@roethlisburger I agree that it’s highly unlikely social media will be used to verify race, in any regard. But your comment made it seem like you thought adcoms definitely don’t check social media ever for any reason at all and that I would be hesitant to say because while there are probably many that don’t, even if they used to, I still think it’s a good idea to keep all social media “clean”. I know this is the case for my daughters as they have been applying for jobs/internships and when they were applying to college a few years ago, they made sure their social media was clean.
So are you assuming no one second guesses if you check a box, or do you know this for a fact? I am asking because I am genuinely curious if it’s that easy to get away with it. I would assume most people do not lie, but I truly wonder if the adcoms really never question it. I’m sure it varies by school. Does anyone know first hand?
When a relative looked into this a few years ago for MIT, she was told 1/8 or more Native American would qualify as NA for admission. A certificate proving tribe connections was required.
MIT is one of the colleges that uses a heritage form, like mentioned in my earlier post. You can view the form at https://mitadmissions.org/pages/nhf/ . They ask a variety of questions beyond tribal membership, like “Please describe the ties that you have maintained (if any) to your reservation(s), Hawaiian/Alaskan homelands, or any other organizations or community groups” and "Do you speak or study your tribal language; know any songs, prayers, or greetings? " They do not ask about genetic percentages. Percentages would be near impossible for many to estimate accurately. Note that different selective colleges have different policies for NA applicants. Some colleges have heritage forms like MIT. Some do not request any additional information.
Sounds like we are members of the same tribe. My mother as fully NA as members of this tribe are makes me ‘1/2’ (was derogatorily called a half-breed as a child a couple of times) which would make my D ‘1/4’ but we never used or pursued her NA status as she has never had anything to do with the tribe. My mother has a friend in the BIA and she called and wanted my D to apply to Dartmouth and use her NA heritage to help (she is Dartmouth alumnus) but I didn’t feel like it was appropriate.
I have no idea, but I wonder what percentage of the kids that get in using the NA hook truly identify in anyway other than on paper. It’s one of those hooks that might not feel “appropriate”, but are others using it and getting in with it?
If you can show me where/when you seem to recall I said that I can explain to you the context in which I said it.
But the fact is that in America if the student is “one drop” black the student has been considered black in all the ways that limited them (ability to not be a slave, right to vote, owning land or buying/renting housing, segregated and inferior education, marrying a white person).
It seems a little convenient to NOW say “Oh you’re not really black for the purposes of AA even though you were totally considered to be black throughout the history of this country”.
Most of the one drop laws have been repealed now, but not all that long ago.
This seems odd. On the web (not the linked page above), photos of US passports issued in 1968, 1980, and 1985 have no designation for race or ethnicity on the photo page.
(Not disagreeing with the existence of the social phenomenon of hypodescent, where a multiracial person is often viewed as a member of the lower status group.)
Account starts at the end of the first page of text. She was unsuccessful in reclassifying as white even though she was “stunned” and “sick for three days” when she found out that she wan’t white. Her great-great-great grandmother was a slave, and the state said that made her black.
I saw a recent article from a supporter of Affirmative Action in the NYT and just wanted people’s opinions on the points of the author. I have pushed against AA in admissions practices, but I still like to see the thoughts of those that do agree with AA and why. My own disagreements stem from not focusing on what I perceive to be the real issues that could possibly make AA obsolete (K-12 educational imbalances and the fixing of the African American family structure from within our own communities), but here is the other side of the aisle.
I read it the day it was published. Not a lot of new territory for anyone who follows this thread and honestly i don’t think he makes a case for AA in it, even though he ends by saying he has.
This section struck me at the time:
Due to their families’ achievements. Honestly, that reflects on the family members who achieved whatever success, not on those individuals born with that advantage.
Athletes can point to their own accomplishments (although again, often their work is supported by family money for their training and clubs and so on, and the family’s savvy about that huge admissions advantage), but they aren’t ACADEMIC accomplishments.
Maybe black students can point to their own accomplishments in the sense of doing really well in a society that is stacked against them in many ways. Maybe that IS an individual accomplishment as well.
Sometimes, the analogy is made between URM (and low SES and 1G) and legacy preference. However, there is a significant difference between these unearned preferences, which is that legacy stands out as being correlated to existing advantage, rather than existing disadvantage of the others (of course, that does not mean that every applicant in each group is advantaged or disadvantaged).
A case can be made for the former having earned their achievements despite extra barriers to cross, while the legacies got extra boosts to help them earn their achievements (of course, it would be better to evaluate individually instead of by check box to account for individual variation). From that, who is more meritous between those showing similar achievement?
I have seen how barriers have affected students trying to change their circumstances. Although African Americans still deal with barriers that affect reaching the stats necessary to be considered “equal”, those barriers are much worse for 1 gen and low SES African American students. My big fear is that the same 10% of African American households (like my own) will continuously take the biggest advantage of AA policies while those policies do little to help the bottom 90%. I have found that having income and the knowledge of how the educational system works has removed many of my own children’s barriers (some societal ones remain), but they also gain the most from today’s current policies. Every generation, it will be harder for society to remember the justifications for AA, so I hope we as a society fix the underlying causes of achievement gaps among races.
