cbrand

I was very interested to read more about the Epenshade and Radford study. It does bring up some interesting and rather disturbing points. However, in doing some research about it, I came across a review called A Weak Defense of an Obsolete Idea by Martin Morse Wooster. If nothing else, I think it is important to note that the data for the study was gathered in 1997 from only a handful of colleges.

(Excerpt......)
Espenshade and Radford use as the core of their book a survey called the National Study of College Experience, which includes data from eight colleges and universities. We do not know which these eight schools are, except they are among the 34 Bowen and Bok studied for The Shape of the River. We do know that the authors originally were going to include ten schools, but decided not to use two historically black colleges because they decided that those schools were not representative of the typical American university.

The authors say the identities of the schools—and the information in their dataset--cannot be divulged because the schools supplied the data on the condition that it not be made public because it contained confidential information about students. But good social science is based on research that can be fact-checked and replicated by other scholars. Surely there must be a way to supply the database to reputable researchers while stripping out any references that would identify particular individuals.

Finally, it should be noted that the survey Espenshade and Radford conducted was for 1997, and readers are supposed to assume that data collected 13 years ago describes today’s colleges and students. It is far from certain that this assumption is valid.

Ambriesce

I'm half Korean, half German (lol, definitely not an advantageous combination).
I had that very same dilemma, but I just decided that I'm going to put both.
I know what they say about Asians and Whites concerning college admissions, but I figure there's no way around it.
I can't change my ethnicity and even if I don't fill in an ethnicity, they'll assume I'm either White or Asian just by my last name (it could actually go both ways, oddly enough).
And besides, they probably know that if you leave it blank, you must be Asian or White anyway because a URM would most definitely take advantage of the situation.
I know I would.
But let's just hope that it's our skills that get us into colleges, not our debatably disadvantageous ethnicities.

Madshock

Thanks for all the replies, and sorry I took so long responding!
I think I'll probably just put both in the end I guess. I identify more as white in general, like on all the stuff in life that only gives you one option, but upon hitting this on the apps it became a roadblock of sorts. Hopefully this all turns out ok then

veryindecisive

Is there any analysis of how colleges view subraces? You'd think that they would matter more than the larger categories - for example, Filipinos don't tend to do nearly as well as other Asian subgroups.

jgraider

Just be honest and put both

jasonInNy

WOW!!!

Recruited atheletes are only twice as likely to get into schools as regular applicants with similar stats. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHA