<p>Of course people should be proud of their heritage. I’m talking about the people who aren’t sure; the ones that even ask questions like “Should my kids check the “Hispanic” box?”. If colleges wanted diverse points of view, they might have boxes to check like one’s voting preference, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, etc. I see disadvantaged kids of all types at the community college where I teach (a federally-designated Hispanic-serving institution, BTW). A lot of the disadvantage they face is from being first-generation college students whose parents know NOTHING about getting into college, attending college, transferring, graduating from college. Forget taking the SAT and the ACT three times or doing service learning in Guatemala- they have no clue about ANYTHING connected with how to succeed at college unless someone mentors them. And some of them are plenty smart. That is a true disadvantage.</p>
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<p>What you’re missing here is the U in URM. There are many ethnic minorities (although I believe Czech would be a nationality, not an ethnicity??), but Hispanics are singled out because they are significantly Underrepresented in higher education relative to their abundance in the general populace. And it is for this reason that within Hispanics, applicants with MA or PR backgrounds are the most desired.</p>
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<p>Let’s be honest. Hispanics receive preferences because they have power through numbers and hence successfully lobbied for them.</p>
<p>^Honestly, I would love to believe that the Hispanic electorate was that powerful and organized, but I doubt it. I’ll have to reference your comment to the folks on the Hispanic Students forum who have lately been discussing the reduction in various NHRP scholarships and the lack of Hispanic clout.</p>
<p>Do look at the discrepancy in numbers between % Hispanics in the US population and the % of Hispanics in college.</p>
<p>My kid’s had to check off the Asian box, but they grew up just like any white Americans. Because they checked off that box they are being compared with all other Asians. In that sense, it is not fair either, but they are very proud of their heritage, so they have checked off that box.</p>
<p>Hispanics (10char</p>
<p>In my students HS, the other co-Val checked the hispanic box, got into colleges and scholarships that were close to free ride etc. Actually he was more Asian than hispanic, (Phillipino with hispanic background being common in that part of asia. ) He did not speak spanish, neither did his parents, and really had little “hispanic-ness” to him. Did he get “profiled”? No. He got in and in the eyes of his HS peers scammed the system big time. (He didn’t have to tell anyone in the college.) Does he provide diversity to his college? Yes, as a Phillipino, but “asian” in general does not count. And I guess he can live with his conscience. I have a WASP relative who married a Hispanic woman and hyphenated both of their last names. His work counts him in their “diversity” of corporation, lol! The place it might hurt is if he has a face to face college interview with someone like me, who when I interviewed a similar student last year, wrote a note in my report “exposing” the applicant’s total “WASP-ness” and told the college the applicant would not enhance diversity if they were factoring that in.</p>
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<p>As an interviewer, do you receive ethnic data on the person you are interviewing? I thought a lot of data (like rank and test scores) were withheld to avoid biasing the interview process.</p>
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<p>Why is it that Hispanics get racial preferences but Filipinos don’t? They’re both descendants of the Spanish Empire, are they not? Moreover, several Latin American countries—Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia, for example—have higher GDPs per capita than the Philippines.</p>
<p>Of course to me, the answer is obvious why Filipinos don’t get preferences: there are not enough of them to lobby for the benefits.</p>
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<p>I’m so glad you’re so upfront about your feelings. Why doesn’t it count?</p>
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<p>So who does “enhance ‘diversity’”? An “ethnically conscious” seventeen-year-old who’s active in La Raza or M.E.Ch.A. and doesn’t even know that Cinco de Mayo isn’t a real Mexican holiday?</p>
<p>And thanks for revealing that in your case, nothing has changed since Harvard et al. began “holistic” admissions:</p>
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<p>@ fabrizio: whoa! hold off there, and don’t assume or interpret what is not there!! First off, the student I interviewed to my admittedly short time interviewing him, had no “in fact” relationship to being Hispanic, other than a surname. As interviewers for this school, we do get the report of what the student has identified themselves as, and potential interest (major and activities). One of my goals as an interviewer is to give the most accurate personal picture of the student as I can from the very short time we have together. (and usually most favorable). I am delighted when that can be a very interesting or diverse student, and also have nothing against the “WASP” students either! I just like the school to have the most accurate info to add to the much more important info they have from the students themselves.
