<p>I was wondering if I would be considered an under-represented minority, and therefore be eligible for a hefty admissions boost. One side of my family originates from South America (my dad was born there), but I look white, my name is Anglo-sounding, and I don’t speak the language fluently (although I can understand and speak fairly well in my home with dad and grandmother). Do you think this will give me a significant boost on my applications, or will colleges look down upon this (in interviews, etc.) when they see that I’m not a minority from a racial standpoint?</p>
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<p>Nope, not trufax, try again.</p>
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<p>Absolutely not.</p>
<p>For one thing, I’m confident in my own ability. For another, I don’t have coprophilia. Maybe you do.</p>
<p>If you want to resort to that to get an edge for something as small as college, you really need to be going to a different school.</p>
<p>I have no idea why in the world you would want to do anything like that to get into UVA. Or maybe if you’d actually change your last name, you’d go to a better school. Or stuff.</p>
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<p>Yes, let’s blame other countries for their own laziness for not being as good as Singapore.</p>
<p>If you are half S. American and don’t live in that culture, it’s unlikely you will get anything like the boost of someone AA. Many schools do not consider anyone other than Mexicans, Central Americans and Puerto Ricans for their Hispanic boost.</p>
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Which article? None of the ones you’ve posted explain how culture can influence IQ, which is what this conversation is about.</p>
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My type of white folk? If I talked like this to a black person accusations of racism would fly from every corner.</p>
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I never denied variations exist. and you have ignored the substance of my response. Do you wish me to produce the data I spoke of? Yes or no?</p>
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I favor a genetic explanation because across nations and cultures various fuzzy defined races tend to score at the same general levels on IQ tests. This data is in my links, which you may examine at your leisure.</p>
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<p>Huh? No, genetics has everything to do with economics in the same way that physics has everything to do with calculus. Can’t you differentiate an injection from a bijection?</p>
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<p>The one on redlining?</p>
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<p>It wasn’t introduced to mainstream evolutionary analysis until Maynard Smith and Price. </p>
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<p>Nope. If they always work they way they should there wouldn’t be any unsolved problems in theory. Humans aren’t faithful representations of Homo economicus in the same way that neutral markers aren’t always really neutral. But close enough to do make useful results. </p>
<p>(Also – clearly you haven’t read Evolution and Economic Behaviour … where economics findings borrowed into biology are reanalysed into economic theory…) </p>
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<p>What lab do you work in anyway?</p>
<p>Bindo - I agree … put it down. It can’t hurt, and it may give you a boost at some schools. But I hope you aren’t depending on Hispanic roots to get you into colleges.</p>
<p>Colleges are definitely looking for more Hispanics, so you should put it down. It might even help you get some scholarships.</p>
<p>What about people who are Latino/a? Does that give the same boost? My family is from South America.</p>
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<p>Merged in from the “Admissions Boost for a URM?” thread: </p>
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<p>Colleges mostly don’t provide enough information about their own policies to make clear who gets a “hefty admissions boost,” but if you think your background adds interesting diversity to a college campus, mention it on your application.</p>
<p>My question is what prevents me (average white guy) from saying I am black on a college/professional school application? Admissions will never know, and even if they did, they would do nothing about it.</p>
<p>They can rescind your acceptance once they found out that you are in fact white.
