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In photos: men’s basketball: gauchos vs uc davis, art as a weapon against invasion – film reminds us of…, opportunity for all uc office of the president yet to make…, the top boba places in isla vista – a journey into…, getting kozy: isla vista’s newest coffee shop, a call for natural sustainability: the story and mission of the…, tasa night market 2023: fostering community and featuring budding clubs at…, in photos – daedalum luminarium, an art installation, creating characters we love: the screenwriting process in our flag means…, indigo de souza and the best-case anticlimax, a spectrum of songs: ucsb’s college of creative studies set to…, nature in i.v. – black mold, southern california is in super bloom, from love to likes: social media’s role in relationships, the gloom continues: a gray may, the rise of ai girlfriends: connecting with desires and discussing controversy,…, letter to the editor: dining hall laborers have had enough, do…, is studying abroad worth it for a ucsb student, workers at ucsb spotlight: being a writing tutor for clas, the immense struggles of first-generation latino college students.

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Imagine being tasked with setting the precedent of success for your entire family at 17 years old. No matter the personal cost, it is now your responsibility to lift your family out of poverty. This is the crucial promise many first-generation Latine college students make when they head off to higher education. Once they reach college, however, these students only uncover a disheartening reality. They were set up to fail from the start.

Stricken with discouragement when comparing childhoods with their wealthier peers, these first-generation Latine students recognize that university was not intended for them. Since the inception of higher education institutions, and up until a couple of generations ago, there was no reasonable path for these students to even attend university, and the few lucky enough to enroll could only do so under the demeaning conditions of systematic racism.

From K-12, Latine students are at a disadvantage. Born to immigrant, working-class parents, Latine children begin their educational journey with a lack of socioeconomic privileges that their peers have become accustomed to by pre-school. Often, neither parent in the household speaks English fluently enough to teach their child(ren) the language. Spanish is all these kids know, as they suddenly enter an environment where they will be excluded because of the simple fact that they speak a different language that isn’t English. Thus, a striking 82 percent of all students K-12 situated in California English language learning programs are Latine. 

Any English learned at school then becomes a tool for the parents and family as these students commonly become a resource for translating, whether spoken in a movie or present in billing letters. It is important to note that a large portion of Latine parents did not make it past high school due to a lack of educational resources in their home country, so it is particularly difficult for them to learn English upon reaching the U.S.

Many Latine children are familiar with poverty. Representing 17 percent of the American workforce , Latine families are actively working to improve the lives of their children but can commonly only do so through exhausting manual labor. In agricultural, construction, or housekeeping occupations, the Latine population composes over half or close to half of the labor force . However, the unreliability and unlivable wages of these jobs severely limits the financial capacities of these working families.

As a result, Latine children in California K-12 schools account for 71 percent of all economically disadvantaged students and 73 percent of all homeless students. Considering that these same Latine children make up over one-half of all California students, it is an unfortunate reality that poverty strikes these children at disproportionately high rates.

When looking at Latine high school seniors graduating and potentially enrolling in the University of California (UC) or California State University (CSU) system, only 44 percent would even be eligible to apply. In order to qualify for either of these public institutions, a series of A-G courses must first be completed in high school, but the low-income school districts where these students are from are not sufficiently informing or preparing them for the admission requirements of higher education. 

Getting into a four-year university is simply not a possibility for a majority of first-generation Latine. Out of 1,391,503 Latine undergraduates in California, 72 percent enroll in community colleges optimistically planning to transfer after two years. However, after six years, only about a third of these students actually end up enrolling in four-year colleges or universities while the rest drop out or postpone their education indefinitely. 

The good news is that Latine students who are lucky enough to attend a major California four-year institution do tend to be first-generation. In both the UC and CSU system three out of four Latino students are the first in their family to reach higher education, which is over double that of other races. This luck has a limit though, as these students will face certain struggles the rest of the student body does not.

First and foremost comes the stress of paying for higher education, and Latine communities are granted less state and federal financial aid when compared to other races. Furthermore, expected contributions from parents and family members are significantly lower. On average, families of Latine students are expected to pay $5,911, compared to $13,319 for white families .

To make up for a lack of family funds, a majority of Latine students find employment to cover tuition and the cost of living. At the expense of academic performance and social participation, about 32 percent of all employed Latine students are working full-time with the rest being employed part-time. It is discouraging that so many of these Latine students must work long hours while trying to maintain a reasonable commitment to school, and this stress contributes to higher dropout rates.

Each year, the amount of Latine students entering higher education rises, so it’s not all bad news. However, proportional to the number of other races, Latine are at a severe disadvantage on all academic grounds, especially those who desire to be the first in their families to attend college. Without proper accommodations and consideration, beginning from grade school, Latine students will commonly find themselves unable to reach any adequate mantle of success for their families and will continue in poverty.

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“what does being hispanic mean to you”.

Members of the Hispanic Business Student Association share personal thoughts on their heritage and how it informs who they are and how they lead.

October 01, 2020

The Hispanic Business Student Association is a community of students interested in the cultural and professional issues that affect the Latino community. | Illustrations by Laura Pichardo

“For me, being Hispanic means standing on our ancestors’ shoulders to transform spaces not created for us and witnessing my parents’ sacrifices in pursuit of a better life — all while indulging in Mariachi music,” says Valeria Martinez, MBA ’21.

Hispanic Heritage Month begins each year on September 15 — the anniversary of independence for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Mexico and Chile celebrate their independence days on September 16 and September 18. To mark this year’s celebration, members of Stanford GSB’s Hispanic Business Student Association answer the question, “What does being Hispanic mean to you?”

— Jenny Luna

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126 Hispanics Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best hispanics topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on hispanics, 📌 most interesting hispanics topics to write about, 📃 interesting topics to write about hispanics, 🔍 simple & easy hispanics essay titles.

