vossron

How about "racially diverse" as "similar to the racial makeup of the country"?

tokenadult

If vossron's definition of "racially diverse" is agreeable to Bay, then my contention will be that a college can, and many colleges will, have a racially diverse group of enrolled students each year even if the college does not gather ethnicity information as part of the admission process.

If Bay has a different definition, I will respond to that in turn. I don't see any strict necessity for colleges to gather ethnic information from applicants to bring about what I agree is a desirable goal, a college enrolling all the various ethnicities in the country (if the college has a national draw) or in the state (if the college has a statewide draw). As this thread percolates, I'll tell a story about an experience I had with a teacher who was a freedom rider about how underrepresented minorities can be well served by a system of not asking about ethnic affiliations.

StitchInTime

If you look closesly at your assertion, you're saying that "17 and 18 year old caucasians and Asians" (your characterization) are fearful of being discriminated against. If one accepts your argument, it's all the more reason to tear-down a system that engenders such fears.

As to selfish/altruistic motives, an applicant can have a selfish desire to be evaluated solely on merit and also be simultaneously conscious of the societal benefits of such a policy. So motives aren't necessarily dichotomous.

Additional Food for thought :

And in some students' own words:

If you're a student self-indentifying as 'unknown', please share your motive(s) here.

tokenadult

The latest version of the Minorities in Higher Education Report

http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cf...ontentID=23716

has a lot of detailed numbers (all based on reports colleges make to the federal government) about the growth in college enrollment in all the reported ethnic groups, and the growth of the group "race unknown."

Tyler09

Dr. King supported affirmative action, so if you are going to use the MLK card as the "Ace of Spades", it means you support affirmative action.

You can't say that someone is the ace of spades and then selectively support half of their opinion.

Bay

I have no more evidence than does Stitch w/his premise that such applicants are "sending a message." If there is evidence, please present it. (Your link doesn't seem to work, btw).

My assumption is based on human nature and familiarity with the college applications process. There is too much at stake for most students to intentionally omit facts that might help in their admissions. If they are trying to send a message that they don't want colleges to consider information about them for which they have no control (i.e. race), then I would assume to be consistent, they must omit gender, disabilities, familial situations, sexual orientation, and geographic and economic demographics, none of which are generally under an applicants control.

Tyler09

ahhhhh i see what you are saying.

If you are going to force your application to be evaluated solely on "merit" and want to send that message, omit all information outside of your control.

If you aren't willing to do so then you aren't committed to "meritocracy", right?

I'm not saying i support it either way, but i'm just trying to understand your point.

Bay

Yes, Tyler09, that is my point. And while they are at it, those applicants should also omit any legacy connections, the name of their high school, and omit any mention of skills learned through lessons paid for by their parents while they were a minor. I'm sure I've left out other things, but I think you get my point.

Ethyrial

I don't recall there being the option to omit most of those things on a college application. It hardly seems fair to cite them as evidence of "inconsistency".

FellowCCViewer

I guess choosing 'race unknown' gets rid of AA and the 'it's harder for white/asian ppl.'
Personally, I was stuck with choosing between race unknown or asian. in the end, I checked the 'others' box and wrote that I was American born Chinese-Indonesian. My last name sounds very asian anyway. I also considered that some might think 'is this kid afraid of showing hir heritage?'

tokenadult

I have heard from posters on CC of a great variety of ethnic backgrounds that "I didn't check any box on the form," in some cases because the applicants would feel better knowing that they got in without consideration of that issue, in other cases because their "multiracial" background doesn't fit the categories well anyway, and in quite a few cases because the students want to emphasize their common humanity with other students. I don't speculate on other people's motives for doing what they do--I certainly don't attribute unseemly motives to people I have never met. The way to find out why a growing number of students don't fill out the ethnic self-identification forms (so much so that some colleges now report 15 percent of their applicants as "race unknown") is to ask a scientifically formed sample of those students in a carefully designed survey. I'm not aware of any researcher who has done that, so I won't speculate further on this issue.

I also don't speculate on whether or not students self-reporting their ethnicity is something "that might help in their admissions." There is MUCH speculation, in dozens of threads on CC, that that is so, and there have been legal findings in particular cases at particular colleges that that was so in previous years, but there is also not good evidence of what impact ethnic self-identification has in the admission process TODAY at many highly desired colleges. Many colleges engage in targeted recruitment of "underrepresented minorities" as best they can, and I strongly support such efforts, and of course the federal government does require colleges to ask, even if students don't tell, about ethnic affiliation of applicants. But some colleges these days are making offers of admission to hundreds of students for whom their best information is "race unknown" and whose motives for leaving the OPTIONAL self-identification form unmarked are completely unknown. Those colleges don't seem to suffer any lack of day in, day out diversity on campus and seem to be highly desirable to students from all over the world of every which kind of ethnic background.

Bay

If an applicant truly wants to "send a message," they could certainly mail in their application providing only their social security number and email address (and omitting any of the afore-mentioned facts) with a letter explaining that they wish to be evaluated only on their merits and not on their circumstances. (I also forgot first-gen and bilingual if raised in such a household).

tokenadult,

Again, I admire your idealism. However, I think it is unfair of you to imply that it is "unseemly" for an applicant to not self-identify if it is done in hopes that it might help with their admissions. Perhaps when your children are old enough to begin the college application process, you will understand that applicants are expected and encouraged to take advantage of every honest opportunity to increase their admissions chances.

tokenadult

Hi, Bay, you seem to be withdrawing your earlier statement describing some possible ways of filling out an application form as derived from "A purely selfish, rather than altruistic motive." And that would be my preference, that we not assume the worst about any other applicant. Rather, let's simply lay out the facts about how college admission works--as best we can ascertain them--for our own children, and let our children decide how to fill out the forms. Applicants will have different reasons for making possibly similar, or possibly different, decisions about how to fill out their application forms. I will not make any invidious inference about why applicants fill out application forms as they decide best.

Ethyrial

There's quite a difference between checking off a provided "race unknown" box and expecting the 17 and 18 year old applicants to jump through hoops to make their statement. In any movement, there are thousands of people who passively harbor opinions for every one activist. This does not mean the former group disagrees with a policy any less. I can't speculate as to what the outcome would be if colleges made it equally easy to leave out all those other details, but I find it unfair that you would uniformly label such people as inconsistent.

It so happens that I know of students who chose to omit race because they wished to be evaluated solely on merit. I know of students who chose to omit gender in situations where it would likely have helped them. I know a student who was even happy to omit a legacy connection (given a situation where he could do so without explicitly circumventing the "parents' educational background" part on the form). But I can't generalize this to the entire applicant pool, and you would no doubt argue that such students must be in the minority.

Bay

No, tokenadult, I still believe that most who choose not to self-report likely do so out of selfish, rather than altruistic motives. But I wholeheartedly defend their right to do so. Nothing I've written contradicts that.

And I wholeheartedly support an applicant's right to fill out a form any way they so choose, but it is no more accurate or righteous to assume that their reasons for doing so are "altruistic" rather than selfish.

I do think its wrong to imply that race is the only factor that negates what would otherwise be admissions based purely on merit. Many other factors that are considered cannot be credited to the applicant's merit.

And finally, I for one, am not comfortable putting higher education admissions policy in the hands of teenagers who do not hold high school diplomas. (Altho I am confident they are capable of many other impressive and worthwhile things).