Should You Put Your Race on Your College Application?

should you hide your race on your college applications this is a question that I often get from my students in particular those students who are identifying as Asian American or Asian in some capacity or some percentage Asian I'm going to talk about this question some different sides to the story some examples of kind of what's happened to some of my students who do identify as Asian American in the college admissions process and hopefully entangle this a bit [Music] my name is Brooke I work with students through the college admissions process in particular I work with a lot of students on their essays and crafting their personal stories so that they can put their best foot forward I tend to focus on students who are applying to very competitive University the majority of the students I work with are playing the top 25 maybe top 50 colleges but I'm going to be talking mostly about whether you should be putting down your race in a competitive kind of college admissions environment hiking information is something people do in a lot of circumstances and it's not necessarily you know wrong so to speak like let's say you're interviewing for jobs and you take a job and you work for two or three weeks and you get fired right away really quickly are you gonna put that three-week job on your resume it might just look better to not put it at all and not have any questions asked about it right like oh yeah I took a job for two weeks and got fired and I think in the same way some people feel like if you're going to use my checking of a box that says Asian against me why should I tell you that I'm Asian I've also previously spoken about this idea in terms of Tailoring your application and maybe not including some information just because you don't include something doesn't mean you're lying right like mental health struggles should you be talking about mental health struggles in your application essay it's a risk and a Shangri-La perfect world we could just be who we are and we can check whatever boxes we want and we can be like oh look here I am and this is me and this is all about me and I'm wonderful and amazing and awesome yay and let's celebrate everyone and that would be great yeah that would be great except that's not reality and we know this because there's this lawsuit right now waging in the Supreme Court against Harvard there's another one against the University of North Carolina in some of the documents that are related to the Supreme Court case I came across an admit rate by race and ethnicity by academic deciles so what that means is if we sort all the students who applied to Harvard into 10 deciles meaning we divide them into percentiles right the top 10 percent the next 10 percent the next 10 percent we find that in the top decile white students get in at a rate of 15.3 percent Asian American students get in at a rate of 12.7 percent we we shared some of these statistics in a tick tock and it basically lit our tick tock on fire with over a million views I think because it's so surprising to a lot of people we always knew that there was some you know that we were considering racing in admissions at these very competitive institutions but to what extent and how that worked the nitty-gritty the numbers of it a lot of us didn't realize necessarily how that played out well this is showing us how it plays out and so when you check that box like I know you're trying to be all like idealistic and like oh like being Asian is part of my identity and I wouldn't want to hide it right but at the same time you've got to ask what are colleges and universities doing with that check box and when I look at this little chart that was also in the accompanying documents from the lawsuit right now that's going on in the Supreme Court we see that being Asian has a negative coefficient estimate on your admission chances at Harvard between 2009 to 2016 between the classes of 2009 to 2016 meaning if you checked the Asian box you correlate with a negative chance of admission why would you check a box if it's going to just create a negative correlation for you right like that doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense now with the Supreme Court case coming down the line you may not get to choose and there may be no check box come next Fall if you read articles on it if you read things like the New York Times they talk a lot about what we call Race neutral Alternatives and that's the idea that in order to enroll more students of color in order to bring in diversity what schools are going to do is they're going to focus instead of focusing on Race they're going to suddenly switch gears and they're going to focus on people who are the first in their family or first generation students to attend college they're going to focus on students of challenging backgrounds of low socioeconomic backgrounds and they'll use those instead of using race they'll use those as sort of markers of potential diversity and by using those they'll try to make sure that they get some students who are from underrepresented minorities as part of the package right but these are race neutral in their means but the goal is to get an outcome where we have that racial diversity at the end of the day right but I have another theory and it actually is going to potentially change the story on whether you should be talking about your race or ethnicity on your application and that is I think the direction we're moving is away from a check box and into a paragraph box where we focus on this idea of do you bring diversity and what have you got to offer us right and what's your holistic package what's your story and how is that going to enrich our campus right and you can see that like Duke is already doing this here's Duke's question that's optional that asks about diversity we see a diverse student body that embodies a wide range of human experience in that context we are interested and what you'd like to share about your lived experiences and how they've influenced how you think of yourself so this question right here this is the future of race and college admissions to me how can you tell your story and does your background play into that race is still going to matter in college admissions and how you present yourself and how you present your background is still going to matter at least a highly competitive University a recent New York Times article actually profiled quite a few Asian American students who were essentially hiding part of their Identity or de-emphasizing their Asian identity in order to try to improve their probability of getting into college there are several categories that these people fall into in several different ways that they're de-emphasizing their Asian backgrounds one people who don't check the box right which we talked about two people who are trying to hide their activities because they come off as stereotypically Asian American so they had a girl who like played chess and that was one of her big activities and she sort of hid in on her application you're like downgraded it in her activities put it at the bottom because she didn't want to put that as her first and foremost thing going on because she didn't want to be stereotyped other students modified what they wrote in their essays right so they were told oh you shouldn't tell that story about how you immigrated to the US and it was hard to learn English and I will agree that's on my list of