• Communicating With Hispanic Patients The Hispanic populace in the United States is strongly assorted having starting points in Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean.
• Asian American and Hispanic Identities in the US This is especially true of immigrants from Laos, who may not feel a strong sense of belonging to the greater Asian American group because they come from different cultural and historical backgrounds. We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• Cultural Empowerment in the Hispanic Community In the case of the Hispanic community prone to obesity, the use of cultural empowerment tools might help identify and incorporate positive elements in the culture.
• Preventing Obesity Among the Hispanic Population The first factor within the dimension of relationships and expectations is associated with the perception of health-related values, beliefs, and attitudes that create a basis for an individual to engage in healthy behaviors.
• Epidemiology: Type II Diabetes in Hispanic Americans The prevalence of type II diabetes in Hispanic Americans is well-established, and the search for inexpensive prevention methods is in the limelight.
• Obesity Among Black and Hispanic Adults In conclusion, obesity is a health issue that is likely to be faced by black and Hispanic adults following poverty, lack of health education, and cultural beliefs.
• Type 2 Diabetes in Hispanic Americans The HP2020 objectives and the “who, where, and when” of the problem highlight the significance of developing new, focused, culturally sensitive T2D prevention programs for Hispanic Americans.
• COVID-19 Among Hispanics in the United States Since the findings demonstrate that the condition is significant for the selected population, it seems reasonable to conduct another study to investigate the epidemiology of COVID-19 among Hispanics living in the United States.
• Expanding Knowledge of Hispanic Culture In a family, the men are the ones who are expected to provide for that family and as well be the individuals in charge of that family.
• Hispanic Patients: The Cultural Differences Due to the processes of economic development of the United States, the import of foreign labor into the country is growing.
• Obesity in Adolescent Hispanic Population According to Kemp, “the percent of Black and Hispanic teens with obesity increased significantly over the past decade, but the prevalence of obesity remained unchanged for non-Hispanic White adolescents and young children, according to data […]
• Reduction of Obesity in the Adolescent Hispanic Population According to Kemp, “the percent of Black and Hispanic teens with obesity increased significantly over the past decade, but the prevalence of obesity remained unchanged for non-Hispanic White adolescents and for young children, according to […]
• Child Obesity in Hispanic Community The problem of obesity among children in the Latin American community is not primarily related to the lack of attention of parents to the growing problem.
• “Diabetes Prevention in U.S. Hispanic Adults” by McCurley et al. This information allows for supposing that face-to-face interventions can be suitable to my practicum project that considers measures to improve access to care among African Americans with heart failure diseases. Finally, it is possible to […]
• Conditions of People Migrating to the U.S.: Hispanic Migration In the first half of the century, Mexican comprised the majority of the Hispanic migrants to the country, with a small proportion of immigrants from the Caribbean countries.
• “In the Heights”: A Depiction of Hispanic Immigrant Experience in the United States In many cases, immigrants form or join the closed communities, and the people, who live there, are often not adjusted to the environment of the main population. Nina Rosario is the daughter of two hard-working […]
• Discrimination Against Hispanics in America Today, Mexicans and all other Hispanics are still victims of the stereotypes and inequalities faced by their people in the US over a hundred years ago.
• Hispanic American History: Importance and Impact The study of the complex interrelationships and general trends of Hispanic-American economic, political, and social developments helped deepen and understand the features of the people, which is helpful for professional activities.
• Hispanic Americans and Immigrants The people of Hispanic origin account for a considerable part of the population of the United States. More specifically, the Hispanic population of the country has surpassed sixty million by the year 2019, and this […]
• Addressing the Needs of Hispanic Patients With Diabetes Similarly, in the program at hand, the needs of Hispanic patients with diabetes will be considered through the prism of the key specifics of the community, as well as the cultural background of the patients.
• Hispanic and Black Community Injustice Moreover, in the letter to environmental organizations, people of color demanded to include them in the ruling positions of unions and to raise funding in the polluted areas.
• High Blood Pressure Management in Hispanic Patient These symptoms are complemented by heavy snoring and the lack of pain except for the headaches, which are becoming more frequent and last for a couple of hours.
• Hispanic and Latino Community’s Health in Florida In terms of the present presentation, the community health assessment will be focused on the health state of the Hispanic and Latino community in the state of Florida and Broward County, in particular.
• Anxiety and Depression in Hispanic Youth in Monmouth County Therefore, the Health Project in Monmouth County will help Hispanic children and adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 to cope with anxiety and depression through behavioral therapy.
• Heart Disease Among Hispanic and Latino Population Hispanics and Latinos have the highest propensity for heart related diseases in the society. They are at a very high risk of developing diabetes, obesity, and hypertension.
• Hispanic Migrant Workers’ Community The primary language spoken by Hispanics in the United States is Spanish as in the case of the farm workers of Mexican origin or Latin American nationalities.
• Nursing in Different Cultures – Hispanic Cultures Cultural conflicts can occur when nurses acknowledge the influence of their values on global health. Cultural values are the lasting belief systems, which a society focuses on.
• Heart Disease Among Hispanic & Latino Population One of the causes of the rise in the case of heart diseases in Westminster is the literacy rate of the Hispanic/Latinos in the county.
• Community Health Advocacy Project: Diabetes Among Hispanics It will be important to evaluate the performance of the intervention plan in order to determine how appropriate it is in addressing the identified problem.
• Community Health Advocacy Project: Hispanics With Diabetes Statistics clearly show that age, gender, socio-economic status, and weight management are some of the key factors that affect the distribution of type-2 diabetes amongst the Hispanics.
• Hispanics Are More Susceptible to Diabetes That Non-Hispanics This trend is persistent to date, and is the reason behind the prevalence of diabetes among Hispanics. The condition of the environments in which Hispanics live also adds increases their susceptibility to diabetes.
• Rates Diabetes Between Hispanics Males and Females An increase in the period that one spends in the US correlates with the chances of developing the disease. In this context, all the levels would be used to address the high prevalence rates of […]
• Hispanics: Scholarly Culture Paper Duran, notes that the absence of information about Hispanics contributes largely to the unavailability of competitive healthcare services of the same.
• Hispanic Americans Opinion Takeyuki Tsuda The book Immigration and Ethnic Relations in the U.S.speaks on the theme of reshaping the face of the United States during the period of the past few decades.
• A Portrait of Hispanics Living in California The originality of the Hispanic population in the US can be traced to different ethnic groups comprising of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cubans.
• Hispanic Culture in “Como Agua Para Chocolate” by Laura Esquivel The subject matter of the book is Hispanic culture and traditions, particularly the cuisine and the family traditions in Mexico. They have a special term “machismo” which is associated with the responsibility of a man […]
• Educational Disparities: Non-Hispanic Whites vs. Blacks The segregation set up the course for disparities in the education sector because the black schools mainly in the south were poor and thus could not afford to provide adequate facilities for the students.
• Boosting Education and Culture Among Hispanic Women There is also the fact that the Hispanic women who have managed to go to school do not demonstrate a strong attachment to the Hispanic culture.
• Hispanic Males in the 19th-21st Centuries This change in the family setup has led to the change in the role of the Hispanic male. The family’s security was in the hands of the Hispanic male while the woman acted as the […]
• Norms, and Characteristics of African American and Hispanic Living in Florida The two minority groups selected for my research are African American people and Hispanic groups with whom I am familiar from my locality.
• African Americans and Hispanics in New Jersey In fact, “African-American history starts in the 1500s with the first Africans coming from Mexico and the Caribbean to the Spanish territories of Florida, Texas, and other parts of the South”.
• Hispanic Americans as Illegal Immigration Thus a historical loyalty to the Democratic Party is still sustained even today At 15% the Hispanic-American population of the United States makes up the fastest growing minority in the United States.
• Hispanic Nation: Brief Retrospective The number of the baby born to Hispanics in comparison to other groups is very high. Another threat is of the low skill set of the Hispanics and their ability to learn new skill for […]
