<p>It doesn’t matter, leaving it blank won’t hurt you.</p>
<p>it might help if you apply to schools with not a lot of asians like Vandy.</p>
<p>I think the best answer is always the clearest. Check multiple boxes if that fits you and discuss it in the essay somewhere if it helps you. I agree with Keilexandra that your ethnic combination (white and Middle Eastern) is unlikely to provide any admissions boost. Do you speak another language? Does your ethnicity factor in any way into your likely area of study?</p>
<p>Serbo-Croat?</p>
<p>MODERATOR’S NOTE TO “Which ethnicity to put down on application?” THREAD: </p>
<p>This thread will be merged with the comprehensive FAQ thread, with a redirect, because the original poster’s question is exhaustively answered in that thread. The short answer to the question is that near eastern and middle eastern ethnicities are considered “white” by federal regulations, but it is ALWAYS optional to indicate any ethnicity at all. The question can be ignored entirely if you don’t think it fits you well, and you can discuss your ethnic heritage in your application essays if that is important to you.</p>
<p>MODERATOR’S NOTE TO “Minimum Ethnicity Percent for Applications” THREAD: </p>
<p>This thread will be merged with the FAQ thread on ethnicity in college applications, where there are links to federal regulations and other information on this subject. The short answer is that there is no minimum percentage of ancestry required for membership in any ethnic group, and plenty of people who could check “one or more” checkbox on a college ethnicity questionnaire. It is also perfectly legal to decline to answer the question at all, as the applicant thinks best.</p>
<p>MODERATOR’S NOTE TO “Applying as An Asian” THREAD: </p>
<p>This thread will be merged with the FAQ thread on ethnicity in college applications, which includes, in the first several posts, numerous links to facts on the issue. Many colleges report many applicants to the federal government as “race/ethnicity unknown,” so there is no evidence that colleges guess about this issue beyond what students self-report, and applicants are welcome to decline to self-report.</p>
<p>By the way, I would be interested to hear what college admission officers say, true or false or unclear, in answer to questions about filling out ethnic identification questions on college applications. At this time of year, there are many opportunities to meet college admission officers all over the country, </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/530012-fall-2008-events-where-students-can-meet-admission-officers.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/530012-fall-2008-events-where-students-can-meet-admission-officers.html</a> </p>
<p>and you might want to ask several different college admission officers what they think about different approaches to filling in answers to ethnicity questions. I’d love to hear what you find out.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Negative action is when Asian applicants are treated worse than equally qualified white applicants. The phenomenon is well documented in the literature. See the research of Jerry Kang, a UCLA law professor, for example.</p>
<p>You shouldnt in the least bit feel dirty about not disclosing race. First, youre not required to answer the race / ethnicity box. Second, as tokenadult has shown, many schools now have double-digit race unknown student bodies. For whatever reason(s), more and more students arent responding to the race / ethnicity box.</p>
<p>Regarding “they can guess from your last name,” first, they are discouraged from guessing. Second, if it is ever revealed that colleges are discriminating based on last names, I expect Asians to change their last names in large numbers (c.f. what Jews did in the 1930s).</p>
<p>Some reasons that colleges shouldn’t guess by last names are </p>
<p>a) some students are adopted by parents who give the students family names that may not reflect the student’s ethnicity (but what is the ethnicity of an adopted child, anyway?) </p>
<p>b) some students have family names through one or another birth parent that don’t reflect the main ethnic community affiliation of the students; </p>
<p>c) some students have family names that are flat-out ambiguous (I have been told that my family name can pass for that of people from a country I have never seen, and I have met Norwegian-Americans named Wang or who have other Asian-sounding names); </p>
<p>and </p>
<p>d) students’ ethnicity isn’t even as connected with family ties as is suggested above, because the federal regulations make clear that ethnicity is based mostly on SELF-identification. </p>
<p>Anyway, in practice most colleges apparently DON’T guess if the student doesn’t declare an ethnic affiliation. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060810896-post4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060810896-post4.html</a> </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060816703-post25.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060816703-post25.html</a></p>
<p>“Negative action is when Asian applicants are treated worse than equally qualified white applicants.”</p>
<p>No. Negative action is when some ORM’s, which include – hello-- Caucasians and most East Asians – are waitlisted or rejected due to abundance in their application numbers combined with huge numbers of such applications & marked similarity in some of the profiles (economically, regionally, academically), which cannot all fit into a diversified freshman class.</p>
<p>Equally qualified Asians are not treated “worse” than their Caucasian counterparts. Overly nondifferentiated candidates are not as positively received as highly differentiated candidates on many factors. </p>
<p>At the moment I am counseling in my work a highly capable young man who is South Asian with an impressive academic background & very likely, i.m.o., to be admitted to more than one Ivy.</p>
<p>You need to stop spreading generalizations to scare people. </p>
<p>Students, whatever your personal origins & however you decide to answer the “race” question, go for it. Do not second-guess the college admissions outcome, because you don’t know it, and statistics or someone else’s experience or someone else’s headlines are not predictive of your journey.</p>
<p>Re: 571</p>
<p>Kidder opens his now-not-so-frequently-cited rebuttal to Espenshade et al. with the following:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>He immediately footnotes the last sentence with, In short, negative action occurs when a minus factor is applied to APA candidates relative to White candidates, a practice that is separate and apart from any affirmative action plus factor given to African Americans and Latinos in the admissions process. He then refers the reader to one of Jerry Kangs papers.</p>
<p>My definition is supported by the literature. I can back it up with sources. Your definition is merely your own misinterpretation of an uncontroversial concept. Consequently, you cant back it up. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The juxtaposition of these two sentences strongly suggests that Asians are overly nondifferentiated whereas equally qualified Caucasians are highly differentiated on many factors. Is that what you meant?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I didnt realize that quoting the literature was spreading generalizations to scare people. Perhaps it is you who needs to stop spreading generalizations about research youre not familiar with.</p>
<p>I’m rather disturbed by some of the generalizations about “Asian” people I’m seeing in this thread.</p>
<p>Once threads become very long, they become unwieldy, so this thread is closed, and a new thread </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1235538-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1235538-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html</a> </p>
<p>with updated FAQ posts has been opened. See you there.</p>