Anonymous asked: how much do you think racial diversity plays into the application process?
This is a tricky question, and I may alienate a few people by answering it. But alas, I was asked, so here we go.
To answer this, I’m going to give you a hypothetical situation:
Dylan is a male with European ancestry from Massachusetts. He’s grown up knowing the differences between Harvard and Yale Law Schools, and has been groomed his whole life to go to Harvard.
Betty is a girl with Native American ancestry from New Mexico. She has researched colleges on her own during middle school and high school, and has been wanting to attend the Cornell School of Engineering since she was a freshman in high school.
^^ see the differences in these situations? I think that this is what admissions officers see when they receive applications with diversity as stated. Colleges assume that people with a minority background have had fewer opportunities to get a good education, which is how some people get the stigma of getting into college because of having a certain ethnicity [see my post here]. I do know that it can be truly unfair to both the people who are accepted and rejected because of race. However, I do not think that it can make or break an application - if you belong at a university, the admissions committee should know.
So if you’re a minority, I suppose I’d advise you to not be afraid to put that on your application. You may not like to be associated with getting into college because of that, but if it helps you in the future [after college, big picture thinking here], it can only help.