• Hispanic American Diversity Analysis Mexican started migrating to the United States in considerable numbers as early as 1850 following the discovery of Gold in Sierra Nevada of California and continued doing so as the economy of the United States […]
• Assessing Learning: Hispanic Lessons and Assessments Assessment is a vital activity in the process of learning in the modern educational framework and it is through assessment that the learning of the content is evaluated and central changes in the process are […]
• Health Effects of Tobacco Smoking in Hispanic Men The Health Effects of Tobacco Smoking can be attributed to active tobacco smoking rather than inhalation of tobacco smoke from environment and passive smoking.
• Hispanic American Diversity and Conventions According to the analysis in these countries majority of these people are catholic, that is 70 %, the Protestants are 23%, and 6% have no affiliation.
• Immigration, Hispanics, and Mass Incarceration in the U.S. This article evaluates the effect of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, that led to the legalization of approximately 3 million immigrants had on the crime rates in the U.S.
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• National Association of Hispanic Nurses: Importance of Involvement The official website of the organization, http://nahnnet.org/, stipulates that the primary purpose of the organization is to unite the nurses and make sure that they provide the Hispanic population with adequate care.
• Hispanic Women’s Stereotypes in the USA Importantly, the single-story related to Hispanic females refers to the representatives of the entire continent since people pay little attention to the origin of the Latino population.
• Hispanic Culture: Juan’s Health Case If he obtains the necessary documents, it would be possible to bring his family to the country, and this will facilitate family therapy. He will have to forget about his family for some time because […]
• Gender Roles and Family Systems in Hispanic Culture In the Hispanic culture, amarianismo’ and amachismo’ are the terms used to determine the various behavioral expectations among the family members.
• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Hispanic Teenager Family dynamics and social withdrawal do not seem to have affected the client’s academic history; her grades are good and she has no history of behavioral problems.
• Bilingual Education for Hispanic Americans The right to learn a native language is incorporated as Article 29 of the Convention of Right of a Child in the General assembly of the United Nations in 1989.
• Perception of Diabetes in the Hispanic Population Diabetes is also defined as one of the leading causes of death among the citizens of the United States. Despite the possibility to create certain measurements of this nursing research project, it is also required […]
• Gonorrhea and Chlamydia Reduction in Hispanic Women Its purpose is to reduce STI’s Gonorrhea/Chlamydia among Hispanic women in Michigan and to plan a culturally appropriate intervention to address this area of health. The final data is also inclusive of the ethnic and […]
• Anti-Obesity Program for Hispanic Children It is expected that the successful implementation of the program will lead to a subsequent 15% drop in the levels of obesity among Hispanic children in the target community.
• Hispanic Student’s Cultural and Ethical Issues Unfortunately, there is a lot of evidence supporting the fact that the educational experience for Hispanics in the United States is one of the most pressing problems.
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• Obesity in Hispanic Adolescents and Fast Food Most of these, however, describe the relationship existing between the prevalence of diabetes in the population and the consumption of fast foods.
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• African, Caribbean, Hispanic, Pakistani, Dutch Cultures In addition, Nigerians are believed to speak their own Nigerian pidgin, which is not true since the official language of the country is English, and many people speak it fluently.
• Counseling and Mentorship Program for Hispanic Children The purpose of the mentorship program was to educate and widen their learning skills of the targeted children. The program also targeted to inform these individuals about the relevance of schooling in the Hispanic society.
• The Hispanic Project” by Nikki S. Lee One of the most complicated and at the same time the most essential problems of the modern world, the racial segregation, and the racial hegemony is to be considered because of the growing number of […]
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• Hispanic American Culture and its Impact in America Impact of Hispanic Americans culture in American is evident. Hispanic Americans are the most culturally influential minority cultural and ethnic group in United States today.
• Hispanic Childhood Poverty in the United States Importance of the Problem The problem of childhood poverty in Hispanic groups in America is important to this study and to the social studies in America.
• Ethnic Stratification, Prejudice, Discrimination: Hispanics The author of this paper discusses the effects of ethnic stratification on the Hispanics/Latinos, and how prejudice and discrimination are relevant to this ethnic group.
• Hispanic Americans: Roles Played in the American Society. In the first place, it is necessary to remember that Hispanic Americans constitute about 15 % of the entire American population, which makes them the second largest ethnic group in the USA.
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• Overview and Analysis of Hispanic & Latino Theology The Hispanic theology is shown as a representation of the religious and theological inflections of the Hispanic people staying in the United States.
• Assessing the Challenges in Treating Substance Abuse Among Members of Hispanic Families In this respect, it is necessary to define the peculiarities of Hispanic culture in terms of family structure traditions, gender role distributions, and influence of family problems on members’ substance abuse.
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• The Hispanic Population in the United States The Hispanic population represents the largest minority group in the United States. Around one half of Hispanic residents in the United States were born in a foreign country.
• The Ethnic Issues of the Hispanic American People In the article, it is evident that the population of people from the Hispanic American origin has risen over the years, and currently, they contribute to approximately fourteen percent of the entire population of the […]
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• Economic and Social Inequalities in the United States Between Whites, Asian Americans, Hispanics and African Americans Although, there are similarities in the wellbeing of whites and Asian American, Asian Americans are still seen as foreigners. However, to further isolate them, they are indentified with a tag inclined to the origin of […]
• The Aspects of Hispanic History and Culture S history emphasize on how the British colonies of North America were found and their subsequent growth, their gaining of independence in 1776 and the east to west growth of the U.S.
• Annotation Of: Hispanics and the Death Penalty It also identified several manifestations of racial discrimination between the whites and non whites by comparing Asian Americans and Hispanics marriages with the whites and discovered that the Asian Americans and Hispanics had higher chances […]
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• Gender Disparity in Automobility Among Hispanics in the U.S
• Child Sexual Abuse Among Hispanics and TF-CBT
• Comparing Modernity Between Hispanics and Tibetans in Baltimore
• Considering the Economic Status of Black Americans and Hispanics
• Contextual Factors and Weight Change Over Time: U.S. Hispanics and Other Groups Comparison
• Diversity Analysis: The Impact of Hispanics in the Workplace
• Domestic Violence Against Hispanics and Latinas in Louisiana
• The Problem of Domestic Violence Among Hispanics
• Educational Disparities Among Black and Hispanics
• Racial Discrimination and Hispanics in the United States
• Ethnic Stratification, Prejudice, Discrimination: Hispanics
• Overview of Healthcare Disparity Among the Hispanics
• The Case of Direct Marketing Advertising for Hispanics
• The Problem of Teenage Pregnancies Anong Hispanics
• Hispanics and the American Dream: Analysis of Hispanic Male Labor Market Wages
• The Problem of Alcoholism Among Hispanics
• Hispanics and Their Contribution to America’s Human Capital
• Analysis of Hispanic Health Care Issues in Texas
• Hispanics, Black, Substance Abuse, and Multicultural Counseling
• Legal and Social Justice for Hispanics and Women
• Looking Through the Eyes of Undocumented Hispanics in the United States
• Hispanics’ Habits and Attitudes Towards Drinking
• Marital Assimilation Among Hispanics: Evidence of Declining Cultural and Economic Incorporation
• His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S
• Mind, Body, and Culture: Somatization Among Hispanics
• Minority Groups: African Americans, Women, and Hispanics
• Mortality Among Elderly Hispanics in the USA: Past Evidence and New Results
• Operant Conditioning and Parenting Practices Between Hispanics and North Americans
• Police Brutality Against Hispanics and African Americans
• Racial and Ethnic Inequality of Hispanics in the USA
• Self-Selection, Prenatal Care, and Birthweight Among Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics in New York
• Racial Prejudice and Bias Against Hispanics
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• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, February 29). 126 Hispanics Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/hispanics-essay-topics/

