<p>Whoops, I didn’t read that your father came from Algeria.</p>
<p>You should just register yourself as Black. That would help a lot more than being French would.</p>
<p>ya they said that 
i don’t know if they are joking or something but they seem quite serious about it. as regard to the internship program, it is a government thing. it’s only for minorities like students from mexico to be exact. since there weren’t many scientists from mexico i guess. well it’s all good for me now since i got out of it… my point is, since this whole asian issue is here and can not be changed, i guess we all just have to accept it. sometimes it’s a bad thing, sometimes it can be good… or afterall it’s just an excuse made by government to kick asian kids out haha. jk at this moment. but it’s something to think about :p</p>
<p>From “The whole Asian thing…” thread: </p>
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<p>What is your basis for saying this? Harder than for what other kind of students? How much harder? What colleges are you talking about? </p>
<p>Thread merged with the existing FAQ and discussion thread on “race” as a college admission factor.</p>
<p>From “Diversity and its advantage question” thread: </p>
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<p>You are white, by the federal rules, period. Have you lived outside the United States at all yourself? Some colleges specifically ask about that, and most colleges will ask detailed questions about your citizenship, including dual citizenship. Most United States colleges get plenty of applications from European-descended people who have claims to both United States and French citizenship–I know quite a few people like that myself. Explain how you yourself can contribute a broader perspective to the college that admits you, apply widely, and see what happens. </p>
<p>Thread merged with the existing FAQ and discussion thread on “race” as a college admission factor.</p>
<p>Congratulations! You are white…but how is that possible if your father is African?</p>
<p>Where did the questioner say his father is African?</p>
<p>Honestly, if you are Asian and bear an Asian-sounding last name (though a few last names do appear in other races) - just admit it. Colleges can often tell what your race is by checking to see where you go to school, names of parents etc. By NOT putting your race down instead it evokes a negative feeling (though possibly misunderstood) that you are “ashamed of your race”.</p>
<p>I am Asian and I plan to put the truth down - regardless of the stereotypes.</p>
<p>^Good for you, bumble.</p>
<p>And the point is that there will be highly qualified Asians who will be honest & open about their heritage, and the U may prefer that to a similarly qualified applicant who, by sheltering an identity, is communicating that the goal is more important than candor.</p>
<p>(Identity is unmasked at interview time, and if one is going to refuse an interview because of a wish to hide an identity, good luck with the acceptance effort.)</p>
<p>Um, there are such things as white Africans? White people live in Africa, too.</p>
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<p>Dear Mr. Mugabe, </p>
<p>Please resign as leader of Zimbabwe.</p>
<p>kthxbai</p>
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<p>There are white people living in Africa, true. But by the federal definition </p>
<p>[Black</a> or African American persons, percent, 2000](<a href=“http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68176.htm]Black”>http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68176.htm) </p>
<p>a person who checks “Black or African American” is asserting that he or she has “origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa.” Not all people who live on the continent of Africa have origins in a black racial group, and that is the official definition–you are only “African American” if you are black. </p>
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<p>But colleges often don’t bother. It is your legal right as an applicant not to indicate a race, and colleges respect that right. The official statistics show that [large</a> numbers of colleges admit large numbers of students who are officially reported as “race/ethnicity unknown”](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865329-post4.html]large”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865329-post4.html) and that includes several colleges that endeavor to interview all applicants for admission.</p>
<p>I’m a baby boomer, which is another way of saying that I’m a good bit older than most people who post on College Confidential. I distinctly remember the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated–the most memorable day of early childhood for many people in my generation–and I remember the “long hot summer” and other events of the 1960s civil rights movement.</p>
<p>One early memory I have is of a second grade classmate (I still remember his name, which alas is just common enough that it is hard to Google him up) who moved back to Minnesota with his northern “white” parents after spending his early years in Alabama. He told me frightening stories about Ku Klux Klan violence to black people (the polite term in those days was “Negroes”), including killing babies, and I was very upset to hear about that kind of terrorism happening in the United States. He made me aware of a society in which people didn’t all treat one another with decency and human compassion, unlike the only kind of society I was initially aware of from growing up where I did. So I followed subsequent news about the civil rights movement, including the activities of Martin Luther King, Jr. up to his assassination, with great interest.</p>
<p>It happens that I had a fifth-grade teacher, a typically pale, tall, and blonde Norwegian-American, who was a civil rights activist and who spent her summers in the south as a freedom rider. She used to tell our class about how she had to modify her car (by removing the dome light and adding a locking gas cap) so that Klan snipers couldn’t shoot her as she opened her car door at night or put foreign substances into her gas tank. She has been a civil rights activist all her life, and when I Googled her a few years ago and regained acquaintance with her, I was not at all surprised to find that she is a member of the civil rights commission of the town where I grew up.</p>
