whats the point of putting your race on your college app? does it benefit you in anyway? does it effect you in college? what is it used for?
if you’re a hispanic, black or native american (even partially) it will help you. If you’re white, it will harm you slightly, and if you’re asian it will very negatively effect you. However, even if you don’t put it as an Asian, your name will likely identify you as an Asian anyhow so you gain nothing. It is used by colleges to have more underrepresented minorities that way the media and others won’t rip them apart for not having diversity, and is also used by colleges to limit the number of asians on their campus.
@theanaconda that’s technically racism. we need more media outlook on this! but our name technically isn’t asian. it’s sounds more british so yeah 
we have a letter difference like the British last name has the c but we don’t.
What if you’re Asian but your name isn’t Asian? In that case, should one specify race?
Look, there are so many super-qualified Asians that elite schools could probably fill their entire freshman class with them. Do they want to do that?? Of course not. That’s the opposite of diversity.
You don’t have to specify race. If you’re concerned about being discriminated against, no one’s making you disclose it.
My son is of mixed races. His name would not give away his racial background.
He never identifies his race only because he doesn’t feel he is one or the other but he feels part of both. Basically, he doesn’t like the question and feels annoyed. He is often mistaken for another race that he is not, anyways.
He didn’t put one down on college applications.
So what if your not from the Asian decent but that where they categorize you. For example I’m half Filipino and half white, I always put both white and Asian on my applications when it gives me the option. I really feel that colleges should put “Southeast Asian” as an option since when people think of Asians they always think of Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc.
Most colleges and universities don’t care about this at all. However, the US Dept. of Education wants those statistics for its own purposes (among them being able to verify that the college/university in question is not openly discriminating against any of the USDOE defined population groups).
THEY DONT CARE ABOUT THIS AT ALL? ARE YOU KIDDING. Tell that to the ORMs with perfect scores who got rejected from their safeties. Tell that to all the people who respond to the race threads. Tell that to all the “Diversity” intiatives the colleges put out and the people whose job it is to bring more diversity to the top 50 colleges.
Oay, let’s say 50…50 is not “most”, right?
Race in admissions FAQ ver 11.0
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1544837-race-in-college-admission-faq-discussion-11-p121.html
Being white the the college process doesn’t hurt you at all. @theanaconda
The default systems in America serve the majority, which are white people. Thus, there is no basis that being white hurts you.
Elite admissions serves the people most comfortable with it, which traditionally are people born here with college degrees, probably have some legacy, or know people in the school. Implicitly this reflects the majority white populations and increasingly second and third generation minorities.
Once again, a thread deflating into knee jerk accusations of racism.
The biggest problem kids have when applying to colleges is not being Asian American. It’s not thinking.
For the moment, I’ll leave it there, for you to ponder.
If you want to vent, the place is the thread Shrinkrap linked. You can vent to your heart’s content and almost no one will expect accuracy.
Colleges do care. My son is mixed but relates more to the black culture so has always checked black although sometimes he’s checked both. He was heavily recruited by top 5 universities and was even flown out by some of their “ethnic programs and initiatives”. Yes, these ethnic academic organizations and programs were named and some we even read their mission statements as looking for those top black students to recruit. There aren’t such organizations for Caucasian students.
@SaphireNY - Please re-read the words that I wrote. It is true that some institutions (the “top 50” that you mentioned among them) do care about race, ethnicity, ECs, essays, letters of recommendation, etc., and their admissions offices will read through every item in a student’s application in order to evaluate that applicant holistically in the hope of building the best incoming class for that college/university. However, the simple truth remains that most of the 4,000 or so colleges and universities in this country do not consider race or ethnicity in admissions. Most of them don’t care about ECs or essays either. All that matters is your GPA, any test scores required, and maybe a letter of recommendation.
Students who are rejected by places that they thought were safeties were wrong about what constitutes a safety. The only real safeties are institutions that are open admission (like most community college programs) or institutions where a student’s stats meet the minimum guaranteed admission requirements posted right on the college/university website. Yes, it really is that simple. Given how easy it is to find this information on the internet in the 21st century, for a student to not identify even one real safety as a back-up shows that that particular student isn’t committed to starting college just yet.
Why? So that the “Diversity department” on college campuses have something to do, and so that the race and class equality-obsessed liberals have something to get all riled up about.
HappyMom, you are correct, MOST schools if you count all 4000 whatever colleges do not care. The reality is MOST questions in this forum are by the people who aspire to attend if not the US News 50, then the 100, where race and ethnicity is a factor to varying degrees. If someone is not concerned about the 100, then it probably does not matter much if at all. However, most people that are not concerned about that tend not to post speculative questions on here. They do post on here and their imput is valuable but it is usually something much more specific based on an immediate need.
For the record I originally posted this on another thread dealing with Hispanic Ethnicity by accident. Clearly I need more sleep.
They ask for race so that whites and asians have a scapegoat for when they don’t get into their top colleges, and can pretend for the first time in their lives they actually care about racism in America, when really they’re just upset that for the first time in their lives they aren’t the privileged class.