"126 Hispanics Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 29 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/hispanics-essay-topics/.

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IvyPanda . 2024. "126 Hispanics Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 29, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/hispanics-essay-topics/.

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IvyPanda . "126 Hispanics Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 29, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/hispanics-essay-topics/.

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College Essay: My Parents’ Sacrifice Makes Me Strong

After living in Texas briefly, my mom moved in with my aunt in Minnesota, where she helped raise my cousins while my aunt and uncle worked. My mom still glances to the building where she first lived. I think it’s amazing how she first moved here, she lived in a small apartment and now owns a house. 

My dad’s family was poor. He dropped out of elementary school to work. My dad was the only son my grandpa had. My dad thought he was responsible to help his family out, so he decided to leave for Minnesota   because  of  many  work opportunities .   

My parents met working in cleaning at the IDS  C enter during night shifts. I am their only child, and their main priority was not leaving me alone while they worked. My mom left her cleaning job to work mornings at a warehouse. My dad continued his job in cleaning at night.   

My dad would get me ready for school and walked me to the bus stop while waiting in the cold. When I arrived home from school, my dad had dinner prepared and the house cleaned. I would eat with him at the table while watching TV, but he left after to pick up my mom from work.   

My mom would get home in the afternoon. Most memories of my mom are watching her lying down on the couch watching her  n ovelas  –  S panish soap operas  – a nd falling asleep in the living room. I knew her job was physically tiring, so I didn’t bother her.  

Seeing my parents work hard and challenge Mexican customs influence my values today as a person. As a child, my dad cooked and cleaned, to help out my mom, which is rare in Mexican culture. Conservative Mexicans believe men are superior to women; women are seen as housewives who cook, clean and obey their husbands. My parents constantly tell me I should get an education to never depend on a man. My family challenged  machismo , Mexican sexism, by creating their own values and future.  

My parents encouraged me to, “ ponte  las  pilas ” in school, which translates to “put on your batteries” in English. It means that I should put in effort and work into achieving my goal. I was taught that school is the key object in life. I stay up late to complete all my homework assignments, because of this I miss a good amount of sleep, but I’m willing to put in effort to have good grades that will benefit me. I have softball practice right after school, so I try to do nearly all of my homework ahead of time, so I won’t end up behind.  

My parents taught me to set high standards for myself. My school operates on a 4.0-scale. During lunch, my friends talked joyfully about earning a 3.25 on a test. When I earn less than a 4.25, I feel disappointed. My friends reacted with, “You should be happy. You’re extra . ” Hearing that phrase flashbacks to my parents seeing my grades. My mom would pressure me to do better when I don’t earn all 4.0s  

Every once in  awhile , I struggled with following their value of education. It can be difficult to balance school, sports and life. My parents think I’m too young to complain about life. They don’t think I’m tired, because I don’t physically work, but don’t understand that I’m mentally tired and stressed out. It’s hard for them to understand this because they didn’t have the experience of going to school.   

The way I could thank my parents for their sacrifice is accomplishing their American dream by going to college and graduating to have a professional career. I visualize the day I graduate college with my degree, so my  family  celebrates by having a carne  asada (BBQ) in the yard. All my friends, relatives, and family friends would be there to congratulate me on my accomplishments.  

As teenagers, my parents worked hard manual labor jobs to be able to provide for themselves and their family. Both of them woke up early in the morning to head to work. Staying up late to earn extra cash. As teenagers, my parents tried going to school here in the U.S .  but weren’t able to, so they continued to work. Early in the morning now, my dad arrives home from work at 2:30 a.m .,  wakes up to drop me off at school around 7:30 a.m . , so I can focus on studying hard to earn good grades. My parents want me to stay in school and not prefer work to  head on their  same path as them. Their struggle influences me to have a good work ethic in school and go against the odds.  

