<p>Well im half Asian Indian and Arab, ever since now on everything i filled out i would just say i’m 100% asian. Now that i am reading that middle easterns are considered white would it be proper to list myself as multi racial on the application or just keep saying i’m 100% asian?</p>
<p>Check this link on the issue of qualifications: </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.act.org/news/data/08/pdf/three.pdf[/url]”>http://www.act.org/news/data/08/pdf/three.pdf</a></p>
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<p>In the United States, it’s not required to answer the question at all. So you can simply leave the question checkboxes blank. Or you can check more than one checkbox. The choice “multiracial” is nonstandard and should be gone from all college application forms by next year, when a new federal regulation, already published, goes into effect. But now and then, you can decide not to answer the question at all. That is your right under federal law. </p>
<p>I’m not completely sure from your question if you are a domestic student (a citizen or permanent resident). If you are an international student from the point of view of United States universities, that would be how you are reported by colleges in their counts of student ethnicities, so what you mark wouldn’t matter at all.</p>
<p>The definition of white in our society has changed over time (these days, Ashkenazi Jews and Irish are generally considered white, but there was a time when neither were considered so). They seem to be going by the US Census standards, which classify Middle Eastern as white. I happen to agree that those standards are out of touch with reality (like Pseudonym said).</p>
<p>I forget who said it, but there was some Middle Eastern comedian who has a quote to the effect of “When I woke up on 9/11/01, I was white. On 9/12/01, I was an Arab.”</p>
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<p>And they are only rumors, because most colleges don’t publish enough information about their admission procedures to make clear what is expedient. But a principled reason not to self-report your ethnicity, which is everyone’s right under federal law, is that you think you are a member of humankind and want to be treated just like people in all the various ethnic groups. You can decline to self-identify with any ethnic group. [Colleges</a> don’t guess about student ethnicity](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061012043-post5.html]Colleges”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061012043-post5.html) and [colleges</a> admit many students who are reported to the federal government as “race/ethnicity unknown.”](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061012037-post4.html]colleges”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061012037-post4.html) </p>
<p>Don’t worry about it. Don’t report your ethnicity unless you actively want to.</p>
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<p>Since way back from the beginning. The federal ethnic classifications are arbitrary, but they have always been that way. (If Lebanese people and Arab people were not considered “white,” they could not have immigrated to the United States in the numbers that they did in the years after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, by then current immigration law.) </p>
<p>See the early posts of this FAQ thread for links out to the official federal definitions, which the Census Bureau itself notes are NOT scientific. </p>
<p>P.S. It’s helpful when raising questions like the several questions that came in overnight to raise them in this FAQ thread, where it’s easier to look up the links to correct information. </p>
<p>P.P.S. Why don’t Irish people get a separate ethnic category?</p>
<p>I think the title speaks for itself. I am part slavic (my dad’s mom was from modern day Croatia), and I was wondering if that is considered to be an underrepresented minority.</p>
<p>no its not. URM is latino/hispanic, black, and native American/Native Islander. You are considered white, but being slavic might help you with “diversity”</p>
<p>I’m a baby boomer, which is another way of saying that I’m a good bit older than most people who post on College Confidential. I distinctly remember the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated–the most memorable day of early childhood for many people in my generation–and I remember the “long hot summer” and other events of the 1960s civil rights movement.</p>
<p>One early memory I have is of a second grade classmate (I still remember his name, which alas is just common enough that it is hard to Google him up) who moved back to Minnesota with his northern “white” parents after spending his early years in Alabama. He told me frightening stories about Ku Klux Klan violence to black people (the polite term in those days was “Negroes”), including killing babies, and I was very upset to hear about that kind of terrorism happening in the United States. He made me aware of a society in which people didn’t all treat one another with decency and human compassion, unlike the only kind of society I was initially aware of from growing up where I did. So I followed subsequent news about the civil rights movement, including the activities of Martin Luther King, Jr. up to his assassination, with great interest.</p>
<p>It happens that I had a fifth-grade teacher, a typically pale, tall, and blonde Norwegian-American, who was a civil rights activist and who spent her summers in the south as a freedom rider. She used to tell our class about how she had to modify her car (by removing the dome light and adding a locking gas cap) so that Klan snipers couldn’t shoot her as she opened her car door at night or put foreign substances into her gas tank. She has been a civil rights activist all her life, and when I Googled her a few years ago and regained acquaintance with her, I was not at all surprised to find that she is a member of the civil rights commission of the town where I grew up.</p>
<p>One day in fifth grade we had a guest speaker in our class, a young man who was then studying at St. Olaf College through the A Better Chance (ABC) affirmative action program. (To me, the term “affirmative action” still means active recruitment of underrepresented minority students, as it did in those days, and I have always thought that such programs are a very good idea, as some people have family connections to selective colleges, but many other people don’t.) During that school year (1968-1969), there was a current controversy in the United States about whether the term “Negro” or “Afro-American” or “black” was most polite. So a girl in my class asked our visitor, “What do you want to be called, ‘black’ or ‘Afro-American’?” His answer was, “I’d rather be called Henry.” Henry’s answer to my classmate’s innocent question really got me thinking. </p>
