I am part white, part asian and part native hawaiian.
I am wondering if my native hawaiian ethnicity can count as a “hook” for elite schools?
Would colleges be able to consider me as a native hawaiian in their ethnicity distribution if I list all three races? Or would they just consider me multi-racial.
Do you think my race can give me an edge in the admissions process or do you think the asian blood in me will offset the hawaiian blood?
Thank you for your responses.
I don’t think you understand what URM means. It is “UNDERREPRESENTED” minority, and Asian is “over-represented” minority. Being multiracial doesn’t necessarily help.
Hawaiian isn’t considered URM in general either, even though it has geographical advantage.
In many cases, the answer is “it depends.” Indigenous peoples of the Americas (Native American/Native Alaskan/Native Hawaiian) are all generally URM’s, with the qualifier that I will list below.
That said, there is no check box on the application that says “Check here if you are URM.” You list your race/ethnicity (if you choose) and the college will use that info as it sees fit. Each college, where not prohibited by law, will decide what is URM and also decide how much of a bump, if any, this will give an application. The OP should just file it under “It is what it is.”
You can look at section C7 of you Common Data Set for your target colleges to see if they consider race/ethnicity.
I took a look at UPenn’s 2017-2018 CDS and it listed only 3 Native Hawaiian/Pacific islanders out of over 10,000 total undergraduates. They also listed 460 multi-racial (2 or more races) students within the 10,033 undergraduates. It looks like I would be considered multi-racial, not native hawaiian. So it seems to be more of an “it is what it is” scenario.
Thats unfortunate.
Also, most people here overestimate the effect of being URM (as defined by the college, which varies). Some colleges do not consider it at all.
It is best to make your reach/match/safety assessments without assuming any effect from race/ethnicity, unless there is an explicit statement (e.g. scholarship explicitly for those with native Hawaiian ancestry).
Got it. Thank you.