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I was born Hispanic

Describe any experience of cultural difference, positive or negative, you have had or observed. What did you learn from it? “My girlfriend…you know the tall brunette, well she swore he was just a friend… but when…” “Be quiet, Matt. I’m trying to teach.” Quivering with impatience, the words had absolutely no effect. “No! Hold on…I’m not finished yet.” Returning to his tragic love story, Matt faced me and the rest of the table, his loyal listeners. Yet again the teacher interrupts. “Matt do we have a problem?” It was more of a threatening command than a concerned questioned. Annoyed, he replies, “Yeah we do. You won’t let me finish.” “Come see me after school.” There wasn’t a day when the teacher wasn’t disrespected, talked back to, and simply ignored. This was expected of the Hispanic students; the lack of respect for education, the expectation that they wouldn’t amount to much in school. But in Sophomore English those degraded values and flimsy ideas towards education and its impact was almost every kid’s mindset. Each student contributed graying attitudes and negligence that weaved a unique environment. A class culture that impacted me as much as my Hispanic culture did concerning what role education would play in my life. I never was exposed to people who valued education. Of course, I saw Caucasian kids who planned to go to college, but they were...well, they didn’t have an accent. They didn’t have immigrant parents who depending on me for translating. They weren’t expected to be pregnant at sixteen or jumped into a gang. None of it. They had parents who spoke English fluently and who paid them for their grades. They were expected to attend college. They were expected to fulfill the American Dream. Yet, in sophomore English, it didn’t really matter what race, background you were. Everyone there hated English. Despite this common ground, I stayed close to mis amigas. Within my comfort zone, I watched the blond girl sitting next to me bring vodka, usually on Mondays because she was still hung-over from the weekend. I wondered if I should say anything when I saw the homegurl toss marijuana out the class room window to the homeboy waiting outside. Education meant nothing to them at all. Despite being exposed to this, I didn’t perfectly assimilate like the ten other failing students did, but it affected what goals I had. I struggled even seeing myself at community college. At the end of the year, the teacher advised me to take AP Language and Composition as a junior. She also offered it to two of my friends. We agreed. Liars! My friends had dropped the class. Walking into AP English, I felt highlighted in that room. Further into that period, just the way these students talked and acted was already intimidatingly different from last year. They participated in class discussions. They did homework. They fretted about their grades. Most of them had taken Honors Sophomore English, the one where there weren’t hung-over students bringing vodka. They practice fierce academic vocabulary. Last year they just cussed hella. Isolated both ethnically and intellectually, I wanted to drop the class but stuck it out. This scholarly culture valued education, despite their financial or ethnic background, respected education as their sacred road to rewarding future. During group discussions, I found out that my different perspective as a Hispanic student could also contribute ideas or values or unearth details. Seeing fellow Hispanic students focus academically and succeed in an AP class culture helped me assimilate into obtaining an AP mindset where education is in the limelight. In my Hispanic peers, I watched unfolding success when society foretold failure. I was born Hispanic, but I wasn’t born into a failing stereotype. I embrace my roots, my different yet enlightening perspective, but I refuse to tolerate any limitations. I will guard my education, planting it in promising academic soil, an environment rich and diverse where I will be able to grow as I did in my AP Language and Literature class

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Latina first-generation college students draw on lessons, mentor others

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Noemi Rodriguez, 21, aspires to make an impact in her community through her work after college. But as she maneuvers through her final year at University of California, San Diego, balancing school, work and commuting has been an ongoing challenge.

"My mom had told me from the beginning, 'If you want to go to school, it’s going to be on your own account,'" said Rodriguez, who's worked part time at Jamba Juice while going to school full time and taking on a second job in the summer to help pay for tuition and cover some of the family’s bills.

Latinos are more likely to be first-generation college students than any other racial or ethnic group: More than 4 in 10 (44 percent) Hispanic students are the first in their family to attend college, according to educational nonprofit organization Excelencia in Education .

Monday was the annual National First-Generation College Celebration, marking the anniversary of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which greatly expanded college opportunities through financial assistance tools such as grants and work-study programs.

While the celebration is one day, many higher education institutions carry out weeklong and even monthlong celebrations.

In California, Hispanics make up 43 percent of public college undergraduates, according to a report by The Campaign for College Opportunity . The organization, composed of a coalition of groups, aims to boost opportunities for the state's Latinos to attend and graduate from college.

Latino college enrollment and degree obtainment are continuing to rise, and there have been encouraging trends in California, which has the country's largest Latino population, making up almost 4 in 10 (39 percent) Californians. A little over half (51 percent) of the state's Latinos are under 30.

The report noted that almost 9 in 10 (87 percent) of Latino 19-year-olds have a high school diploma or equivalent credential, compared to 73 percent 10 years ago. In the last five years, four-year graduation rates doubled for Hispanics enrolled as full-time, first-year students in the California State University system — from 9 percent to 18 percent for Latinos and from 15 percent to 29 percent for Latinas.

However, only 18 percent of Latino and 29 percent of Latina freshmen at the California State University system are graduating in four years.

Rodriguez is a success coach for the UCSD Student Success Coaching Program , which supports incoming and continuing first-generation students like her through mentoring, helping them balance school and work and giving them access to resources and support services. After graduation, she plans to continue mentoring students, drawing on her own experiences.

The first in her family to attend a four-year university, Rodriguez recalled dealing with impostor syndrome in high school before she was admitted to UCSD, a topic of discussion among many first-generation students.

"When I talked to other people outside of my school, they all did a lot better than me and had higher SAT scores, higher grades," Rodriguez, who is double majoring in political science and ethnic studies at UCSD, said. "Even though I know I did a lot, I didn't think that I was going to get in."

Daisy Gomez-Fuentes, 23, a graduate student at San Diego State University, works for the school's Latinx Resource Center as a peer mentor and graduate assistant.

She provides students with guidance by supporting them across coursework, answering questions they have about classes, advising them on how to ask for letters of recommendation and holding workshops regarding impostor syndrome and best practices to stay organized throughout the semester.

“As a first-gen, I’m paving the way for future generations by breaking cycles and barriers and essentially becoming a resource and a mentor to other first-gen students,” Gomez-Fuentes, who earned a bachelor’s degree earlier this year in Chicana/o/x studies from California State University, Fullerton, said.

She is planning to obtain a doctorate in sociology and become a professor. Under 6 percent of Latinas have a graduate degree, compared to 15 percent for white women.

'I see myself'

For Brenda Elizondo, 21, helping first-gen students is a full-circle moment.

Elizondo works in youth development services for the Boys and Girls Club of Garden Grove, helping many first-generation youths from low-income areas grow as students.