<p>I think one of the most effective tactics during the toughest years of the civil rights movement was when a black person would stand in a public place with a sign saying “I am a man.” Really, it’s that simple. To buy into the idea that “racial” categories make other people a different kind of people is to buy into the worldview of the segregationists. I am a human being, and you are a human being, and everyone else applying to your favorite college is a human being, and every member of the college admission committee is a human being, and we all have a lot more in common than we have in distinction. It’s a radical idea, but it’s a correct idea. Alas, I don’t remember our visitor Henry’s family name, or I would Google him up and thank him for getting me to think in the most concrete way possible about whether I acknowledge the common humanity and personal individuality of all my fellow human beings. It is from this perspective that I am glad that there are many college applicants who decline the opportunity to self-report an ethnic affiliation and many colleges that admit many such students.</p>
<p>Four decades ago, when my fifth-grade class received that class visitor, I would never have imagined that people would still take “race” so seriously today. (Indeed, that same fifth grade class prepared a time capsule with predictions of the year 2001, which was opened that year, and in the time capsule can be found my prediction that “interracial” marriages would increase–I am part of one–and that people would learn to get over racial classifications. I guess we are still working on that, more slowly and less surely than I had thought we would.) Better late than never.</p>
<p>I have referred to international comparisons in some posts I have made about this issue, because of course the classifications of ethnic groups used in the United States are essentially fictional, and don’t match the classifications used in other countries. But it is a cultural and historical universal that wherever general government policies become ethnic-conscious, the citizenry becomes more ethnic-conscious, and ultimately inter-ethnic violence becomes much worse. The long civil war in Sri Lanka (among “Asian” ethnic groups that most Americans would be unable to distinguish), the former civil war in Lebanon (among “white” people by the United States Census classifications), the genocide in Rwanda (among “black” people), the national disintegration and genocide in Yugoslavia (“the land of the south Slavs,” who all look alike even to other white people), and other troubling examples are why I don’t think it is good public policy to attempt to classify people officially by ethnic categories. This thread records dozens of examples of how arbitrary and poorly fitting any of those categories are. You can fill out your college self-identification form however you like (but please don’t lie), but please don’t insist that such questions on college application forms exist for all time. Let’s start calling Henry Henry, and calling our neighbors and fellow citizens our neighbors and fellow citizens. </p>
<p>Very soon we will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s (and Charles Darwin’s) birth, which will also be the 100th anniversary of the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. By then, will we have learned that we all have a lot more in common than we have that divides us?</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that Asians have it the worse when they apply to HYPSM and many other “top universities.”</p>
<p>What kind of initiative should a college applicant show to demonstrate that he is willing to learn from other students, including other students who don’t share the same ethnic background? It seems to me, because the earth is full of lots of different kinds of people, that any college admission office would be doing the right thing to prefer applicants with a demonstrated ability to get along with all kinds of people. How can a high school student develop that ability? What resources or activities do you recommend to students who want to understand other people from other ethnic groups better?</p>
<p>Just out of curiousity, how honest are people generally when it comes to identifying with a race?</p>
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<p>I’m pretty honest about saying that I’m just one member of Homo sapiens among more than 6 billion. </p>
<p>I don’t know how to give a more general answer to your question, because I’m not sure how one would gather reliable data to know how to answer it. Indeed, what is the “honest” way to identify races, when race categories are largely arbitrary to begin with?</p>
<p>Thanks for the “We’re All Human Beings Here” Post, Token. But with all due respect to you old guys, your generation is what frustrates most of us trying to get into college. I’ve spoken to several adcoms and each one was from your generation. You guys are controlling the admissions process based on your memories from the past. Take it from me, there’s no noticeable racism in my school. If anything, the AA and Hispanics are the most judgemental of people based on race, but again it’s not that noticeable. I personally don’t hate anyone because of their race. Nor do any of my friends. But because your generation is in charge at the moment, my generation is forced to pay the price for your bad memories. The irony is that the only resentment I see my friends feel towards another because of race is due to affirmative action policies. The bottom line is that your generation needs to wake up and look at the current situation, and not think back to the 1960s. With respect to racism, America has changed for the better but you guys continue to think it has not (just look at the White House). I hope that once your generation is gone, my kids won’t have to worry about whether they are disadvantaged for college admissions because they are not an URM.</p>