Also, the interviews have very little to do with admissions, overall. I can count maybe 2-3 times I think that by my intervention, a student got a second look (favorably) and all were students that had some cultural adversity that actually might not have come to light in their application. (gay student in a tough school, kid whose dad had been front page public scandal, Hispanic student bucking her elitist wealthy parents to work for the underclass. These are things they often don’t write about in those essays, but are the UMs that also increase “diversity”. )
-and I agree, a Filipino student has an interesting cultural perspective to bring to that student’s school. (in this case from a well off family and born in the US) but my point is that if he checked Asian he would face reverse discrimination. That is why (in the Admissions game) being asian “wouldn’t count” , as an UM. And that is a flaw in the system.
I personally would love it if all students would check “ethnicity data declined” or something like that, but the world is not at that point.</p>
<p>"Hispanics receive preferences because they have power through numbers and hence successfully lobbied for them. "</p>
<p>Can’t say I’ve ever heard THAT before! At least not in California.</p>
<p>And more conundrums of “boxes”. I have 2 now adult friends who face similar questions. One is a “white” woman, born and reared in rural Africa to American parents. She has always wondered if she should check “African American” (she is certainly culturally diverse!) The other is a “black” friend who is now a US citizen, born and reared in the Caribbean who refuses to check “African American” as he says he is Caribbean-American and very proud of it!</p>
<p>FWIW, I think the box says black/African American; is he just as proud to be black ? Will his kids be black or African American? For how many generations will he think of them as Caribbean American? (my kids are 3/4 Caribbean 1/4 African American, 100 percent black…hmm…probably more like 80 percent since I’m sort of “light skinded” as we used to say). Also, the US census is pretty clear that being born in Africa does not make you African American.</p>
<p>Also, in some situations the KIND of Asian, like the KIND of Hispanic DOES seem to “count”.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the Common app first asks if you are Hispanic/Latino, including Spain, and then asks if yes to describe your background (here’s where the nuances should go!) then it says, REGARDLESS of how you answered that, then how do you identify yourself (Asian, includes the Philippines, which is what that one student presumably should have checked), (White, includes Middle Eastern,(unless I guess if you are black Middle Eastern?)) , and under Black says Black OR African American, including Africa and Caribbean. (so maybe my white friend is still African American since it says or??) (and it does not include a box for “refuse to participate in any profiling”)
oops, just noticed there is an instruction,a bit aside from this section which is in grey, or gray, depending on your cultural preference 
which says the areas in grey are optional.</p>
<p>Again, according to federal regs or rules or whatev, being born in Africa does not make you black NOR African American. Smiley face emoticon.</p>
<p>Just for fun, your friends might want to check this out, but they might want to stick to the first fourteen posts.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/927219-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-8-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/927219-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-8-a.html</a></p>
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<p>The form asks if you are African-American, not if you are “African-American as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau” or even if you are a black African-American. If a person with German parents or grandparents calls himself German-American, then logically a person with African parents or grandparents could justifiably call himself African-American. It’s not as if the government is incapable of being precise on these forms, it chooses not to be, for political reasons.</p>
<p>Please research White qualifications within the US. Yes, they should check the Hispanic. Please be honest.</p>
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<p>Maybe the answer is to ask yourself this question: who do you think those who sponsored or created the scholarship saw as the ideal recipients for the awards? And what do you think their motive or intention was in creating such a scholarship? Likewise, what might a school be looking for in terms of taking hispanic ethnicity into account, if they did?</p>
<p>If you honestly think your kids are true to the spirit and intention of those scholarships or admission guidelines, then by all means go for it!</p>
<p>If not, it seems like a con job; playing with a technicality to game over someone else just because you can (and is that really something you want to teach your kids?)</p>
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<p>I agree. </p>
<p>And I’m always mystified as to why people try to apply their own personal philosophy to whether they should check one of the URM boxes or not. If something is supposed to be an advantage in admissions, then colleges have to have some clear-cut, undebatable definition of what it means to be URM. Otherwise, it could be abused by anybody without any consequences.</p>
<p>And especially when it applies to scholarships/financial aid which depend partly on the URM identification, there has to be some clear, precise definition in which any candidate could be classified by a third party. Lying on a financial aid form is fraud, but if the ethnicity box is “whatever you consider yourself to be,” there is no way to apply the law here.</p>
<p>The bottom line here is that it’s pointless to ask a bunch of cc people. Ask the colleges how URM is supposed to be defined.</p>