"Race" in College Applications FAQ & Discussion 12

Applying to College
221

When you talk about AA, you definitely need to consider the following “holistically”.

  1. As worldwide diversity, Asians account for >40% of population, and 5% in US. Do you want to assign the ratio to every level? every unit? every academic institution? every sports team? or every movie cast? And which ratio?
  2. Africans and Asians both had their own hardship and face disadvantages. However after hundreds of years, the plantation masters and railway financiers are nowhere to find. Politically the field is leveled if not overtilted. Obviously it’s now the taxpayers, not plantation masters or railway financiers or their descendants, paying the price. Is it fair?
  3. In my upper middle class neighborhood, my African neighbor is much richer than many of us. However their kids don’t perform competitively and don’t even work hard at all, but they’re and will be favored by all top colleges. How fair is it?
  4. I know many white families, some even the very group of early settlers, live in very poor communities for more than a couple of generations. Are they “redeeming” their family sins? A 60+ white guy had a job, bought his own minimum health insurance, and dared not go to hospital when really sick. He finally he went and got discharged in 2 days because he worried about the medical bill. He died in 70+ days later. When there is free governmental Medicaid available, do you think it’s fair? Then how many generations do they (or we) have to wait for AA and entitlement programs to expire?
    I hope everyone take all into consideration, rather just your own racial benefits. When you talk about fairness, talk about it fairly. Eventually we’re all the human race.
222

While still a marketing ploy by Hernandez, the facts she states cannot be denied. Growing up from teens to adults is hard enough on these kids…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michele-hernandez/the-ivy-league-asian-prob_b_10121814.html

223

I think the discrimination in elite college admissions include:

  1. Severely again ordinary and poor white applicants;
  2. Severely against Asian male applicants;
  3. Severely against Asian applicants for Social Science and Humanities because overwhelmingly admitted as STEM majors.

Wealthy white applicants admitted because of legacy and/or donation. Female Asian applicants of STEM count as both female and color quotas, with no quotas left for Asian male and social majors.

The college should do away with the option of “Race” completely. When we watch a basketball or boxing game, we all cheer for a all-black-player team with no feeling short of diversity. Why cannot we do the same for an academic institution?

224

Do colleges look at the specific country of one’s race? I was just wondering because I am Malaysian and I’m pretty sure that colleges don’t get as many applicants of Malaysian descent than those who are Chinese and Korean. Also, what is the minimum percent of an ethnicity you need to list it on the college apps? I know this is kind of open ended but I am mixed so I am just wondering.

225

@TheTennisNinja when they evaluate internatinoal students they do consider their nationality. For example, coming from an underrepresnted countries would play in favor for you

226

The boost you get for being a minority is a lot smaller than you’d think by reading through this forum.

227

So even though I would be in the “Asian” category, being from an underrepresented Asian country would help?

228

I’ve read that students from Asian countries that are underrepresented get a boost, Laos, Cambodia, like that. Not sure on Malaysia.

229

Colleges in general want to have a globally diverse student body (and on their website most will proudly provide a long list of countries represented at the college). HYPSM generally look for citizens of countries, while most other very selective colleges prefer citizens but are happy to accept residents as representatives of countries (when looking at the list for each college it will note whether it includes just citizens or citizens/residents). The result is, students coming from a country with few qualified applicants will generally have a valuable advantage in the admissions process. While I can confirm that students coming from most of Africa, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia get a boost, I can not speak for Malaysia.

230

I think the vast majority of Malaysians who are qualified are Malaysian Chinese while native Malays seem to be closer to the people of the countries listed above. So yeah I’m not sure if I have an advantage or a detriment.

231

@SirPepsi Exactly.

http://www.vox.com/2016/5/22/11704756/affirmative-action-merit

232

^^ I posted this article on the same Samson study before, but it is worth another look:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/13/white-definitions-merit-and-admissions-change-when-they-think-about-asian-americans

This professor has a solution; I just don’t expect any taker:

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/10/18/how-liberal-students-could-change-affirmative-action-debate-essay

Bottom line-When it comes to personal self-interest, we are tribal, period.