"For me, it really just means a lot because I was part of this program, as well," Elizondo, who's a full-time student at Cal State Fullerton, said.

She said participating in the program as a child helped distract her from troubles at home. There would be times when there wasn’t any food on the table, she said.

Now, as an adult, she juggles three jobs while being the sole caretaker for her mother, who is 42 living with several chronic conditions. As the eldest of her siblings, she also provides for her two younger brothers, who are 17 and 13.

“I do feel like it gets overwhelming,” Elizondo said. “There’s times that I feel like maybe this isn’t for me, maybe I should drop out.” But serving as an example for her brothers is what is motivating her to continue college, she said.

Having her mom and siblings watch her walk at graduation would feel “like crossing that line at a marathon,” Elizondo said. She said she expects to graduate in 2022 and is pursuing a career in journalism to tell stories about people in her community who she feels don’t have a platform.

The guidance Elizondo is providing at the Boys and Girls Club is a step to helping more Latino youth on the pathway to college.

"Being able to offer that support, whether it's emotional, anything, just for these kids, it means a lot," she said, "because when I see them, I see myself."

Follow  NBC Latino   on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .

Edwin Flores reports and produces for NBC Latino and is based in Anaheim, California. 

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, how to win a hispanic scholarship fund award.

Financial Aid

If you’re a high school senior of Hispanic or Latinx heritage, you'll definitely want to learn more about the Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF) . With more than 150 types of scholarships available through this program, there’s a lot to learn—and a lot to win!

When you submit an HSF award scholarship, you’re actually submitting yourself for consideration for many different awards (much like when you submit a FAFSA ). I’ll talk about all the details you’ll need to take into consideration before submitting your own application for Hispanic scholarships. Then, we'll take a look at application strategies for current high school seniors.

What Is a Hispanic Scholarship Fund Award?

The Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF) is a large organization that oversees many scholarship programs. It has partnerships with both philanthropic and corporate organizations to fund scholarships for Hispanic students.

Since 1975, HSF has awarded more than $675 million in scholarship money, with 5,100+ new scholarships awarded each year . Overall, it's a real powerhouse of an organization, which aims to ensure that every Hispanic household in the US has at least one college graduate.

In essence, there's no single HSF award; instead, HSF offers many different scholarships, each with its own funding sources, eligibility requirements, and award amounts. The great thing about HSF is that you only have to submit one application every year to be considered for all available scholarships .

These scholarships are merit-based,  meaning they're awarded based on academic and personal achievements, not financial need; that said, financial need is taken into consideration when determining the amount of the award.

Most awards are not renewable —you only receive one annual award amount. As I mentioned above, however, you can submit an HSF scholarship application every year. Re-submitting applications in the future may help your chances of getting more scholarship funding . HSF really values building a community and slightly favors past award winners when reviewing scholarship applications.

HSF award amounts vary from $500 to as high as $5,000, but the specific amount you could win will vary depending on your financial need.

HSF scholarships offer more than just funding for school, though. Here's a list of the benefits that come along with an HSF award :

• Career center platform to help you look for jobs and internships
• Mentor match program
• Online course system to augment your normal college studies
• HSF newsletter with extracurricular and volunteer opportunities
• HSF events and programs, such as Latinos United and Networking for Advancement (LUNA) and National Leadership Conference (NLC)
• An extra "point" on future HSF scholarship applications—if you've won an HSF scholarship in the past, you'll be more likely to win one in the future

All in all, an HSF award is a really great resource in more ways than one. Because one application means you'll be considered for countless scholarships, it's well worth your time to apply for an HSF award . So let's get started!

How to Know If You're Eligible for an HSF Scholarship

In order to receive an HSF award, you must meet all of the following eligibility requirements :

• Be of Hispanic heritage (defined as being at least 1/4 Hispanic or Latino)
• Have a minimum 3.0 GPA on a 4.0 scale (for high school students)
• Have a minimum 2.5 GPA on a 4.0 scale (for college and graduate students)
• Plan to enroll full-time at an accredited nonprofit four-year university or graduate school during the fall of the scholarship cycle year
• Be a US citizen, permanent legal resident, DACA, or eligible non-citizen as defined by the FAFSA
• Complete the FAFSA
• Complete the State Dream Act financial aid application, if applicable

Students of all majors are considered, although there is an emphasis on STEM fields . This is likely because students of Hispanic heritage are especially underrepresented in the fields of math, science, technology, and engineering.

What Do You Need to Apply for an HSF Scholarship?

Before you start working on your Hispanic Scholarship Fund application, it'd be wise to gather the following information and reports.

To complete your HSF application, you'll need the following materials:

• Your FAFSA and Student Aid Report—get complete instructions here
• School transcripts —you can get these from your guidance counselor
• Enrollment verification from your school—check with the admissions office about this
• Financial aid award letter from the college you're enrolling in—the HSF uses this to determine your award amount but not whether you receive a scholarship
• Letters of recommendation —you'll need at least one academic recommender, but additional writers can be academic or non-academic

Your school guidance counselor should be able to help you gather the paperwork you need.

How Do You Submit an HSF Application?

The Hispanic Scholarship Fund application opens January 1  each year and typically closes mid-February. The 2023-24 cycle is currently underway, and awards will be disbursed sometime in December 2023. For the 2024-25 scholarships, the application is estimated to open January 1, 2024, and close February 15, 2024.

By submitting just one application, you'll be considered for a variety of awards. However, although you might be eligible to receive multiple scholarships, you can only be awarded one scholarship per year. Remember that you are encouraged to submit an HSF scholarship application every year you're in school.

After you submit an HSF scholarship application, you'll learn whether you won an award via email in June or July.

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Learn more about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in.

How May You Use Hispanic Scholarship Fund Award Money?

HSF scholarship funds can be used for tuition, books, fees, and other academic expenses. You can also use the award money to pay for room, board, and transportation expenses.

How to Raise Your Chances of Winning a Hispanic Scholarship Fund Award

HSF scholarships are highly competitive; unfortunately, not all qualified applicants receive a scholarship each year. It’s important, then, that you dedicate yourself fully to the application process if you’re serious about trying to get an HSF award.

I'll address some long- and short-term strategies to help you win an HSF scholarship here.

Long-Term Considerations

As you prepare for HSF scholarship applications, keep in mind that students are evaluated on the following criteria:

• Academic achievement
• Personal strengths
• Commitment to giving back to their communities

HSF also strives to help students achieve their goals, particularly in areas in which Hispanic/Latino students are underrepresented, namely STEM fields .

