A lot of young folks are finishing up their college applications right now. Here’s a last-minute application tip: don’t be shy about checking the “Hispanic” box. I met a Harvard undergraduate at a party last night, pleasant, intelligent, and quite blond. Her mom was half-Hispanic, so she checked “Hispanic” when applying to Harvard, which now claims her among their minority students. The only awkward moment was just after she was admitted, when she was invited to come from her high school to campus for a visit and stay in a dorm suite with a Harvard undergrad. The Harvard bureaucrats thought that she might not be comfortable staying with a non-Hispanic white or Asian undergrad, so they asked her if she wanted a “minority” host.
At no time was she challenged on her ability to speak Spanish or the question of how her skin and hair came to be so pale.
Do you think I can claim Hispanic ancestry for my children based on their (probably) Sefardic (grand)+father who spoke Ladino?
Hey Phil, in 1988 when I started college, 1 out of 3 applicants were accepted by MIT. I hear that the admissions rate has dropped to 1 out of 12. Is that true?
I suspect this has become increasingly common. One of my husband’s colleagues, whose great-grandfather was Native American, checks Native American when he applies for federal jobs, and has had his children check this box when applying to college. He says they clearly got into better colleges than they otherwise would have. And he feels that as long as he’s forking over tens of thousands, he’d of course rather it be the best college possible.
I think those of us who’ve learned from various sources that college tuition is something like 33% higher than it would be because the colleges almost have an incentive to keep it elevated to receive more federal funds for those students receiving financial aid, have become a bit cynical about the whole process. But since we don’t want our children to go out into this hideously competitive world with a high school diploma, c’est la vie.
There’s a very interesting book out about Harvard admissions written by a Canadian guy, now a professor somewhere within the UC system. If nothing else, it provides reasonable justification for letting athletes into the Ivies, even if their GPAs, SATs, etc., aren’t stellar. Whatever they learn out on the athletic field leads them to be highly successful in lucrative financial advising-type jobs, so they’re probably more likely than the nerdy types to become very wealthy (assuming that’s considered a measure of success).
College application process is a real education indeed.
I’m the whitest man in America. Sheets blush in my presence. I mean both physically and ethnically. Yet according ton one popular definition, I am Hispanic since I speak Spanish. Maybe I should have checked that box on my application to Michigan Law…
Anonymous: You are probably right. When I applied as an undergraduate to MIT, in 1978, I think the admissions rate was closer to 1 in 2! Only about half of those admitted chose to attend, so basically 1 out of 4 applicants ended up as a student. Kids today are so much brighter than we ever were, and have to jump through such intense hoops to get into the first-rate schools, the only thing that I can’t figure out is how come these geniuses don’t accomplish more when they get out. Everything in aviation, for example, basically derives from engineers working during WWII or Vietnam. Computer software is pretty much mired in the early 1970s. Maybe the answer is that all of the smartest young scientists and engineers are working on biology (or that the truly smart ones have gone to Wall Street and are not doing science and engineering; they are achieving heroically, but in the domain of personal salary rather than things that the general public can use).
When confronted with a form containing a box to tick or space to fill in indicating my “race” or “ethnicity,” I often tick the box marked “other” and write in “HUMAN” for race and “USA” for ethnicity. I’m certainly not lying.
I think if more people did that, not only would the bureaucratic bean counters suffer well-deserved apoplexy, but we might actually get closer to the supposed goal of ending racism.
Very good advice indeed. Admiral Farragut, Nobel Price winner Luis Alvarez both Hispanic. Anyone can claim to be Hispanic, Sephardic Jews, Black Cubans (and white ones too)… Isn’t Greenspun a Hispanic last name?
My daughter is blonde and blue-eyed and her father is half-Japanese (at least, that’s what my wife tells me :-). Do you think it would help or hinder her prospects if she checked Asian?
To answer Rob’s question, it appears to hinder one’s chances of getting into top schools if one is Asian. At the top high schools, including the specialty science-math magnet ones, many of the best students are Asian, so the competition among them becomes even fiercer. They aren’t just good at academics — they’re best at everything, e.g., jazz band, tennis, swimming (on my son’s high school swim team last year, there were two child prodigies, as the older swimmers termed them, both of whom had a last name “Yang”).
