<p>Those numbers are interesting. Our AP stats teacher, who is Asian, told us last year that the top five to ten colleges would be around 40 to 50 percent Asian if quantifiable data alone was used for admissions. He probably came to this conclusion from these numbers.</p>
<p>They probably wouldn’t be half Asian. Berkeley on has such high numbers of Asians because California is a state with a lot of them.</p>
<p>I’d like to ask a serious question, because in the midst of discussion of college admission policies there are from time to time references to “underrepresented” groups without explaining how “underrepresentation” is demonstrated. </p>
<p>If a medium-size privately operated national research university takes applicants from all over the country, and indeed all over the world, but has a plurality of its applicants living within 500 miles of the university (a fairly common pattern), should the university </p>
<p>a) balance “representation” by the world population of all college-age young people? </p>
<p>b) balance “representation” by the national population of all college-age young people? </p>
<p>c) balance “representation” by the regional population–within a specified distance from the college–of all college-age young people? </p>
<p>d) balance “representation” by the world population of all college-age young people who have completed secondary education? </p>
<p>e) balance “representation” by the national population of all college-age young people who have completed secondary education? </p>
<p>f) balance “representation” by the regional population of all college-age young people who have completed secondary education? </p>
<p>g) balance “representation” by the world population of all college-age young people who are as academically qualified–determined by that college’s rules–as the least qualified admitted students from the year before? </p>
<p>h) balance “representation” by the national population of all college-age young people who are as academically qualified–determined by that college’s rules–as the least qualified admitted students from the year before? </p>
<p>i) balance “representation” by the regional population of all college-age young people who are as academically qualified–determined by that college’s rules–as the least qualified admitted students from the year before? </p>
<p>j) balance “representation” by the actual group composition of that college’s applicant pool that year? </p>
<p>k) simply admit students based on the college’s judgment of academic qualifications, as long as its admission procedures admit some representatives of every major ethnic group officially recognized in the United States? </p>
<p>There are quite a few possible standards here, with different possible results, and it’s not usually clear to me which standard participants in the discussion are appealing to when they call one group or another “underrepresented.” Underrepresented by how much? Which students actually apply to which colleges?</p>
<p>When you don’t report your ethnicity on your application:
- Will it ever hinder/strengthen your chances?
- Couldn’t admission officers just look at your last name to determine your ethnicity?</p>
<ol>
<li>But WHAT if, you choose not to report your ethnicity AND you have a last name that doesn’t match with your ethnicity? For example, what if a White/Non-Hispanic had a Native American last name or an Asian/Pacific Islander had a Hispanic last name? Would that trick 'em?! ha ha ha.</li>
</ol>
<p>^ See the [FAQ</a> page](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063172691-post14.html]FAQ”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063172691-post14.html) in this thread. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063172691-post14.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063172691-post14.html</a> </p>
<p>You are fully within your rights to not indicate ethnicity or race in a college application.</p>
<p>
This option would certainly increase Asian “representation.”</p>
<p>“You are fully within your rights to not indicate ethnicity or race in a college application.”</p>
<p>Absolutely, but, by doing so, today’s HS student is preventing tomorrow’s students from knowing the actual ethnic/racial makeup of a school. This can work both ways: Some blacks might prefer a school with a significant black population, and some might prefer the possible admissions boost at other schools. Personally, I favor having valid information available.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m in agreement on that. I think it is most informative to know which colleges [admit</a> a lot of students who decline to self-identify with a narrower group than humanity](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063172559-post8.html]admit”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063172559-post8.html) as a whole. Most such colleges, by the way, still manage to be quite diverse as to enrolling students who choose to self-identify with a federally defined ethnicity or race. </p>
<p>And of course all colleges try, in their publicity materials, to give the impression that they welcome all applicants, although most don’t resort to [url=<a href=“http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-small-talk/200908/erasing-race]Photoshop[/url”>Erasing Race | Psychology Today]Photoshop[/url</a>] when making that point.</p>
<p>If I am half Japanese and my mom is white, which would it be more beneficial to classify myself under?</p>
<p>^Ideally, you should say nothing. But you probably have a Japanese surname, so saying nothing could lead them to believe that your 100 percent Japanese. You’re probably better off checking both the Asian and white boxes.</p>
<p>Re #90</p>
<p>As tokenadult has written, admissions officers are discouraged from guessing applicants’ ancestries based on surnames. (Whether they do so anyway is a different subject.)</p>
<p>Based on my experience, some more “exotic” Japanese surnames can actually sound West African, which would severely compound the problem of guessing from surname.</p>
<p>I once met a woman whom I had corresponded with for years, thinking she was sansei from her name, only to find out that the name is Italian and not Japanese.</p>
<p>Yeah I have gotten that from a few people that my name sounds Italian. Ill just go with both Asian and White.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Do you or don’t you agree that applicants have a legitimate interest in knowing as much as possible about the demographics of their potential 4-year residence community, including the approximate racial (resp. ethnic, socioeconomic, religious, gender, age) composition of the population? Or is it your position that we must pre-empt that information from ever getting into the wrong hands, such as those of applicants, taxpayers, voters, and neighbors?</p>
<p>
At the first two colleges on that list
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063172559-post8.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063172559-post8.html</a>
all of the students self-identify with a narrower group than humanity. ;)</p>
<p>@#95: Are you referring to men and women? </p>
<p>In general, is the opinion here that </p>
<p>religion </p>
<p>political party </p>
<p>parental occupation </p>
<p>student-reported family income category </p>
<p>intended college major </p>
<p>etc., etc. are all such valuable information that each category should be tracked from the inquiry stage to the application stage to the stage of having an enrolled class, or can some of this information be reported to the outside world on a voluntary basis after the class is enrolled, with no consideration of the information in the admission process? Are some categories more informative for admission decisions than others?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Re #83: I love this question, tokenadult. The anti-AA contingent generally considers only the applicant pool and stats when determining whether unlawful discrimination exists.</p>
<p>It seems to me that a university should be free to define in its own mission, what sort of racial representation it deems important to the education of its students, and not be bound by the proportions of whomever shows up with an application at its admissions door.</p>
<p>In other words, if a private university in Kentucky, for example, wants its student body to be exposed to races and cultures from all over the world as part of its educational mission, then it should not be required to admit nearly all white students from Kentucky, just because 90% of its applicants fit that description. It should be free to choose most or even all of its students from among the 10% who are not white and from Kentucky.</p>
<p>Of course, this all comes back to the crux of the AA question, which is whether the benefits of learning in a racially diverse environment contitutes a compelling interest to our country and a university’s educational mission.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. Yes, I think there are a lot of implicit propositions of value embedded in discussions of this issue, which I hope we can all discuss more calmly if they are made more explicit. </p>
<p>I see a lot of agreement in this thread that </p>
<p>a) everybody wants to attend a college with people of every which kind of background, </p>
<p>and </p>
<p>b) everybody wants college applicants to have equal opportunity to get into highly selective colleges, </p>
<p>and </p>
<p>c) everybody wants to build a society in which all social groups are working together to build a more just and cohesive society. </p>
<p>It’s the details of implementation that get to be awkward. But folks are working on it, and I’m glad to see a lot of interesting points of view here in this thread.</p>
<p>When colleges report the ethnic groups of their students, as in, for example, their Common Data Sets, how do they decide who qualifies as what? Specifically, how do they categorize those who check multiple races?</p>
<p>They´re usually listed as other/biracial/multiracial</p>