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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sara Harberson just posted an article that suggests referencing race or culture might cause parts of your application to be “thrown out.” She’s drawing this conclusion because Harvard told their interviewers not to make note of a student’s race, ethnicity or national origin. [/quote]

Really? If a kid is a member of the Chinese cultural club (and lusted as an EC), the application will be thrown out?[/quote]

you can say they were a member of a cultural club, but you just can’t specify which culture, which country etc. similarly if kid mentions being a refugee family, immigrant family, having to learn a new language, translate for family members, we can mention that. but can not specify which country, which race, which language. I’m a Harvard alum and sat in on the zoom training session. This is directly what the AOs stated. [/quote]

This is really sad. Students are not being viewed as their authentic selves, but as numbers and scores.

My daughter is of Hispanic origin with a 1550+ ACT and top 10% of her class. She is applying to top schools and in some essays where it was prompted, she exposes her heritage in a fun and entertaining way. She probably did it in most of her applications. I expect this is the golden ticket these days...URM with strong scores, great essays, and ECs. Our private counselor encouraged her to do this and thinks Sara is giving very bad guidance that should be nuanced.

If you have a student with strong scores, you should be fine sharing race. It's only if you are test optional or scores below the middle 50% that you should consider leaving that information out. A student's application stands on its own with strong stats and the sharing of heritage gives it a nice little boost.

FWIW, one of UMD's questions is about culture.
[/quote]

UMD’s question is about diversity. Not culture although a student can talk about that. Mine is talking about some other form of diversity. [/quote]

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