cliche essays race aside ethnicity City aside it's just a cliche essay and it's a story a lot of people applying to college have and I will agree that for Asian students is probably even more important that you don't write cliche stories because Asian American students tend to be over represented in the pool of students applying to competitive colleges versus their percentage of the general population in that sense and so the idea of is this a student who's adding to our diversity is a question that could come up especially if you're pigeonholing yourself into stereotypes so you definitely want to be careful about stereotypes there was a study done with real admissions officers and they gave them you know hypothetical students and they found that these officers were more impressed by Asian students that did atypical activities for Asian students as opposed to stereotypical Asian activities that that was more impressive so if you're playing tennis or chess or fencing or the violin those are stereotypical and that's not helping you but if you're an Asian kid who's in a rock band and has a mohawk wow you seem cool right so that idea of stereotypes is also something you can play with and if you are Asian American and You Buck The Stereotype it might actually be good to State your ethnicity is what that study also found that Asian students who were a stereotypically typical like the Asian kid who was the rock band fared better in admissions than white kids on average so you know there are some ways to play your story to an advantage as well as I always say if you're going to include the information right if you're going to if you're Asian American or you're Asian and you're going to talk about that background what I always like to say is you want to go big or go home and what I mean by that is if you're going to talk about it you want to work into the story so that it works for you and that it's a part of that story and it's an integral part of who you are that if you try to rate the story without it it wouldn't work let's talk about my own students I'm going to give you a little bit of a peek into my own students now I do have several I work with a lot of students who are Asian American whether they're South Asian or East Asian and even some International students that are Asian and international students and I will say that if you're International and you're coming from a country right that is an Asian country and you are of an Asian background it's really hard to hide and you're not going to be able to hide in it just is what it is and it is what it is and you have to talk about it or you can't hide it right but if you're American and the checkbox goes away you have a choice to make now I have a couple of students that in the last several years got into Harvard one is salvation the other is East Asian background but both you know Americans grew up in the United States um and they both very much talked about their culture they did so in ways that were self-effacing that were funny that were brilliant and you know what they could not have told their stories if they didn't talk about their background because it wouldn't have made sense they couldn't it would have been impossible and I think in those cases it worked in in their advantage because they told such beautiful stories and it was a part of who they are that it's like they told off all the haters and all the races and when you tell an awesome and amazing and compelling story no matter what background you're from that can just cut through all the noise and that's kind of the ticket to getting into these fabulous and amazing universities a lot of the time a few years ago too I had a half white half asian student who we decided that we did not talk about or check the box saying that he was Asian that was not part of the story and it didn't make sense it didn't make sense to put it in the story it wasn't an integral part of of the story now now where he had lived and where his experience were and and certain groups of people that he identified with and other you know and political events these things embraced cultures from around the world but but who he was it didn't make sense and he got into you know of Herbert Stanford Princeton and Yale he got in two out of four which I think is pretty good he did fine but I will also say you know I had another student who talked about how she felt out of place as an Asian American in a class of like lots of white girls and she felt like you know that tension of race and she didn't get into pen and I wonder and I still scratch my head and wonder if her topic of choice could have created some of that friction and I'm not sure you know we'll never know I don't know did it is that was that what it was I I can't say but I can't look at the statistics and I can see that there's definitely a disadvantage that you've got a higher amount to climb if you're coming from one of these backgrounds now the flip side of this is the other thing I want to talk to you if you're an underrepresented minority if you're African-American Native American Or Hispanic I'm going to say it's going to be very important that you talk about your background and you talk about your identity and you talk about the diversity that you will bring to campus because that is something valuable that you have to offer these Elite or competitive universities and you have the power even if affirmative action goes away you have the power to still get in but part of getting in is going to be the diverse point of view and story that you bring and your story is going to matter a lot more once colleges probably start to roll back affirmative action because of the Supreme Court ruling that I'm anticipating is coming down the line so I also want to tell you guys that story story story is probably the most important thing but story is what's going to when you get in these competitive School environments basically there's too many qualified candidates gpas are inflated everything's test optional now story is All You've got to cut through the noise right now and I like to believe that if you are true to yourself and you tell the story of Who You Are and you don't have to hide who you are but mentioning things that could hurt you if it doesn't make sense to throw them in you don't have to throw them in but if it does make sense or you can't tell your story without it you know then you tell your story and you do your best and you cross your fingers and you see what happens and that's where I'll end for today I hope you guys like this video so please give it a thumbs up subscribe to our Channel if you haven't yet and let us know in the comments how you feel about this issue we've also got group classes private tutoring all kinds of awesome stuff we also have these simple super Summoners if you're trying to get a really high score like that 1550 plus and you feel like a whole class is just unnecessary but you want an hour here an hour there to really punch up your skills we have super seminars coming up before the upcoming act and upcoming sat in February and March so definitely check out supertrutertv.com for all of that

Channel: SupertutorTV

Views: 9,140

Keywords: SAT, ACT, Brooke, Brooke Hanson, Hanson, prep, SAT prep, ACT prep, college, harvard, princeton, yale, supertutortv, tv, super tutor, admissions, high school, learning, tutor, tutoring

Id: NKkHMI0rgck

Length: 12min 55sec (775 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 27 2023