{"id":26543,"date":"2012-11-19T16:32:51","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T16:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=26543"},"modified":"2012-11-19T17:13:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-19T17:13:00","slug":"college-applications-force-mixed-race-teens-to-color-outside-the-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=26543","title":{"rendered":"College applications force mixed-race teens to color outside the lines"},"content":{"rendered":"

College applications force mixed-race teens to color outside the lines<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Mash: For teens, by teens<\/a>
\n2012-11-15<\/p>\n

Steffie Drucker<\/strong>
\nNiles North High School, Skokie, Illinois<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Josh Kalamotousakis<\/strong>
\nJohn F. Kennedy High School, Chicago, Illinois<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Mash is a weekly newspaper and Web site that is here to serve you, the Chicago-area teenager.<\/em><\/p>\n

The paper is distributed for free each Thursday at Chicago-area high schools and is written largely by high school students. Our student contributors influence most of the paper\u2019s coverage, so it\u2019s a publication and Web site created for you, about you and, most important, by you.<\/em><\/p>\n

The college process is filled with questions. First, students must ask themselves what type of school they want to attend and narrow down schools to only a short list of places to apply. The process can be confusing enough since schools ask for different essays, transcripts or letters of recommendation.\u2028Unfortunately, there\u2019s one question students are asked that should be simple to answer but isn\u2019t always: to identify their race and ethnicity.<\/p>\n

For some students, identifying themselves is hard because they don\u2019t fit into a single box. And they\u2019re not alone\u2014according to 2010 census data, more than 9 million people in the U.S. identify themselves as being two or more races, up from about 6.8 million in 2000.<\/p>\n

Matthew Ibrahim, a senior at Niles North<\/a> who considers himself Assyrian because his family\u2019s roots are in the Middle East, falls into this category.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t feel like I fit into a box,\u201d he says. Ibrahim usually checks white since that\u2019s his skin color or Asian since the Middle East is technically in Asia. But, he says, \u201cIt makes me feel dishonest.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…Sally Rubenstone, a former college admissions officer, author of \u201cPanicked Parents Guide to College Admissions\u201d and a senior advisor at the college process advice site collegeconfidential.com, sympathizes with multiracial students who say they\u2019re torn between checking different boxes. \u201cKids are becoming more and more mixed,\u201d she says. \u201cNot everyone identifies with one race or another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kennedy<\/a> senior John Gonzalez, who identifies himself as Mexican and white, feels that being multiracial is to his advantage since each race has its perks. \u201cI know that if I put down Mexican, I\u2019ll have a better chance getting into some schools than if I would say I\u2019m (only) white.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rubenstone does believe that being multiracial has its advantages\u2014though not for the same reason as Gonzalez. \u201cColleges like (the diversity brought by mixed race and ethnicity students) because they can get a Puerto Rican kid and a Greek kid in one student,\u201d she says. \u201cIt makes the student (body) a bit more interesting.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

College applications force mixed-race teens to color outside the lines The Mash: For teens, by teens 2012-11-15 Steffie Drucker Niles North High School, Skokie, Illinois Josh Kalamotousakis John F. Kennedy High School, Chicago, Illinois The Mash is a weekly newspaper and Web site that is here to serve you, the Chicago-area teenager. The paper is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2895,8,20],"tags":[12763,12761,12762],"class_list":["post-26543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-campus-life","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-josh-kalamotousakis","tag-steffie-drucker","tag-the-mash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}