<p>One day in fifth grade we had a guest speaker in our class, a young man who was then studying at St. Olaf College through the A Better Chance (ABC) affirmative action program. (To me, the term “affirmative action” still means active recruitment of underrepresented minority students, as it did in those days, and I have always thought that such programs are a very good idea, as some people have family connections to selective colleges, but many other people don’t.) During that school year (1968-1969), there was a current controversy in the United States about whether the term “Negro” or “Afro-American” or “black” was most polite. So a girl in my class asked our visitor, “What do you want to be called, ‘black’ or ‘Afro-American’?” His answer was, “I’d rather be called Henry.” Henry’s answer to my classmate’s innocent question really got me thinking. </p>
<p>So why are we still asking people what their group label is forty years later?</p>
<p>I was recently reading this thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/742349-race-college-admissions-faq-discussion-4-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/742349-race-college-admissions-faq-discussion-4-a.html</a></p>
<p>and I found out that I could self identify my Asian status or decline to put any ethnicity on my college apps. BUT, my name is distinctly Asian in origin (Indian), so is there any way around this issue so that colleges can’t find out my ethnicity and use it to change my admissions status in any way?</p>
<p>I’m just frustrated that being Asian is such a big disadvantage when it comes to competitive college admissions… and that Blacks and Hispanics get an advantage (whether fair or unfair).</p>
<p>Go to court to get your name legally changed.</p>
<p>It won’t really be a “make or break” factor, so you might as well be honest and self-identify your race.</p>
<p>It’s not a big disadvantage, and trying to hide your ethnicity is more likely to hurt than to help.</p>
<p>I think you’d be wise to take a dialectical approach to this and not get polarized on what is advantage or disadvantage. Because individuals can have a name that does not accurately reflect their race or ethnicity it is appropriate to give you an opportunity to choose how you wish to identify yourself. (For example you could have an ambigous name like Lee, which is multiethnic, or you could have a highly identified name and have been adopted, or…there are multiple iterations on how names and identities can be differentiated)</p>
<p>You cannot control how colleges use the information, just as you cannot control much of the entire process (which is why it is so stressful if you have a drive to control all outcomes). It can be very tempting to get attached to a single variable that will make all the difference–but it is really a flow of many, many variables in process. Make a choice about how you want to present yourself and trust that you are going to find admissions to a school that will value you. Put your genuine self into the essays and fill in the blanks in a way that feels true to you, and let it go. </p>
<p>(If this aspect really preoccupies you, then write one of your essay’s about the legacy of your name…so that you can differentiate yourself from whatever you feel will be projected on to it.)</p>
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<p>The answer to this question is always the same, by the United States federal definitions. </p>
<p>[Black</a> or African American persons, percent, 2000](<a href=“http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68176.htm]Black”>http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68176.htm) </p>
<p>"White. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as ‘White’ or report entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Near Easterner, Arab, or Polish.</p>
<p>“Black or African American. A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as ‘Black, African Am., or Negro,’ or provide written entries such as African American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian.” </p>
<p>Here’s a simple rule of thumb: if no one in South Africa would have called you “black” or “coloured,” especially during the days of apartheid, </p>
<p>[Apartheid</a> – Africana](<a href=“http://www.africanaencyclopedia.com/apartheid/apartheid.html]Apartheid”>Apartheid in South Africa: What Really Happened and How Did It End?) </p>
<p>you have no basis in America for calling yourself “African American,” the official synonym of which is “black.” A person who checks “Black or African American” is asserting that he or she has “origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa.” Not all people who live on the continent of Africa have origins in a black racial group, and that is the official definition–you are only “African American” if you are black. If you call yourself white, and your friends do too, it doesn’t matter where your parents were born, or what countries they lived in. You also have the choice of not indicating any ethnicity or race at all. What a college does with what it sees on your form varies from college to college. </p>
<p>Good luck in your applications, and good luck to everyone else applying in the coming application season.</p>
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<p>By the federal definitions, </p>
<p>[Black</a> or African American persons, percent, 2000](<a href=“http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68176.htm]Black”>http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68176.htm) </p>
<p>Somali students who grew up in the United States are definitely black, and the terms “black” and “African American” are synonyms in the federal definitions of “race” categories. The same applies to young people whose parents came from other tropical African countries where black people live. (North African people are categorized as white by the federal definitions.) You also have the choice of not indicating any ethnicity or race at all. What a college does with what it sees on your form varies from college to college. </p>
