"Race" in College Admissions FAQ & Discussion 3

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on the common app you need to put your parent's ethnicity/birthplace

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<p><a href="https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/docs/downloadforms/CommonApp2008.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/docs/downloadforms/CommonApp2008.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p>Just the country of each parent's birth. You don't need to mention anything about ANYONE's ethnicity--that's all optional information.</p>

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why cant we all be one race.

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<p>We are in fact. It would be great if the law treated us that way too.</p>

<p>wouldn't it be obvious though? considering most asians or minorities are first gen americans?</p>

<p>Washington</a> Post: Multiracial Pupils to Be Counted in A New Way:</p>

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Public schools in the Washington region and elsewhere are abandoning their check-one-box approach to gathering information about race and ethnicity in an effort to develop a more accurate portrait of classrooms transformed by immigration and interracial marriage. Next year, they will begin a separate count of students who are of more than one race...

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<p>...then why do we have affirmative action. Shouldnt it be based on socio-economic background? I dont care what color your skin is, fair is fair. Helping someone based on the color of their skin is just as racist as judging someone based on the color of their skin. Teens shouldnt be brought up in an environment that condones special treatment or unequal treatment based on pigmentation.</p>

<p>It doesn't make sense and it never will/has. I try not to think about it, it only enrages me.</p>

<p>I believe racism is bad.</p>

<p>[/equally original statement]</p>

<p>yawn... that made me laugh quite hard..</p>

<p>^^u black? probably</p>

<p>You're right. Let's do away with all of this nonsense. That way, we can admit students* based solely on test scores, rec letters, and essays. </p>

<p>*75% of which will be from India or Southeast Asia.</p>

<p>Yep, this happens every year. After students have sent in all their applications but before they have seen all their application results, they complain about affirmative action. Read the FAQ posts (the first few posts of this thread) for what to do about the issue.</p>

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Yep, this happens every year. After students have sent in all their applications but before they have seen all their application results, they complain about affirmative action. Read the FAQ posts (the first few posts of this thread) for what to do about the issue.

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Actually I started it and I already got into Penn so whatever.</p>

<p>If I have a spanish sounding name but am not spanish or hispanic then would it be better for me to not identify as any race at all? (I am white)</p>

<p>Colleges aren't supposed to guess your ethnicity but rather to go by what you self-report. See the first few posts of this thread for more details. It's much harder to say what is advantageous for an individual applicant, as colleges don't publish clear information on that issue.</p>

<p>Untill I hear a better proposal to help minorities out from the low economic sector I will continue to support Affirmative Action.</p>

<p>It's very simple and a lot of people have been arguing it for a long time, to no avail: socioeconomic affirmative action. Beyond the small first-gen and obstacles boost currently.</p>

<p>Why should a black/Latino poor person be advantaged over an equally poor white person?</p>

<p>Because college admissions officers are idiots.</p>

<p>ok so can someone explain affirmative action to me lol</p>

<p>Here's one interesting article I found by a Google search: </p>

<p>Harvard</a> Gazette: Affirming affirmative action </p>

<p>It's maddeningly hard to find a straightforward statement by officials of a college about what exactly their affirmative action procedures are, and I don't claim that this document does that job.</p>

<p>justintsn: How about this as a better proposal to "help minorities out from the low economic sector": Start working as hard as Asians work at school.</p>