(For a long time, I was the only one here who wants to entertain such a paradigm).

233

Int’l students don’t get counted in the official racial numbers. They all just fall in the “non-resident alien” bucket.

234

Will there be significant preference for Tibetan-Americans? I know a lot of Tibetans born in India and have immigrated to America and now attend HYPMS. Not sure about Tibetan-Americans. Thanks!

235

Sir pepsi your statement is categorically false. The boost from being a URM is quite large though is varies depending on personal circumstances. The only bigger hook is being a recruited athlete or from family of major donor. The Sander’s data from UCLA shows that even at a state school in a state where AA is against the law the boost is huge.

236

Being black, I personally hate when people call me African American. Most of my ancestors are from Jamaica. (we have a few Indians and Hispanics in the mix) And while I know most Jamaicans arrived from Africa, I have no connection to Africa. I don’t know what part of west Africa my great grandparents x10 are from. I know very little about African culture except what I have learned from school,personal reading, or other people. Really, if you are white people consider you just american. Anything else has to be hyphenated.

237

In one of the videos here: www.collegereadykid.com
The dean of undergraduate admissions at Emory and the vice president of admissions at GA Tech talk about how race influences admissions decisions.

238

Would I, with my Chinese last name, be better off leaving ethnicity blank or marking Chinese, Korean, and other? Would it even make a difference? I’m not exactly an URM so I don’t feel like putting my ethnicity on display would make even change anything

239

“At your college, do Asian-American applicants who are admitted generally have higher grades and test scores than other applicants? 41%YES 30%YES”

This is like asking if the GPA and Test scores of the STEM student recruits are higher than those of the hockey team. Asian stats are higher b/c fewer of them are admitted in the uber-hooked category of athletics. This is a fact that reflects any individual college’s decision to have major sports teams or not.

240

Could someone tell me why certain Muslims groups sholdn’t be eligible for maybe even a softer affirmative action?

There are some serious racial biases and bigotry against that group, that is instutitional (ie NSA spying, EEOC complaints wher ethey make up 50%+ of EEOC complaints for religin despite being 1% of this country’s population). I have Muslim students I work with who told me there teachers would become racist towards them and lower their grades after 9/11, after terror attacks like Pulse.

On the other hand, in my own community, many white Latinos like Cubans, the descendants of conquistadors and opressors somehow are allowed into this country, are incredibly racist (just FB one) against these very groups (Malcolm X), or blacks (MLK) who worked for affirmative action and even allowed their people into this country.

I feel like this discussion comes up time and time again. And here we have an example of a people who are losing power in our country, and have strong institutional racial and religious bias against them. Shouldn’t Muslim Americans, and quite possibly in the future, certain female and sexual orientation groups be afforded affirmative action? I don’t think racism (most Muslims in this country are overwhelmingly ethnic minorities) is nearly as acceptable towards MUslims as it is Latinos or African Americans, and its having a profound impact on their ability to get into higher education especially when compared to similar ethnic groups (ie Indian Hindus or Sikhs, same thnicity different religious group).

Seems like any angle you put it at, ie ‘diversity’ affirmative action doesn’t have a consistent policy.

I am not for a box or anything. No one should outwardly show their religious affiliation, but if I saw something like this as a challenge in a college essay I would definitely highlight it.

The city I grew up in, Jersey City, so many of the black and Egyptian (white, call blacks abeed or slave but mark african all the time) minorities are so much more well off than many of the Polish, Irish, Indian Pakistani people, yet still get the full benefit of affirmative action at local state ranked high schools. It’s unreal. I have seen teachers put down Latino and Muslim students and ‘B’ grade them after this election. How can we say it’s not affecting them, their community, their potential, their future? Instutitionally and culturally?