<p>No it is not. But if your last name is “Gupta” and you don’t want to identify yourself as Indian, ad coms will know that you are and that you are trying to elude them by not providing your race in fear of being put at a significant disadvantage.</p>
<p>By your line of thought the only people that wouldn’t put down their race are those who feel designating one would be a disadvantage.</p>
<p>I am only refferring to the OP who feels that his race would carry a disadvantage.</p>
<p>I would not send my child to school that goes thru this kind of thinking process. Too creepy, plenty of other nice places. Why to break thru closed door, there are plenty of wide opened.</p>
<p>Give me a break! I haven’t seen any applications to mainstream colleges that do not ask for a voluntary racial identification. About 20% of students decline to give it, so that’s no big deal, either.</p>
<p>Also, the existence of any “disadvantage” for Asian students is a matter of great debate, and not an accepted fact at all. Every college accepts lots of Asian-ethnic applicants, and lots of colleges (not the ones most popular with Asian-ethnic applicants, of course) would gladly accept more. I think any disadvantage Asian applicants face is at worst a function of having very high concentrations of applications at a very small number of colleges, and a cultural disconnect among many Asians who have trouble believing that non-quantitative factors are actually crucial in American selective college admissions. White students with similar profiles face a similar “disadvantage”, and identifying your race or not won’t affect things either way.</p>
<p>Names are slippery things, though. I have close relatives who share my (very Jewish) last name who are Episcopalians and hard-core Evangelicals; I know other people with identifiably Jewish last names who are multi-generation Christian Scientists, Quakers, or followers of an early 20th-century cult. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s daughters, with their Indo/Persian names, are my blood relatives, and probably not yours.</p>
<p>^ ^ “Hispanic” is not a “race” by the federal definitions, which is one of the main reasons the college ethnicity questionnaires have been redesigned by federal regulation this year. </p>
<p>^ Egyptians and Palestinians are white by the federal definitions.</p>
<p>So, if I want to fill out the questionnaire, I have to indicate something else alongside Hispanic?</p>
<p>Hey guys,</p>
<p>Really quick question. Ok, so I am 40 percent Spanish (as in from Spain). Apparently, now the common app asks you if you are of hispanic decent. Then, there is a space below that thay says “background:________.” So, two things. One, if you are spanish does that make you a URM. Also, what are you supposed to write on the background space? </p>
<p>Thanks so much,
Robbie</p>
<p>No. You are European. A few schools won’t care if you just have a Spanish name. Most will count you as white european.</p>
<p>Lol ya I kinda thought that I would be counted as a European. However, I am indeed hispanic, and on the common app it asks you to mark if you are caucasian or hispanic. So, I am confused as to how they would even know I was European…if I marked hispanic.</p>
<p>Hispanic does apply to European Spanish people, but that’s not exactly what colleges are looking for.</p>
<p>They now ask you to mark two boxes:</p>
<p>Ethnicity: Hispanic or non-Hispanic
Race: White, black, Asian, etc.</p>
<p>Some applications may still include Hispanic as a race.</p>
<p>However, I’m going to go out on a limb here and ask some counterquestions. How do YOU identify? Have you and your family always identified yourselves as white during your entire life? When you fill out other forms, what do you check? How do you think of yourself? What does your culture and home life reflect?</p>
<p>im asian and i recently found out from my father that i am about 1/32 Pourtegese as well. how should i represent myself? could i check asian and hispanic/mexican? (i do not know what categories they have)</p>
<p>1/32?? </p>
<p>You’re Asian.</p>
<p>How are you 40 percent Spanish? That seems like sucha weird percentage.</p>
<p>A family I know officially changed their last name’s spelling from Lin (obviously Chinese name) to Lynn (certified Anglo) so that their son has a better chance at college admission. Just imagine the headache for the entire family - with all the institutions that have their records.</p>
<p>As much as I try to remain open minded and culturally relativistic, deep down I hold them in a mildest form of contempt. It’s nothing but a soft form of deception. I will never trade my sense of identity for some obscure and unproven advantage in the college admission game. Besides, it’s not like their son was competing for hyper competitive colleges and universities inundated with Asian academic monsters. </p>
<p>In my case, I actually talked about my heritage in the main essay, not as a theme, but in passing as part of what made who I am and what led my self discovery process.</p>
<p>Just be yourself. Would you routinely hide your origin and identity every time there is a vague indication of a disadvantage due to being what and who you are? That’s a depressing thought!</p>
<p>how far do you go to identify yourself? Like 1/8 or 1/4 or 1/16 or even 1/64?
There isn’t any scientific rule about this. And there isn’t any commonplace social rule about this either. I feel quite strongly identified with a country that was the ancestral home of just one of my eight great-grandparents, because another relative (in my grandparent’s generation) is strongly identified with that country. My son (one-sixteenth of ancestors from that country) has studied in that country. He sure doesn’t look like anyone who grew up there, but he has ties to the culture.</p>
<h2>But of course that country isn’t mentioned as a separate basis for ethnicity on college application forms, which is why I claim that all those categories are arbitrary anyway. Why should one country of origin be deemed more significant than another?</h2>
<p>this is why i asked the question ^. can you clarify further? I am definitely not 100% asian… so i was just wondering if i could check off 2 boxes in the application.</p>
<p>Oh, well, I mean, if you do identify yourself as such…just seemed like one of those people who’s just trying to take advantage of the system. -.-</p>
<p>Portugal is White, anyways. I think they accept Spain (as Hispanic), but I didn’t see anything about Portugal.</p>
<p>two things:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If i am trying to take advantage of the system, why does it matter? If it is true that there is no specific rule about this, then i should take advantage of it, correct? I do have a little bit of mixed blood so…it’s not like i am a person pretending to be something i am not. </p></li>
<li><p>Could i check off two boxes (one asian and the other to which Portuguese qualfies as?)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Well, the Common app doesn’t limit you to one box, so I guess you can check both if you feel you’re of both cultures.</p>
<p>Portugal is white, by the way.</p>