You'll be considered an even stronger applicant if you plan on going into science, tech, engineering, or mathematics.

You should also note that HSF scholarships are looking for students who are well rounded . In other words, they would prefer a student with a slightly lower GPA and an impressive resume to a student with a perfect GPA and no extracurricular activities.

Nevertheless, the strongest HSF applicant will demonstrate both academic excellence and involvement in extracurricular activities .

If you're a younger high school student, you can start working on making yourself a stronger applicant, both for scholarships and college applications (there tends to be a lot of overlap).

Here are three things that can make applicants more competitive , according to HSF.

#1: Taking Honors or Advanced Classes

This speaks to your academic achievement. Students who challenge themselves with a more difficult course load will seem more ambitious and tenacious.

#2: Consistent Involvement in Extracurricular or Volunteer Activities

Depending on what activities you’re involved in, your participation in extracurriculars/volunteer activities can speak to all the qualities that applicants are evaluated for.

• Academic achievement: Activities such as Science Olympiad , Mock Trial, and Debate can augment what you’re already doing in class. Basically, participation demonstrates intellectual curiosity.
• Personal strengths : Your success in various activities/organizations will speak to your personal strengths. If you win any awards, honors, or accolades through your participation in extracurriculars, these will get you brownie points on applications.
• Leadership : If you hold an authoritative role as a club officer, or if you started a club or volunteer organization, you’ll prove that you are a strong and effective leader.
• Commitment to giving back to the community : Generally, any volunteer or school-related activity will demonstrate a commitment to your community.

#3: Demonstrating Experiences That Have Contributed to Your Personal Growth

You might be questioning what exactly this point is supposed to mean. After all, experiences that contribute to personal growth will be different for everyone.

In general, though, any experience that challenges you or forces you out of your comfort zone will contribute to your growth .

Here are some examples of how you can demonstrate these types of experiences in the domains relevant to the HSF application:

• Academics : Again, difficult coursework, especially in your weaker subject areas, will challenge you intellectually. If you approach the challenge productively by seeking extra help from teachers and keeping up with your work, you’ll come across as a strong applicant. Letters of recommendation from appropriate teachers can really shed light on whether you seek out challenging academic experiences.
• Leadership: No one starts off as a leader in any club or activity; you have to work your way up by proving yourself and earning respect over time. Volunteer to take on new and challenging learning experiences in your extracurriculars. You can do this by leading a group, proposing an independent learning project, or even starting your own club or organization.
• Commitment to giving back to your community: How do you demonstrate commitment or passion to giving back? You do more than what’s required or expected of you. Do you feel that your school or community is missing a particular type of service group? For example, maybe you’ve noticed that the younger kids in your school community don’t have access to tutors or mentors for homework help, and you have a passion for education and teaching. This would be a great opportunity to give back to your community while also demonstrating real initiative and leadership.

Take every opportunity to describe personal growth and development - scholarships (and colleges) love to see this upwards trajectory.

Sometimes, leadership and community commitment go formally unrecognized. Although I know it’s difficult for some students to toot their own horns, formal awards, honors, and accolades can really help you boost scholarship and college applications.

Work on taking the above advice over the long term, but also try to actively seek out award opportunities in your community . You can do this by checking with your school's guidance counselor or by doing a Google search for any awards in your area.

Short-Term Considerations

If you're ready to start working on your applications, this section will be especially helpful. I'll break down the best ways to approach each part of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund application so you can optimize your chances of winning an award.

The actual essay prompts for the 2024-25 HSF scholarship application aren't available yet, but the HSF lists ideas for personal statements that will likely overlap with its own application essays.

You can use the following prompts to brainstorm before you have access to the actual application in January:

• What are your goals? Why did you choose these goals?
• Why did you choose to apply for HSF fund scholarships?
• What are your values and philosophy about education? Why?
• Are there any accomplishments (either in or out of school) that you're particularly proud of? What have you learned from these experiences?
• Do you have a time-management system? What is it?
• How do you schedule your time to include both academic and social activities?
• What difficulties or disadvantages have you faced in your life, and how have you overcome them? What is one area in which you are weak, and how have you or do you plan to overcome this weakness?
• Identify a leadership experience and talk about the most important lessons of the position and experience.
• What makes you unique?

Your actual scholarship essay will be evaluated on four different factors, which are as follows:

#1: Length : There’s a maximum word count for each essay. The best essays will use all the space available. While you don’t need to write the exact max number of words, you should try to get as close as possible to the maximum.

#2: Content : The essay prompts will be focused and direct; make sure your response is as well. If the prompt includes multiple parts, ensure that you’re answering each part of the prompt.

• Highlight the qualities that the HSF values in scholarship recipients, including academic achievement, personal strengths, leadership skills or experiences, and commitment to giving back to the community. Reference the section above for examples of activities, experiences, and challenges you could highlight.
• If there are any major weaknesses in your HSF application (such as a lack of leadership experiences or poor academic performance), use your essays to explain yourself . Don’t make excuses—keep your tone matter-of-fact, but optimistic.
• If you’ve experienced any extraordinary hardships or obstacles, mention them in your essays . It’s important that application readers have a full and comprehensive understanding of situational factors that could have affected different aspects of your application.

#3: Use of Examples : The examples you use in your essays should be personal (without being confessional) and relevant to the prompt. Your essay responses will be more engaging if, for example, you begin your writing with an anecdote or personal story.

#4: Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation: Errors are distracting and detract from the quality of your writing. Avoid mistakes by giving yourself plenty of time to write the essay. Have a trusted teacher or mentor edit and proofread your work, too.

This sign doesn't make a great first impression. Make sure your HSF essay does!

Letters of Recommendation

Your academic recommendation writer must be an instructor, an adviser, or someone who can evaluate you academically (e.g., your academic performance, motivation, plans and goals, etc.). Additional recommenders can be either academic or nonacademic.

Secondary recommendation writers must be able to evaluate your community service and extracurricular activities (e.g., your leadership, work ethic, or commitment). Recommendations from family members, family friends, and other close friends are discouraged by HSF.

Strong letters of recommendation are important for any application. Here’s how you can go about getting the best letters possible for an HSF award application:

#1: Ask the Right People : Ideal recommendation writers are those in educator/mentor positions and with whom you have a long, positive history. The best recommender will be excited to vouch for you.