The reality that I’ve encountered now that my oldest has been through the college app machine, is that being Indian or Chinese means big trouble, except if you’re one of the very top achievers. The parents of these kids are like cheerleaders, so they tend to suffer maladies like depression a lot less, which increases their chances of achieving the top grades, etc., in high school even further.
The world’s a tough place, so why should college entrance be any different? I told my oldest he should just be grateful there’s no military draft. The closest he got to the war in Iraq was helping with a wonderful program teaching some young veterans recovering at Walter Reed how to kayak on the Potomac River. Many of them were his age (18) or just a bit older. A humbling experience for my son.
Rob: NOOOO!!! STAY IN THE CLOSET!!
The University of Michigan did a workshop for admissions counselors regarding their new “holistic” admissions process. Out of 4 applicants, they accepted the 3 least-qualified and rejected the one with the best qualifications: a semi-affluent Asian female with a 34 ACT, challenging curriculum, and good extracurriculars.
http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/12/01/438eaff81b111?in_archive=1
It sounds like your daughter might resemble noted Hispanic activist Cameron Diaz, which works in your favor.
Buy way of backrground, the new UM admissions process is a result of the Supreme Court saying that the old undergraduate process, which used a clear-cut points system that adjusted GPA based on high school difficulty and gave X points of preference for “legacies,” Y points for having dark skin, Z points for good SAT scores, etc, was wrong, but the Law school’s murky, “we look at the whole person, and discriminate, but in a devious and inscrutible way.”
So the Supremes had no objection to institutional racism, but object strenuously to the use of arithmetic in anyone’s decision-making process.
There’s so much complaining about politically correct racism, classism, etc. It would seem there should be a significant market for colleges and universities with high academic standards that blatantly refuse to compromise those standards for PC, whether during admissions or at any other time. Members of every PC-favored group would be welcome to apply and attend, but with the understanding that their recognized achievements are not the product of special favors.
Would everyone involved with these schools be tarred and feathered? Or merely have their reputations thoroughly smeared by a ‘vast conspiracy’ of conformists? Or do these schools already exist somewhere and I don’t know about them?
Or is everyone already certain that the proposal is irrelevant, that to be a supposed ‘success’ BS is more important than substance?
Anonymous Prig, your school would not be able to get government funding for educational or research programs. Everything would be privately funded. How many private citizens or businesses would give your school money for research on, say, Confucian Influence in Issac Newton’s Principia? In summary, your dream school will be outrageously expensive.
That’s just crap. As an undergrad I applied for a minority fellowship and was told that I wasn’t a minority and/or didn’t fit in nicely within the black/latino/asian/indian demographic. My ethnicity: a first generation european who speaks a foreign language and whose parents didn’t take a college degree. The system is screwed up when it considers, for example, asian americans who are two or three generations removed minorities over a european student who is first generation.
Back in the days when this first became an issue my friend’s children tried that trick and were rejected because their last name was not hispanic. Same story in bi-lingual ed, where your ability to speak spanish will not get you a teaching job, but rather you must be culturally hispanic, ie Mexican or one of the other approved classes of hispanic.
Someday the world will be so mixed this era will be looked on as something of a joke.
Vincent, as a first generation european immigrant, you DO get preference over second or third generation asian americans. Imagine being a typical slob of an american and getting pegged as an overachieving asian american. We get screwed two ways to Sunday.
Are there any states where the population is White and Asian with a negligible population of other groups? Hawaii? In such state, affirmative action works in Whites’ favor.
Believe it or not, Spanish people are white Caucasians, and 100% Hispanic people can be blonde. Insofar as the group categorised as “Hispanic” in the US is not white, it’s Native American. Just Native South American, not North American.
I am light brown haired, blue eyed and I know that my Dad’s Grandfather i.e. My Great grandfather’s mother was fully spanish, from spain, Is that too far back to claim Hispanic on a college application?
Hola Caitlin: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/1997standards.html is referenced by the Wikipedia article on “hispanic”. The OMB (government) standards do not specify any percentage to quality as “hispanic”. Nor can they agree on a person being able to say “I am part hispanic”. If you are aware of any Spanish origin, you are therefore hispanic (since you cannot be part hispanic and you know that you are not 100 percent non-hispanic).