Leaving Race/Ethnicity blank

Parents Forum
1

<p>Will colleges take it against an applicant if he leaves the Race/Ethnicity part of the application form blank.</p>

2

<p>No. Many applicants do so.</p>

3

<p>So if a kid has a name like John Brown but who is Asian . It makes sense for him to just leave the Race part of the application blank. The college will of course see the student when he or she goes for the interview.</p>

4

<p>Perhaps now that girls may have a harder time getting accepted into some female-heavy colleges, some girls with “neutral names” (Taylor, Robin, etc.) will decline to state their gender. Mmmmm?</p>

5

<p>A John Brown could be any color! ;)</p>

<p>Lots of kids nowadays are adopted from Asia and have non-Asian sounding names; colleges should not assume ethnicity based on names alone. There are also plenty of Jews whose names don’t sound Jewish. The original family name of Larry Summers of Harvard was Samuelson (as in Paul Samuelson).</p>

<p>Not all colleges require interviews and some actually discourage them.</p>

6

<p>The number of applicants who decline to identify their ethnicity is rising, and it is rising particularly fast at the most selective schools. Many young people, like all of my children, would have to check more than one box, but the ethnicity questions on college application forms are OPTIONAL, as is made very clear on the Common Application. </p>

<p>P.S., nope, no one would guess my children’s ethnicity correctly knowing only their given and family names.</p>

7

<p>Hey whatever works. If putting in the sex will heavily put the girl at a disadvantage, why not hold off putting the sex.
Joking aside, it is OPTIONAL when it comes to race(not sure about sex). Going back to John Brown ( my S in this case, lol), he does not speak any Asian languages and only speak English and Spanish. Although he has Spanish blood but not a Hispanic from Latin America. Not Black nor Caucasian but of Asian descent.<br>
Not putting the race seem to have it advantages.</p>

8

<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A63331-2003May31&notFound=true[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A63331-2003May31&notFound=true&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Thats an article from Washington Post entitiled: College-Bound Students Often Skip Race Question</p>

9

<p>I don’t think schools hold anything against applicant who do not answer the race/ethnicity question, though the schools probably assume (correctly so in most cases) that the applicant is not a URM. Also, other info (like zip code) will suggest your race/ethnicity/class/income.</p>