<p>I disagree with you, Old College Try. I’ll go ahead and assume that we’re a part of the same generation, but I don’t think the problem is older adcoms. My school is located in a rather Caucasian, affluent area but has students from low income neighborhoods, which are made up of mostly African-Americans, so it’s about 50/50 between black and white students (not very diverse in terms of other races). I’ll also assume that there is a similar balance between all URM’s and whites at you’re school. I, as a middle-class black woman, can say that even if you don’t think there’s blatant racism at your school, the minorities at your school probably do. It’s kind of like when students use the adjective “gay” in a negative way; the straight kids saying it might not notice it, but LGBTQ students do. As someone who is used to being the only black person in most of my classes/activities, I can say that I’ve never been made to feel completely included or respected for my accomplishments. It’s never “Wow, [raynebow] you’re a great student”; it always comes across as “Wow, you’re pretty smart for a black kid.” Although I’m usually passive about some things, I came home crying one day this year because of multiple comments like that in a single day. When EA letters came out, our val, a white male, got rejected from Stanford, and without him saying why he got rejected, people automatically assumed it was about race. I know Stanford might not be the best example this year, but just because a person is underrepresented, doesn’t mean their under qualified. Cookie-cutter applicants aren’t what most colleges are looking for, so why not diversify in terms of other qualitative factors, which don’t necessarily include race. Unless you are a URM, you might not be as sensitive to these differences. And as far as the racism in America, it still exists (just look at the racist sentiments and text messages after Obama was elected); since Obama won the election, nothing has changed in my daily life.</p>
<p>oldcollegetry, I hope that your naivete is shattered when you arrive at college. You sound like the average high school student, who doesn’t understand how complicated the issue of race is in our society. </p>
<p>I am of your generation, btw. I likely go to a similar school to you and the majority of my peers probably think the exact same way as you. If the topic interests you, I suggest researching deeper into it.</p>
<p>Oh, I think there is still racism in the current generation of young people applying to college. I see it on the various CC forums, alas. I do hope colleges get more into the business of saying, “We are looking for a lot of different kinds of students, and we want you to feel welcome to apply, whoever you are,” and then apply weighted consideration of admission factors more on a socioeconomic basis than on an ethnic basis. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.tcf.org/Publications/Education/carnrose.pdf[/url]”>http://www.tcf.org/Publications/Education/carnrose.pdf</a> </p>
<p>I have no idea how many colleges already do that, nor do I have any idea how much admission consideration is given to student ethnicity by any college that does consider it. I urge all applicants, whoever they are, to apply widely and see what happens. I also urge everyone not to whine about their admission results, because it’s never clear to outside observers why one applicant gets one result and another applicant gets a different result. I do hope the young people in my children’s generation learn to be as ethnicity-agnostic as my children largely are.</p>
<p><a href=“%5Burl=http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061501619-post569.html]#569[/url]”>quote</a> Thanks for the “We’re All Human Beings Here” Post, Token. But with all due respect to you old guys, your generation is what frustrates most of us trying to get into college. I’ve spoken to several adcoms and each one was from your generation. You guys are controlling the admissions process based on your memories from the past…I hope that once your generation is gone, my kids won’t have to worry about whether they are disadvantaged for college admissions because they are not an URM.
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<p>The current generation applying to college is uniquely positioned to move the admissions process towards a meritrocracy. It will take more than ‘hope’; actually personal action and responsibility. In a [previous</a> thread](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1059987095-post542.html]previous”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1059987095-post542.html) the following appeal was made. Note that the appeal also challenges one to have the courage of his/her convictions:</p>
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<p>A [similar</a> appeal](<a href=“http://home.roadrunner.com/~justamerican/]similar”>http://home.roadrunner.com/~justamerican/) is being made for the upcoming census.</p>
<p>Token, people will always hate, thats just life and its not going to change. People hate on fat people, gay people, ugly people, poor people, etc. But guess what? Black and Hispanic people hate, too. In fact, at my school, the blacks and Hispanics hate more than the Asians and whites. Its not even close. But that type of hate is not what I am talking about. My point is that this is 2008, not 1968. Forty years ago, hate limited opportunities for people of color. Thats not true today. Today, blacks and Hispanics limit themselves. I can only speak on what I see every day, and the URMs in my school dont do as well as Asians and whites in my school only because they dont try hard enough. Hate and prejudice have nothing to do with it. In their culture, doing well academically is looked down on. In the Asian culture, doing well academically is encouraged. Thats 95% of the reason why Asians do well and blacks and Hispanics do not. I could tell you story after story about Asians with higher scores in my school who didnt get in to their school of choice while blacks and Hispanics with lower scores did. And why? Because people still think were living in 1968; they still think blacks and Hispanics dont do as well academically because they have been prevented by The Man from doing so, and they need a boost. From my perspective, its totally wrong and unfair.</p>
<p>You are completely missing the fact that for Asians there is the “bamboo ceiling” where Asians are never ever put in leadership positions even if they are more than qualified compared to say a white guy. One of the first things we learned in economics was that most boards of directors of large corporations are made up of “old white guys.” Plus Asians have like -50 points on everything when they apply to top colleges and are compared to other Asians like “this Asian has similar ECs to this Asian, they are all the same, unoriginal, etc.” Yet you have white students who have very similar ECs to other white students yet are not judged because of that. ■■■■■■■■ double standards like this exist everywhere and no matter how hard Asians try, there is always a much larger percentage of Asians that do not get into “top schools” compared to people of other races because of these stereotypes and the complete lie that is the “model minority myth.”</p>