<p>^ </p>
<p>[Post</a> #4](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865329-post4.html]Post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865329-post4.html) </p>
<p>[Post</a> #7](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865405-post7.html]Post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865405-post7.html)</p>
<p>I was wondering what other people think of the big AA. Some think it levels the playing field for minorities trapped in impoverished neighborhoods who are at a massive disadvantage to the affluent white majority. Others find that it categorizes minorities as inferior applicants who need a leg-up in the application process. What do you guys think?</p>
<p>There are way too many threads on this.</p>
<p>This topic has been discussed to death for the past 50 years. Use the search feature.</p>
<p>Mhmmmmmmmmm</p>
<p>yes. because I am white and low-income, which means that I get neither the benefit of being affluent or a minority. </p>
<p>If the admissions process was really fair, they wouldn’t ask race, religion, or gender.</p>
<p>^yeah, & since some of our names give our genders away, we should just be assigned numbers, instead!
<em>rolls eyes</em></p>
<p>It is certainly racial discrimination of a flavor not prohibited by law, but I don’t think it insinuates the superiority of any race.</p>
<p>I think it would be better to do it by family income instead of race, because minority doesn’t imply poor. I would be completely okay with a hispanic person getting in ahead of me with worse scores because he grew up in poverty and had less oppurtunities than I did. But if he is rich and has the worse scores, I don’t feel like that is fair because he had the same oppurtunities. If they did it by income it would still help many, many minorities.</p>
<p>Affirmative action was begun to help the poor as well as ethnic and racial minorities. Doing it only by family income (and for those that don’t know – affirmative action is NOT only about race, it is also about family income and sex/gender as well) ignores the fact that minority race/ethnicity is a disadvantageous characteristic in the middle and upper classes as well. (And it is certainly not a “benefit,” not even in college admissions. If that were the case then Harvard and Yale would be 15% African American and 15% Hispanic, not just around 7% of each.)</p>
<p>Beyond that, affirmative action is not only about helping the poor. It is about ensuring that our nations’ universities’ student bodies reflect the diversity of our nation itself, and that our universities’ ethnic makeup is not reflective of historical disadvantages (not just based on income and economic status, but race too). The idea being that if our nations’ undergraduate bodies are diverse, then our nations doctors, lawyers, engineers, researchers, managers, i-bankers, etc., will be diverse as well.</p>
<p>do you think this thread will be merged with the 100000000000000 other similar threads?</p>
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<p>The admission process IS fair enough to favor students who read well enough to know that </p>
<p>a) questions about race are OPTIONAL ( [first</a> post in this FAQ thread](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/742349-race-college-admissions-faq-discussion-4-a.html]first”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/742349-race-college-admissions-faq-discussion-4-a.html) ) and often left unanswered by successful applicants ( [post</a> #4](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865329-post4.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062865329-post4.html) ), </p>
<p>b) questions about religion are almost never asked on college applications, except at a minority of religiously affiliated colleges, and </p>
<p>c) questions about sex are asked mostly for practical reasons such as estimating the demand for dorm space. </p>
<p>Good luck in your applications. Be sure to read each application form thoroughly before filling it out.</p>
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<p>The fact you cite to follow up that statement isn’t a complete proof of your statement. Affirmative action IS a benefit if it favors “otherwise equal” applicants of one category rather than another. Most colleges are sparing in revealing enough data to show how much impact their affirmative action policies have, if any, on the admission chances of comparable applicants from different groups.</p>
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<p>This is generally very good advice here on CC.</p>
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<p>This is generally very good advice here on CC.</p>
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<p>Tokenadult, they way you explained why not to pick a race does not include the benefit of increasing your chances.</p>
<p>You said it was because sometimes some people might have complicated situations and simply just want to be regarded human.</p>
<p>Fair enough, but most people here want an admissions boost, or at least to even out the playing field, in which case not selecting a race DOES NOT HELP.</p>
<p>You’re mixing up the two, thinking they are one.</p>
<p>Obviously being an URM is beneficial to admissions.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that Asians are overrepresented in colleges.</p>
<p>What about being Jewish? Is it a sign of diversity and an admissions hook or simply overrepresented?</p>
<p>I don’t think being Jewish will make a difference at all, positively or negatively.</p>
<p>Sorry for the tag, there is no option for Native Alaskan.</p>
<p>Is there such a thing? I am 1/4 Inuit on my mother’s side. Her family immigrated to a pacific island, then I immigrated from there to here. </p>
<p>I want to report my race for college purposes, but I know that Native Americans have to be registered with their tribe, but no one has said anything on the “Alaskan Native” group of peoples. </p>
<p>so do I have to start digging for old documents that prove this?</p>
<p>Also, I am 1/2 mongolian and 1/4 han chinese. That makes me 3/4 asian. If I report both, it makes me URM and ORM… what happens then?</p>
<p>I’m currently living in California, but my family’s income is under the poverty line, which is also contradictory for college purposes. I would love to transfer to Yale for anthropology and sociology, but my background at an inner city school has not given me much chances to shine in high school like some of the other kids. I am also first generation to attend college. I would say my GPA in HS is probably only a 3.5, top 10% and bad SATs which I will retake to improve.
Might I still have a relative chance if I do stellar in college?</p>
<p>I have a 3.93 with an engineering major right now, and am involved in community service and several clubs related to the humanities, but I’ve only been at my current university for 3 semesters and usually only juniors and seniors get the kind of leadership positions (President, VP, student senator of so and so) I see thrown around on the CC forum from graduating HS seniors. I also volunteer during my vacations for habitat for humanity, conservation corps and animal interest groups like wildlife waystation.</p>
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<p>Read the federal definition. </p>
<p>[Black</a> or African American persons, percent, 2000](<a href=“http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68176.htm]Black”>http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68176.htm) </p>
<p>Follow-up questions will fit well in this FAQ and discussion thread, into which your question was merged. Specific chances questions fit better in the What Are My Chances? Forum (which I personally don’t trust, but that is just me).</p>