I don’t understand why ethnicity/race/gender matter so much to colleges?
Some private colleges want their student bodies to try to reflect the makeup of the general population, and related reasons. A school’s Common Data Set may say how much such issues are important to them.
Colleges are putting together classes and value diversity. Diversity adds a lot to the community. Take an inventory and see if you have a hook. Agree that race should not be a factor on its own.
OP - Not all ethnicity matters (positively) to college admissions. Asian-Americans, for example, are often labeled as the “New Jews,” referring to once in our history where quota was practiced in limiting Jews into elite colleges. A part of the reason why ethnicity is significantly considered in college admissions has to do with the affirmative action “moral obligation” and partly because the diversity is valued in the makeup of the class.
For ethnicity/race, we have a thread for that: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1843141-race-in-college-applications-faq-discussion-12.html#latest.
Very few non-religious men want to attend colleges where the student population is almost all male. That’s partly why there are only four secular all male colleges left in the US. To a lesser extent, I assume most women don’t want to go to a college where the sex ratio is too lopsided either, although more all women’s colleges have survived into the 21st century.
At least one school (Kenyon) has admitted males over more qualified females in the interest of gender balance.
re #5. It’s well known for most LACs that men have the advantage in admissions by the numbers. There are many more qualified women. Pomona College for example has an average admit rate of 8%, but it is much higher for men and much lower for women.
Same happens to men in fields like engineering. They’ve been trying to get girls into engineering at a crazy rate.
Don’t worry about your race or your gender. As an admissions counselor put it “focus on what you can control, not what you can’t control”. You can’t control what gender or what race you are, so don’t worry about it. It may help or hurt you, but either way, it doesn’t matter since you can’t change it. Focus on the stuff that you can change, such as test scores, GPA, EC’s, etc.
Keep in mind that ethnicity/gender is one of many many factors in college admission. While there may be a boost for some people at some schools for the sake of of diversity, one’s ethnicity/gender will not get a person into a school that he/she is not otherwise qualified to attend.