Tolmanator wrote:Alyssa wrote:Desert Fox wrote:Hey-O wrote:Hispanic only counts for Mexicans and Puerto Ricans.
What about people from South America? Central America? Chile? Peru? Do you mean it doesn't count for people from Spain?
Those people do not count. Only Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans.
By this he means that those people count as human beings, but are not
Underrepresented Minorities to get a real URM boost.
Being hispanic (but not Mexican or Puerto Rican) might help a little, but it's closer to a good soft.
Please, please, stop the ignorance. This whole Mexican/Puerto Rican URM argument holds very little water in relation to law school admissions. This is a massive myth perpetuated by the fact that these groups hold special privileges in many states due to strong constituencies in these areas that are able to support a bill through state legislatures. In some cases, these groups will receive more of an urm boost than other groups that one would think would be deserving, but this is generally only true in an area with an aforementioned strong constituency.
Now that we have that established, law schools only care about numbers. Even Desert Fox, who is usually so right, but in this case so wrong, will agree with me on that. Law Schools are given a minority ranking by US News that is reported yet not accounted for in their ranking. There is a lot of speculation of what would happen and that US News may start counting the minority rank in the overall rank in years to come. Schools also want to be seen as having a good minority ranking and being off the people (forget how untrue this is for a moment - they often only care about how they are seen, not the facts). This results in a breakdown of each schools minority groups which are then compiled to give it a ranking. They group the identities into Asian, African/African American, Hispanic, and Native American. Now, Asians do not receive much of a boost as they are well represented in higher education, but if identify as another group (and probably have a decent diversity statement to boot) then you will receive a significant boost in your application. I know of people who are Spanish, but not Mexican/Puerto Rican who were admitted into law schools there numbers had them beyond auto admit.
Might there be a bigger boost for some subsections of the Hispanic identity group? Of course. Nonetheless claiming they are the only groups that receive an URM boost or that it is just a good soft is uninformed and might signal someone has been drinking the TLS kool aid a bit much. It is incorrect and poor advice to be given to potential law school matriculants. There is a wealth of great information available on TLS, but this Hispanic URM myth is promulgated by so many that are unaware of how the actual system works and its effects.
Edit: To fix quoting