<p>Good luck in your applications, and good luck to everyone else applying in the coming application season.</p>
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<p>The answer to this frequently asked question makes up the first few posts in this FAQ thread. </p>
<p>You have and everyone has the legal right to leave the form blank. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062864808-post1.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062864808-post1.html</a> </p>
<p>The recent national trend has been for an increasing number of college applicants to decline to self-identify any ethnic group. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865289-post3.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865289-post3.html</a> </p>
<p>Many colleges admit many students each year for whom they do not know of any ethnic affiliation. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865329-post4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865329-post4.html</a> </p>
<p>You don’t need to worry about this. If you choose not to self-report any race or ethnicity, for whatever reason you have, the college won’t hold that against you, because for all the college knows you are just a student who is very aware of your legal rights and chooses to exercise those rights. See </p>
<p>[</a> </p>
<p>for evidence that colleges don’t care about a blank response, because they can’t infer anything from it, and aren’t required to do anything about it. </p>
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<p>The Census Bureau has done a study of the most common family names in the United States and what “race” or ethnicity is reported by people with those last names. A lot of family names are characteristic of (that is, highly correlated with) one federally defined “race” group or another, or of Hispanic ethnicity, but there are always exceptions. Wang is a family name in Norway as well as in China. “Leroy Johnson” could be a black man or a white man. And so on. People marry people of other “races,” and adopt children from other “races,” and thus family names are not an unerring guide to anyone’s “race,” especially if you look closely at the federal definitions. </p>
<p>What you decide about how to fill out your application form is up to you. But notice that many, [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865329-post4.html]many”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865329-post4.html]many</a> colleges report lots of applicants as "race/ethnicity unknown](<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865405-post9.html[/url]“>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865405-post9.html[/url),” so not every admission committee guesses about every applicant. </p>
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<p>The definition of Hispanic ethnicity used by the federal government </p>
<p>[Persons</a> of Hispanic or Latino origin, percent, 2000](<a href=“http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68188.htm]Persons”>http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68188.htm) </p>
<p>"Hispanics or Latinos are those people who classified themselves in one of the specific Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino categories listed on the Census 2000 questionnaire -‘Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano,’ ‘Puerto Rican’, or ‘Cuban’ -as well as those who indicate that they are ‘other Spanish/Hispanic/Latino.’ Persons who indicated that they are ‘other Spanish/Hispanic/Latino’ include those whose origins are from Spain, the Spanish-speaking countries of Central or South America, the Dominican Republic or people identifying themselves generally as Spanish, Spanish-American, Hispanic, Hispano, Latino, and so on.</p>
<p>"Origin can be viewed as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the person’s parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States.</p>
<p>“People who identify their origin as Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino may be of any race.” </p>
<p>makes clear that a great variety of people of varying ancestry or “heritage” or “country of birth” can categorize themselves as Hispanic. You have the choice to indicate Hispanic ethnicity, by that definition, and to indicate white “race” after indicating Hispanic ethnicity. (The forms used in this application season first ask a Hispanic ethnicity yes-no question, and then suggest “select one or more” for the “race” question.) You also have the choice of not indicating any ethnicity or race at all. What a college does with what it sees on your form varies from college to college. </p>
<p>It’s always a good idea to let a college know about any diversity factor you might bring to a new enrolled class at the college. It’s unclear how weighty different kinds of ethnic heritages are in college admission decisions at which colleges. </p>
<p>Good luck in your applications, and good luck to everyone else applying in the coming application season.</p>
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<p>Several of the answers above are wrong, or at least out of date. For this year’s (2009-2010) admission season, all college application forms are required by federal regulation to have an optional ethnicity question that is in two parts, first asking about Hispanic ethnicity (yes or no) and then asking about the federal defined “race” categories, with the instruction “select one or more” or some language very similar to that meaning that you can choose one or more category. (You can choose no category at all by not answering the question.) You also have the choice of not indicating any ethnicity or race at all. What a college does with what it sees on your form varies from college to college. </p>
<p>Good luck in your applications, and good luck to everyone else applying in the coming application season.</p>
<p>But, if I’m just Hispanic, can I just check the Hispanic box and not the other ones of other races?</p>
<p>Is ethnicity status mandatory on application?</p>