Growing up my parents have always checked non-hispanic white as my racial and ethnic identity however I feel that this doesn’t accurately reflect my cultural identity and heritage. My entire pedigree is Jewish. My dad is an Ashkenazi Jew born in colombia to a mother born in Colombia and a Father born in Austria, both are of eastern european jewish descent. My mother is a Sephardic Jew born in Israel, to a Moroccan mother and an Egyptian father. I have grown up in a culture mix consistent with those of Latin, North African, and Jewish origin. My question is how would this heritage accurately reflect on paper work, my best guess is Hispanic and White? Also would I be able to change it in my school, college board and applications, and census records. Lastly, if I do make the change, will it raise suspicions in admissions officers or in others. Thanks looking forward for a response
I am of the mind that everything should match: whatever your parents put down when they registered you for kindergarten should match what they put down when they enrolled you in high school, which should match both how you answer the question on the SAT and how you answer the question on college apps.
23&Me and the like seem to have given everyone the green light to change their race and ethnicity at will, based on a belief that anything but white or asian looks better to colleges. In reality excellent stats and consistency look better to colleges. However, if your family actively and regularly celebrate both middle eastern and Columbian traditions, then you can probably make a good case.
I agree. For sure the numbers and activities take huge priority over identification, But I’ve been meaning to get this situation fixed since middle school, but I feel that if I do it now, beginning of 11th grade and 2 months before SAT it would just be insanely suspicious of taking advantage of identity to get an advantage in admissions. Would I be better off leaving it or making the switch and then dealing with explaining it to admissions officers? Like I said I am a regular practicer of Middle Eastern, latin, and Jewish Tradition, grew up in a trilingual household of hebrew english and spanish, and I feel that the category of non-hispanic white groups me with people who i personally don’t Identify with.
You can put down Hispanic and white. But if adcoms don’t see the sort of connections to Latin culture that they look for, null effect.
And a parent simply born in a country doesn’t do it. Tricky.
I think you can change your school record. Your guidance counselor should know how to do that.
Do you already have a College Board account? If you identify as Hispanic why didn’t you choose that? You’ll have to contact them to ask how to change their records. If you don’t have an account you don’t have to change records. Just pick what ethnicity you want.
The next US Census is in 2020. You’ll be able to identify however you want then. But you can’t change past census records.
None of this will help you with college admissions if your heritage isn’t reflected in your app. What, exactly, are you planning to explain to admissions officers?
Consistency is over-rated. Just because the OP’s parents may have made a mistake when they registered the OP for kindergarten, doesn’t mean the OP needs to repeat that same erroneous answer when applying for colleges.
MIstake? Or they see their heritage and identity differently?
Another possibility is that the parents at the time the OP was in kindergarten feared some kind of unfriendly discrimination against some part of their ethnic heritage, so they left it out of official documents.
Or it may not have been possible to indicate many ethnic heritages at the time (remember forms that said to “check one”?).
I.e. descended from Jewish people who lived in Spain before 1492? Note that https://www.census.gov/topics/population/hispanic-origin/about.html says that “OMB defines “Hispanic or Latino” as a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.”
It sounds like a great essay. If you feel pulled to your Jewish and whatever roots, go for it. If you want to add Hispanic because you really feel that way and it’s true. Go for it.
If all of the above is a convoluted way of approaching an admissions preference, I would guess it could possibly weigh heavily on your conscience over time. And who knows how these things pop up down the road to bite someone.
Just put down the truth.
Anyway, each college admissions office determines for itself, if you have the connections and perspective that matter to them.
Ucb, with my kids, we had multiple requests over the years to verify their ethnic or racial whatever, as the k-12 needed to present reports to the feds. I just think calling this some historical limitation is a stretch, in this day and age.
Bottom line, OP needs to be able to show, not just tell, that any Hispanic influence has shaped his perspective and identity. It may be subtle, but CC often agrees that just living somewhere for a generation is not it. Asians who lived a genration in S. America are not Hispanic. And frankly, the jury is still out on whether recent ties to Spain do it.
Are there a lot of choices for ‘race’ on the current form? Do any of them fit you?
For ethnicity, are there more choices than “Hispanic? Yes/No, and if Yes, white or non-white?”
You can check whatever you identify with. It won’t matter on for college admission, but will be what the college reports to the federal government. Statistics.
You can report what you like on the census, or your parents can if you live with them and they fill out the form. Everyone in a family can have a different race and ethnicity if they identify differently. Many people will have different answers for 2020 than they had in 2010 - address, marital status, even sex. The individual answers are not compared to prior filings.
I don’t know why this is so hard and comes up every year. Unless there’s an admissions preference concern.
It shouldn’t be that difficult.