. Intending to prove his friends wrong in a light-hearted way, Modi started going by “Kal Penn.” His callbacks increased by 50% following the change. Causal effect or temporal effect? You be the judge.</p>
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<p>That example is not statistical proof that identifying race (or not) is the determiner of getting an interview. Personally I’ve never heard of a single truly competitive candidate to an Elite being declined an interview after identifying race on the app, or when disclosing revealing birth name. If you have more than one example of highly qualified Asians not getting interviews, I’d like to see those examples.</p>
<p>The Modi example is no proof.</p>
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<p>Why not? Is your reasoning, “I say it’s not, therefore it isn’t”?</p>
<p>How do [colleges</a> that interview most applicants report that many students are “race/ethnicity unknown”](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063506721-post4.html]colleges”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063506721-post4.html) even after they have enrolled and been on campus attending classes? Could it be that neither interviewers nor professors nor dormitory counselors have any responsibility to categorize every student they meet by “race”? </p>
<p>After edit: If a college has a definite procedure of asking all interviewers to report to the college the interviewer’s personal impression of an applicant’s “race,” that probably would be a “smoking gun” that would get the college into a lot of trouble if an applicant reported an allegation of that through the federal Department of Education Office of Civil Rights complaint process. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintprocess.html[/url]”>http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintprocess.html</a></p>
<p>The interesting story about Kal Penn, </p>
<p>[Kal</a> Penn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“Kal Penn - Wikipedia”>Kal Penn - Wikipedia) </p>
<p>just to be clear, is not about the college admission process. It may indeed reveal a societal prejudice.</p>
<p>This has probably been discussed before, but I want a definitive answer.</p>
<p>Given that: Jewish students, similar to Asian students, are overrepresented in colleges.</p>
<p>Do colleges discriminate in admission of Jewish students?
Furthermore, would it be beneficial to attempt to hide all instances of this fact in applications?</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>Anti-Semitism is not chic anymore, and it hasn’t been for a while now. In fact, people are generally afraid of expressing anything that could remotely be construed as anti-Semitic. Coupled with Jews’ being part of the American elite, and your question can be answered with a definitive NO. Thus, there is no need to hide Jewishness as it is not considered a “problem.”</p>
<p>How does Jewishness show up in typical responses to application questions? It’s not asked about explicitly on any college application I have seen.</p>
<p>"
“Hey I’m Sudanese which is in North Africa and It is an Arab country considered part of the Middle East” </p>
<p>Actually, I was quite surprised the year I first learned that Sudan is part of the Arab League. I have never thought of Sudan as part of North Africa, as I knew from childhood that the upriver parts of the Nile valley were long inhabited by tropical African (that is, “black”) people. If you are socially identified as black when you interact with Americans in America, it seems to me that it’s fair to self-identify as black on your college application. Mentioning what specific country you come from may be helpful in your application too. "</p>
<p>I have the same problem. My question was still not answered in the last thread. I am Spanish (as in Spain) but I checked “no” because I am sort of Italian culturally in addition to Japanese. So, I guess that this is ok as well, right?</p>