But I know it’s hard to tell that a person has completely no blood of some race. The best friend of my S in middle school was half black cuban and half white. His elder brother looks somewhat colored but this kid looks very white. Another example is my former colleague. He is quarter native american but never look like that. An extreme example is that there are people in northwestern region of Japan who have Caucasian DNA traces which brought to Japan several thousand years ago. Some of them look a bit white.</p>
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<p>Personal honesty and integrity.</p>
<p>My husband’s fam from PR although he has nothing to do with them. Daughter is declaring herself HIspanic because she is proud of her heritage. She will be first gen on his side to attend college. I am curious about how it may affect her admissions at a state school.</p>
<p>thank you</p>
<p>Okay, sorry for the quadruple post, but I think there’s a very simple experimental design that we’re all overlooking … </p>
<p>Black children adopted by financially Asian families with good parents.</p>
<p>Contrast their achievement scores with the scores of other Asian students.</p>
<p>I bet they would be similar.</p>
<p>Perhaps … a series of separated identical twin experiments involving black children where the babies are split up into contrastive cultural home environments. And we could get the federal government to grant the funding and the legal enforcement for the experiments…</p>
<p>(And I don’t know why pseudoscience supporter Killbilly likes IQ tests so much … no one in neurobiology takes the current state of psychometry seriously…)</p>
<p>Now, conversely you could raise Asian children of Ivy League Asian parents in ghetto inner city households. And to improve experimental rigour, confiscate identical twins born to Asian families at birth …</p>
<p>Then, we could get some good evidence to resolve the AA debate, now wouldn’t we?</p>
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<p>At a few state universities (University of California, University of Texas, University of Michigan and a few others) there shouldn’t be any boost at all, because by state law the universities may not consider ethnicity as an admission factor. But at most state universities, the working assumption is that Puerto Rican students otherwise similar to students of majority “race” will receive favorable consideration, although it is unclear how much of a practical difference that makes. </p>
<p>Good luck in the application season.</p>
<p>“They can rescind your acceptance once they found out that you are in fact white.”</p>
<p>How will they do that? It’s not like the admission committees check your race after you enroll.</p>
<p>“Personal honesty and integrity.”</p>
<p>Considering that I find affirmative action to be racist and immoral, that doesn’t sound very convincing here.</p>
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<p>I disagree. It’s like if Kobe bryant was to adopt asian children, they’re not going to become pro athletes (most likely).</p>
<p>Imo different races have different things they’re good at. and IQ does sorta come into play, although not necessarily what we have as IQ right now.</p>
<p>and I’m not going to read through that, just explain it in a few words.</p>
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<p>Why do you think so? </p>
<p>Different environments trigger divergent selection towards divergent adaptations. But consider that, throughout human history, no human group has ever been really completely cut off genetically from the other; that is, there has always been at least intermittent gene flow, among all ethnic groups. Within the last 15,000 years alone, and IGNORING European colonization and everything after 1492, there have at least been 4 waves of migration to the Americas, and probably more (once we get the archaelogical bickering resolved).</p>
<p>And now really think about the different ecological niches that humans would face in contrastive environments … are they really that different to trigger large, stable, discrete, differential genetic characteristics as they pertain to cognition? The ecological niche of a desert group and that of a Siberian group may on face value seem quite divergent, but if you really think critically about it – not really. (I’ll trust you all to realise this, but I can explain more detail if needed.)</p>
<p>Sure OK, the environments are different to create differential allele distributions for alleles pertaining to things like melanin production, hair colour and eye shape.</p>
<p>Some characteristics you must also realise undergo sexual selection and selfish gene selection (see Green-beard effect). That is, some traits don’t evolve as a divergent adaptation to a new environment, merely as a sexual effect to diverging <em>sexual</em> pools. That is, if rich red hair colour becomes valued in society (some arbitrary characteristic of health) – because in order to have any sort of rich colour you must be adequately fed ([Handicap</a> principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle]Handicap”>Handicap principle - Wikipedia)). This is where economics comes in you see – if you look at the good example shown at [File:Handicap-signal-of-quality.png</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Handicap-signal-of-quality.png]File:Handicap-signal-of-quality.png”>File:Handicap-signal-of-quality.png - Wikipedia) – you can see in the sexual advertising game, that MB = MC much faster for poorly-fed individuals (less intense signal), whereas the optimum solution for more well-fed individuals is a more intense signal. (This handicap principle weeds out deceptive advertising by less-fit individuals.) But ANYWAY, it could be red hair, intense jet black hair, or golden tresses – but these evolve not necessarily because red hair is good for the Irish climate or whatever, but actually because social custom and genetics reinforce each other. Volatile things like that are especially susceptible to divergence, because of their arbitrariness. </p>
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Handicap-signal-of-quality.png]File:Handicap-signal-of-quality.png](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Handicap-signal-of-quality.png%5DFile:Handicap-signal-of-quality.png){kind=link}
<p>Another rather arbitrary thing with a memetic-based hereditary component is language … and you can see those are especially susceptible to historical divergence.</p>
<p>Now, when it comes to cognition … you really have to think about what sort of selective mechanisms would encourage a <em>DIVERGENCE</em> in cognition-related genes. You must realise that the sheer majority of these genes (about 10,000 of the 30,000 genes in the human genome deal with the nervous system) are highly-conserved – they code for critical microtubule assembly helpers or affect a wide class of interneuron communications. </p>
<p>Many of the more plastic aspects of cognition are in fact transmitted by culture and the environment … and for good evolutionary reason. But unfortunately Killbilly does not appear to have any conception about neuroplasticity.</p>
<p>okay, and now instead of theory, we look at the facts. How many asians are “qualified” for HYPSM? How many (insert URM group) are qualified for HYPSM? How many asians are there compared against other URM groups in USA?</p>
<p>How many 2400s are URMs? How many are asians?
How many USAMOers are asian? How many are URM?</p>
<p>BUT URMs clearly dominate sports such as basketball, baseball, soccer, etc.</p>