<p>i'm half syrian half filipino. do i still have to fill in the asian bubble of death? haha. </p>
<p>i mean... syria doesnt come to mind when you say asian... and statistically, filipinos dont do much better than your everyday white person, and they are not overrepresented in college. </p>
<p>and if they do give more specific choices like that, would i still be at the strategic disadvantage?</p>
<p>idk, its always been a strange ambiguity for me, and probably for others. what do you think? i dont care too much about a debate on whether affirmative action is fair or not. i'm just talking flat numbers right now.</p>
<p>yes, it is in asia. but asia is big. asia has lots of different cultures. chinese people are not the same as indonesian people are not the same as russian people are not the same as middle eastern people. if the point of affirmative action is in part to encourage diversity that otherwise wouldnt be there, plopping all asians into one monolithic group sounds utterly stupid to me.</p>
<p>I kinda think you can tell that Filipinos are Asians by looking at how they look. Their skin is about the same color as Asians, their eye colors are the same and their hair color are the same. How can you think of something different? Filipinos are definitely thought as Asians by many people. Syria is still in Asia, you can’t bubble “white” especially when your ethnicity is pretty much on Asia. That would make you lying when you sign the statement saying that this application is right to the best of your knowledge. You have to check Asian, you can’t check “white”. Both of your ethnic background comes from Asia (The Philippines are in Asia and Syria is in Asia, not where else). And it doesn’t matter how much better your ethnicity does. I mean there are Asians that do worse than White. How are colleges going to care about the “average” Filipinos and their intelligence?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What The Heck??? Since when was Middle Easterner’s “white”. Their names don’t sound “white” at all. Their countries are in Asia (unless I have been taught wrong for the last 10 years but I’m positive I have been taught the right answer).</p>
<p>You don’t have to check any box. It’s optional. Filipino sometimes have an added advantage in that their surnames are Spanish, and admissions officials often have trouble determining if they are Hispanic/Latino (barring a face-to-face meeting or some other evidence like birthplace).</p>
<p>It is often difficult to determine the racial and ethnic origin for people with Syrian names–particularly ones with Assyrian or Christian roots. For example, did you know that the actors Jim Backus (Mr. Magoo, Gilligan’s Island) and F. Murray Abraham (Amadeus) are Syrian? So is Andre Agassi.</p>
<p>So if you want to help your application, don’t check any box under “Race”. Keep 'em guessing.</p>
<p>Some countries listed (i.e. Russia and Israel) maybe be conflicted in its identification to Europe. It’s too common in America to think of Asians as more of an ethnicity when it really defines one part of the world. Asians are the people who live in Asia, but we too often think of only certain countries and neglecting others. So I say to hell with ethnicity and identification and just bubble in humanity. I bubble in robot</p>
<p>Sometimes they don’t care about ethnicity. If they find that you are one of those math loving, non humanities, no contact sport kind. They can assume pretty much your are a Asian. And then your chances of getting of rejected are greater because there are hundreds of application similar to yours, unless you stand out a lot.</p>
<p>Two options. If you want to choose a real bubble, then there is no way that you can call yourself black or white or anything but Asian. However, there’s no shame in bubbling the “Other” or “Mixed Race” or “I prefer not to…” either.</p>