I'm asian applying to college

rhandco
Sun, 23 Aug 2015 06:08:16 +0000

Simple, don’t list your ethnicity or race on the Common Application… If you think your name is “too ethnic”, change it.

You say: " IT SUCKS. Not necessarily because my chances are “lower” of getting into top colleges, but because of the mere fact ALL Asians are grouped together, as if we have similar cultures or values or upbringings or stories."

All Europeans are grouped together, yet they range from white like a piece of paper to dark like a brown paper bag. All Africans are grouped together yet really the only economically disadvantaged Africans in the US are refugees or descendants of slaves. So yes, a southern Indian is grouped with a Thai or Laotian. And grouped with an Israeli and Iraqi.

Who isn’t grouped together? Heck, even multiracial people like myself are grouped together, and we can be ANYTHING at all. I was just looking up Eartha Kitt - 1/4 Cherokee, 1/4 black, and 1/2 white and she is “black” because she looked black. I’m Asian and white, but I would fit into the multiracial category as much as she did - are we really that much the same? (yes, we are, we are human)

I am brown, sometimes I am confused with Hispanic but I am not. My Hispanic nephews know not one word of Spanish not taught in K - 6 and they are pale with light brown hair, but they can get their URM boost. But they wouldn’t be mistaken for a laborer while I was mistaken for my own children’s nanny because they look white and I don’t. White Spaniards and Cubans get the URM boost. Poor white people get no URM boost. Herman Cain’s kids get the URM boost.

Life is not fair. You will see CC posters who think that discrimination against Asians is rampant and purposeful, but it is no more rampant or purposeful than discrimination against blacks in the NBA or NFL, or discrimination against white men in corporate America.

Please do write an essay about your family. Do you think a white person can write about their race in an essay? Write about your culture, write about specific episodes of discrimination, fine. I don’t suggest writing about how the world has a conspiracy against Asians, or how some people are ignorant to think you’re Korean when you’re Vietnamese etc.

(and don’t get me started about how within “communities” - “communities” that the mass media considers - whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics - is much worse than most of it outside those communities - that could be an entire other thread)

The only way to get rid of this “problem” is to use socioeconomic class only in college admissions. A school that has 100% of the same race can be more diverse than a school with equal proportions of each race, IF the distribution of socioeconomic status is diverse in the first case and not in the second.