Hello, questions. Note I am asking these questions because I am truly confused and not certain of the definitions, not trying to upset anyone.
Is Affirmative Action (AA) originally or by practice limited to only Afro-Americans? Does this mean Hispanic-Americans do not fall under AA? I assume Native Americans are accorded AA benefit by certain colleges?
Does AA benefit only Afro-Americans? How about if the applicant is an international applicant who is a black student from Cameroon? Or a student from Mexico?
How does AA differ from URM hook? If I remember correctly, Asian-Americans used to benefit from URM (or was it AA?) very long time ago from certain schools, including UCLA law school, but why is it that Asian-Americans no longer benefit from AA? I realize that a strong argument can be made that Afro-Americans still suffer discrimination in the American society -- do not get upset at my not using a definitive statement because I am trying to see the other side -- but why is it that Asian Americans are deemed not to suffer discrimination in the American society and not accorded AA? I am aware of the distinctive sufferings of Afro-Americans due to slavery etc. which differ from other races, but if that's the case, how come Latin Americans are accorded AA benefit and not Asian-Americans? I assume Native Americans are also accorded AA benefit due to their own distinctive history.
It's totally up to each college to decide whether it wishes to accord AA benefit or hook, correct?
If I may add my own views on AA, it’s similar to that of @ChangeTheGame above. For example, there is a big difference the challenges faced by my own kid (Asian-American) and an Asian-American kid like I was. My kid grew up in a relatively affluent household in a relatively stable family, while I grew up in a poor family that was not stable at all. Basically, even though my kid and I grew up as kids of the same race in the same country, my parents (Asian immigrants who had no college education) were working so hard to just to survive and pay next month’s rent and lacked any info on U.S. colleges that I was pretty much left alone to do my own things, which actually turned out to help me in setting up my own business and making a success out of it, but you get what I am saying, which is: I can see my kid benefited from many benefits that I did not, and arguendo, Asian Americans were accorded AA benefits, the kid like me should be accorded AA benefit, not my own kid, even though we are the same race.
@websensation I will answer your questions as I understand them. If I am wrong on any of the points, I trust the CC family to correct me.
Affirmative Action (AA) in the US is a group of policies or guidelines that are used to try and overcome historical discriminatory practices, inequalities, and to promote diversity and is normally applied to African Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Native Americans in elite college admissions practices. Affirmative Action policies have also been used in some cases to help women as well, but is not normally tied to elite college admissions (think workplace hiring advances)
Affirmative Action (AA) does not benefit international students of minority races from the literature that I read on the subject, but we are not privy to the deliberations of admissions officers so I question if it does (at least among other international students).
Affirmative Action policies gives URM candidates a boost (so people tie AA and URM hooks together) I have also heard of schools that consider Asian-Americans as under-represented due to having a small number of Asian American students, but they are ORMs in elite college admissions since Asian-Americans have a much larger percentage of students in most elite admissions in comparison to their US population percentiles. You are correct that each individual school tends to come up with their own policies in regards to whether “race conscious” admissions can be used, even though some states like California and Michigan have banned the practice through state-wide referendums.
I hope you ended up getting a boost for being 1st gen and for having a low SES, but I believe @Data10 showed on this thread that the URM hook was larger statistically in Harvard’s data set.
@ChangeTheGame Thanks for your answer. So, Asian-Americans may be considered as URM by some colleges but are not accorded Affirmative Action benefits, even though they have been discriminated and are still discriminated, mainly because they are well represented at “top” colleges? Is that correct generally? In essence, to be accorded AA benefit, a group must be discriminated and be under-represented? I guess I am trying to understand on what basis some groups are accorded AA benefit.
Affirmative Action is a term that originally related to employment. Originally it was about being a remedy for past discrimination, and to enforce equality in hiring by removing barriers that were in place to advantage white (men) over everyone else.
So it’s probably better to read the history of it yourself rather than get it secondhand from forum posters like myself. This is a fairly clear textbook-style overview - https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1970.html
URM is a term I never heard until I came to college confidential. If you google “URM student” a forum post on CC is the first result.
That said, colleges get to define who is URM for themselves but the acronym does stand for Under Represented Minority. So we can infer one meaning - there aren’t as many of them in college as are in the population, or they don’t get as many apps from them as other groups.
I think most every elite college would give a bump to certain Asian groups who are underrepresented - mostly but not exclusively Southeast Asian Americans, very few of whom make it to college at all. They’re more likely to be first gen and low income as well. Many colleges, notably LACs and colleges not on the coasts and bigger cities, also would like more Asian students, period, because Asian students tend not to apply to them as much as white students do (I’m thinking of top unis like Notre Dame, or top LACs like Grinnell). So things like that influence any particular colleges policies as to who is underrepresented and who is not. And obviously I’m speaking in gross generalities. But so it goes with terms like “URM”.
Affirmative Action has been talked about much less in the realm of employment (last 20 or so years at least) as many forms of discrimination made illegal by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and been upheld by countless Supreme Court rulings has helped changed the employment landscape (although there are still problems). Below is a more recent overview of AA with some views from both supporters and critics of the policies as it relates to college admissions.