Law School Discussion

whats the band thing?

is that new?

it wasn't there yesterday.  It looks like a mistake they made while preparing to update for monday.

I'm in Atlanta.  My major had about 6 or 7 Cherokee kids.  I have a small major though (everyone know eachother) so it was a pretty big percentage.  I ended up in a group project with a friend of mine who is also Cherokee - she was telling me there is a pretty big organization of Cherokee that live in or around Atlanta.

Kind of a dumb question - but I figured I'd ask.

I am 1/4 Muskogee Native American, and I check the box because I ALWAYS have. When I was 6 years old taking my first standardized test, when I didn't even know what AA was, I checked NA because my grandmother and father had made me proud of my culture. Its a part of who I am. It doesn't sound like this is the case with you, please don't check it.

I wasn't being serious asking if I should check the box.  It was a joke.  It was just a humorous way of asking about whether or not cultural identification should place you into a particular ethnic group or not.

If you check Native american You better be able to prove it with documentation.  I'm 1/4 cherokee on both sides of my family but I never check Native American because I'm not documented.  If you can't prove it they will probably be a little upset.

I can prove it I just never took advantage of it.  I have talk to my grandmother to get the nemes of my ancestors.  Then I have contact the Cherokee Nation to see if thier names are on the membership rolls if so then I have to petition the Feds for Blood Documents stating that I'm Native American.

You don't have to look Native American to be Native American.  You just have to be honest with yourself and not be a racist prick.

That was a little extreme.

Would this help you out at all even if you don't look Native American at all?

The school I'm attending and about to graduate from recently took a Chinese American student who checked the Hispanic box into their graduate engineering program.  The admissions people and faculty who took him hadn't met him before he arrived and were expecting, well, a mexican person.  They were all kind of shocked when he got there.

Of course they let him stay - he was still a picture perfect student.  His reasoning for checking the box was that he identified with the latin culture and really enjoyed listening to salsa music.  To be fair he also lived in Spain for a number of years, spoke fluent spanish and he really was a pretty good representation of someone who identified with latin culture.

My Question:

If I checked the Native American box (I really am something like 1/32 or something ridiculous like that) would it help my chances of getting into a better school?  Also - would admissions people be ticked when I showed up and looked white catholic but explained my cultural identification with the Algonquin?