This seems incredibly unlikely to be true - if 34% of students lied, and 48% of people who lied claimed to be Native American, then ~17% of college students should be Native American. Which they're not, suggesting that this is probably bullshit.<p>EDIT: Yes, this really seems extremely fishy, see: <a href="https://twitter.com/Daniel_Laurison/status/1453026929511055363" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/Daniel_Laurison/status/14530269295110553...</a><p>> here's a quick reality check that
@insidehighered
could have done - took me under a minute to find this report. Less than 1% of applicants using the Common App said they were Native American in the 2 states I've looked at so far.<p>> Ok ok, on a bit of further reflection if this (48% of 34% of white applicants say they're native american) were accurate it wouldn't be 17% of all apps, it would be 17% of all apps that SHOULD say white. Which is at least 53% of all apps, probably more.<p>> 0.48×0.34×0.53 = 0.86 = at least 8.6% of all apps should claim to be NA (or 2 or more races). More to the point, if 34% of white applicants are saying they're not white, you'd expect some over-reprentation of "non-white" applicants, which is not what you see.<p>More here, same conclusion: <a href="https://twitter.com/JonBoeckenstedt/status/1452864922765783045" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/JonBoeckenstedt/status/14528649227657830...</a>
I'm white with a "more ethnic sounding" name.<p>I wasn't getting callbacks or interviews by filling out that information on job applications or in Linkedin. Despite having 9+ years in Tech for a major company.<p>The day after I removed my picture off LinkedIn and stopped answering the "race" question on applications, I started getting tons of calls.<p>YMMV, but that was my experience, so I'm not shocked.
Objectively, one way to protest the use of race in admissions is for everyone to lie making the practice useless. Game theory is strongly in favor of lying.<p>Personally, it always infuriated me when I was applying in the early 2000s that most colleges had a checkbox for "underrepresented" minorities. Don't bother applying if you're not the "right" kind of minority.
From the outside (Europe) you have to ask yourself why the US even recognizes such a thing as race. To start with, it's hard to define precisely. It also seems to be at odds with the idea of individual responsibility, and individual identity. Just let young people, who have not yet formed their identities, apply. And judge them by individual criteria, not what groups they happen to be part of.<p>There's also a very superficial idea of diversity presented. Is your university really going to be diverse from simply having people with different skin color? Having varying skin tones does not tell you for instance whether all the institution's students are wealthy or poor. Or if they grew up in the same place. Or have the same attitudes, which I suppose is the real diversity that you want to have.<p>As for lying about it, you can't really be surprised. If there's no checking, and people think ticking one box puts them at an advantage, why wouldn't they? Surely many of them have a similar attitude to race as what I'm writing, and why would you set yourself backward unjustly?
As a black man, I usually decline to put my race on job applications. Even though EEOC information isn't supposed to be used to discriminate against applicants, I don't believe for a second that it isn't. Unfortunately, having attended an HBCU, I don't know how helpful that is. I've seriously considered, recently, marking my race as "white" for future apps. It wouldn't be a complete lie; my great-grandmother was white. However, I keep remembering th anecdotes of black professionals with "white-sounding" names who were welcomed enthusiastically during the phone interview, only to get the cold shoulder when they showed up to the office.<p>In case anyone was keeping track, the ability to get the job you trained in your degree for is more important than getting into your specific desired degree program.<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/african-americans-with-college-degrees-are-twice-as-likely-to-be-unemployed-as-other-graduates/430971/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/african...</a>
I think it's more accurate to say "34% of respondents lied about race.<p>Without more details, I'm skeptical that their methodology, as presented, was very rigorous to be able to extrapolate to the entire population. So this is very suggestive, but I'd like to see a more tightly controlled version conducted.
Did it have an effect, though? It says 75% who lied got in, but what are the rates for people who were honest? How do rates vary by honest applicants across demographics?<p>Of course, the answer is in the methodology:<p>>> <i>"All data found within this report derives from a survey commissioned by Intelligent.com and conducted online by survey platform Pollfish. In total, 1,250 white Americans were surveyed. To qualify for the survey, each respondent had to have previously applied to a college or university in the U.S. Appropriate respondents were found via a screening question."</i><p>So this doesn't tell us anything without further study.
Interesting. 1,250 students surveyed and of those 437 were male, 813 female (if I have done my simultaneous equation correctly). Why the discrepancy? - Are white males currently less represented than white females on the surveyed campuses in the USA?<p>There is probably room here for the stats to vary widely by campus surveyed, potentially even across courses within a single college.<p>According to Kahneman (Thinking Fast and Slow), sample deficiencies are one of the biggest causes of incorrect deductions. Are there other surveys for comparison?
