Given the lawsuit that HLS has lost regarding affirmative action, I'm leaning toward not reporting my ethnicity to law schools. However, I am wondering if refusing to report ethnicity is something that AOs will see on my application and consider unusual (especially since my name is revealing about my ethnicity).
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@PowerUp_Tutoring - I think what you're referring to is the Supreme Court's Students for Fair Admissions case. Harvard lost, or "lost", the case but the exact meaning of that is kinda sorta buried in the weeds. Rather than dive into those weeds, here's what's up with that question.
1) No matter how you answer, law schools cannot see your race/ethnicity on your app. Just to say it again for the people in the back of the room, but in a different way - even if you opt in to this question, all schools will see on your app is "Answer suppressed."
2) So what're we talking about here? Well, schools are still required to report certain information regarding race and gender to the Department of Education, the American Bar Association, and other folks. How do schools get this information? Because once they admit you and once you indicate that you plan to enroll (ie, you deposit), the previously masked information is "unmasked." That's how you get all the race/ethnicity information that you see on school's ABA forms: https://www.abarequireddisclosures.org/requiredDisclosure
So again, no matter how you answer this, no one will see your race/ethnicity on your app. This is just about if I'll be able to see it when I report info to the Department of Ed and the ABA or if you'll be in that "Race/Ethnicity Unknown" group.
@JacobBaska I see. So if I choose to suppress this information, all the AOs will know is that my ethnicity will not be factored into the Department of Ed and the ABA statistics. Good to know, thanks!
@PowerUp_Tutoring They won't even "know" that because they don't see anything until way down the road. What will happen is:
1) We admitted PowerUp_Tutoring.
2) PowerUp_Tutoring deposited - yay!
3) It's now September and we're sending data to the ABA, Department of Ed, and US News. Looks like PowerUp_Testing didn't opt into letting us know their racial/ethnic background, so they go into the "Unknown" category.