Why would any of them claim to be Asian? I’ve known Asians that “lied” on their applications by setting themselves to white.<p>Anyways, race should be banned from everything.
A good example of why racism is not a solution to racism. It doesn't matter that the intention is to help minorities, it will always end up harming them in unforeseen ways... Here's another way: artificially favour minorities in submission to education => employers now perceive minorities as unlikely to have attained qualification based on merit alone => -1 point<p>Every positive will turn into a negative - just stop being racist, in all ways. Equality != racism * -1
From the article: "All data found within this report derives from a survey commissioned by Intelligent.com and conducted online by survey platform Pollfish. In total, 1,250 white Americans were surveyed. To qualify for the survey, each respondent had to have previously applied to a college or university in the U.S. Appropriate respondents were found via a screening question. This survey was conducted on July 13, 2021. All respondents were asked to answer all questions truthfully and to the best of their abilities."<p>In other words, they used a single online anonymous sample, which are well known to be biased and - depending on where they sample from - provide less than accurate results. I haven't used Pollfish personally, but looking at their website, .95 USD puts them in Amazon Mechanical Turk territory. Granted, it's been three or four years since I used an online sample provider, but the reliable ones back then charged 3-4 USD+ per response and the fees escalated significantly if you had any specific requirements.
As Europeans it is hard to grasp that some places may attempt positive discrimination based on race and many comments go in this direction.<p>But one of the things that most surprised me from visiting the US is the huge racial diversity, way more that we can enjoy in most of Europe, which is really a blessing for the US.<p>I invite Europeans to picture the scenario of a society where large groups of population are routinely discriminated, abused, put in disadvantage based on the color of their skin, or their names, or the places where they live. It is just normal that institutions have positive discrimination policies.<p>Oh wait, you don't have to do picture it since we actually do just that. It's just our "racial minorities" are even smaller and unable to form critical mass to cause change, something women and LGTB+ collectives more or less managed. See how immigrants are treated, particularly if they are not white enough.
I'd like to see the getting into/paying for college trade press cover the modern state of the "surrender custody of your child so they can declare financial independence and qualify for a full tuition waiver based on their near-zero income" strategy (e.g. <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/university-of-illinois-financial-aid-fafsa-parents-guardianship-children-students" rel="nofollow">https://www.propublica.org/article/university-of-illinois-fi...</a>).<p>Is this strategy still viable? I couldn't find any coverage of it with a quick Web search ([site:intelligent.com independent student]). Maybe it's so good that the college-consultant industry is hoping it'll stay under the radar for a few more years?
RE: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28980707" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28980707</a><p><pre><code> Race is really a distraction. As someone pointed out, the real meat is rich vs poor. Imagine if on the last census, everyone in America identified as some other race. This would immediately squash the debate. But then we'll get something else. Perhaps democrates vs republicans will be the new headline .... "Many republican students lied about their affiliation to improve changes of admission". Maybe it is just me but all of this stuff just reeks "tribalism". It's all the same conflict but using different words.</code></pre>
I applied for many grad schools and I don't remember having any of the applications gives my race correct. And to be fair the race options in US doesn't work for me in general. I chose white for applications that made the choice mandatory. I don't think this had put me in a disadvantage. I am the only international student who got accepted in the school I accepted and got offers from about 40% of schools I applied. I actually can think that identifying as a white is the advantage.<p>But to be honest I don't think that it matter because in most applications I remember that they say it is just for stats and will not be a factor in admission.
In order for this even to constitute lying, colleges would have to define "white". Nobody wants to do that, because it would look exactly like arbitrary 19th-century ethno-purism.
I am not white and I have lied on applications and government forms. I'm mixed. If the document doesn't cover my appropriate race I always put white. If I'm feeling really silly I will bubble in both black and white. I hate that in my court records it says black. Because I'm not black or white.
> 3/4 of students who faked minority status were accepted<p>Mmm, and what percentage of those who did not fake were accepted? That 3/4 doesn't tell us anything without comparison to other group (and sample size).
Such lying would not make a difference if college admissions did not discriminate on the basis of race. It's interesting that 48% of white boys vs. 16% of white girls admit to lying about race.
> 3/4 of people who faked being a racial minority on their applications were accepted by the colleges to which they lied<p>Then I guess we better get used to it.