If you have someone in mind, ask them to write your letters in such a way that they have an "out" if they’re not comfortable doing it. If they don’t have any positive things to say about you, they’ll end up writing a lukewarm letter, and this will really hurt your application.

Ask if they’d be comfortable writing you a "very strong" or "glowing" letter. This way, you'll know that if they decline or hesitate, you’re probably better off asking someone else to write you a letter.

You can ask more than one person to write you a letter of recommendation. This is potentially a great opportunity to present yourself as a well-rounded applicant. I advise you to ask for letters from two to three people; any more than that, though, and the HSF scholarship evaluators will have too much to read!

#2: Give Your Letter Writers Plenty of Advance Notice: Aim for 10-12 weeks, if possible. Since the deadline for HSF is in mid-February, you'll want to aim to ask for rec letters by mid-November.

What's Next?

Although the HSF application means you'll be considered for many scholarships, you don't want to stop there! To really optimize your chances of getting scholarship funding, you should apply to as many scholarship programs as possible.

The good news is that we have comprehensive guides to submitting the best applications for some of the nation's top scholarships. Read these to learn how to win the Gates Millennium Scholarship , the Ronald McDonald House Charities scholarships , the Walmart Scholarships , and the Coca-Cola Scholarship .

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

Francesca graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and scored in the 99th percentile on the SATs. She's worked with many students on SAT prep and college counseling, and loves helping students capitalize on their strengths.

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Holly R. "I am absolutely overjoyed and cannot thank you enough for helping me!”

Should college essays touch on race? Some feel the affirmative action ruling leaves them no choice

CHICAGO — When she started writing her college essay, Hillary Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. About being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana and growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. About hardship and struggle.

Then she deleted it all.

“I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18-year-old senior at Lincoln Park High School in Chicago. “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.”

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in higher education, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. For many students of color, instantly more was riding on the already high-stakes writing assignment. Some say they felt pressure to exploit their hardships as they competed for a spot on campus.

Amofa was just starting to think about her essay when the court issued its decision, and it left her with a wave of questions. Could she still write about her race? Could she be penalized for it? She wanted to tell colleges about her heritage but she didn’t want to be defined by it.

In English class, Amofa and her classmates read sample essays that all seemed to focus on some trauma or hardship. It left her with the impression she had to write about her life’s hardest moments to show how far she’d come. But she and some of her classmates wondered if their lives had been hard enough to catch the attention of admissions offices.

“For a lot of students, there’s a feeling of, like, having to go through something so horrible to feel worthy of going to school, which is kind of sad,” said Amofa, the daughter of a hospital technician and an Uber driver.

This year’s senior class is the first in decades to navigate college admissions without affirmative action . The Supreme Court upheld the practice in decisions going back to the 1970s, but this court’s conservative supermajority found it is unconstitutional for colleges to give students extra weight because of their race alone.

Still, the decision left room for race to play an indirect role: Chief Justice John Roberts wrote universities can still consider how an applicant’s life was shaped by their race, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability.”

“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination,” he wrote.

Scores of colleges responded with new essay prompts asking about students’ backgrounds. Brown University asked applicants how “an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you.” Rice University asked students how their perspectives were shaped by their “background, experiences, upbringing, and/or racial identity.”

WONDERING IF SCHOOLS 'EXPECT A SOB STORY'

When Darrian Merritt started writing his essay, he knew the stakes were higher than ever because of the court’s decision. His first instinct was to write about events that led to him going to live with his grandmother as a child.

Those were painful memories, but he thought they might play well at schools like Yale, Stanford and Vanderbilt.

“I feel like the admissions committee might expect a sob story or a tragic story,” said Merritt, a senior in Cleveland. “And if you don’t provide that, then maybe they’re not going to feel like you went through enough to deserve having a spot at the university. I wrestled with that a lot.”

He wrote drafts focusing on his childhood, but it never amounted to more than a collection of memories. Eventually he abandoned the idea and aimed for an essay that would stand out for its positivity.

Merritt wrote about a summer camp where he started to feel more comfortable in his own skin. He described embracing his personality and defying his tendency to please others. The essay had humor — it centered on a water gun fight where he had victory in sight but, in a comedic twist, slipped and fell. But the essay also reflects on his feelings of not being “Black enough” and getting made fun of for listening to “white people music.”

“I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to write this for me, and we’re just going to see how it goes,’” he said. “It just felt real, and it felt like an honest story.”

The essay describes a breakthrough as he learned “to take ownership of myself and my future by sharing my true personality with the people I encounter. ... I realized that the first chapter of my own story had just been written.”

A RULING PROMPTS PIVOTS ON ESSAY TOPICS

Like many students, Max Decker of Portland, Oregon, had drafted a college essay on one topic, only to change direction after the Supreme Court ruling in June.

Decker initially wrote about his love for video games. In a childhood surrounded by constant change, navigating his parents’ divorce, the games he took from place to place on his Nintendo DS were a source of comfort.

But the essay he submitted to colleges focused on the community he found through Word is Bond, a leadership group for young Black men in Portland.

As the only biracial, Jewish kid with divorced parents in a predominantly white, Christian community, Decker wrote he constantly felt like the odd one out. On a trip with Word is Bond to Capitol Hill, he and friends who looked just like him shook hands with lawmakers. The experience, he wrote, changed how he saw himself.

“It’s because I’m different that I provide something precious to the world, not the other way around,” he wrote.

As a first-generation college student, Decker thought about the subtle ways his peers seemed to know more about navigating the admissions process . They made sure to get into advanced classes at the start of high school, and they knew how to secure glowing letters of recommendation.

If writing about race would give him a slight edge and show admissions officers a fuller picture of his achievements, he wanted to take that small advantage.

His first memory about race, Decker said, was when he went to get a haircut in elementary school and the barber made rude comments about his curly hair. Until recently, the insecurity that moment created led him to keep his hair buzzed short.

Through Word is Bond, Decker said he found a space to explore his identity as a Black man. It was one of the first times he was surrounded by Black peers and saw Black role models. It filled him with a sense of pride in his identity. No more buzzcut.

The pressure to write about race involved a tradeoff with other important things in his life, Decker said. That included his passion for journalism, like the piece he wrote on efforts to revive a once-thriving Black neighborhood in Portland. In the end, he squeezed in 100 characters about his journalism under the application’s activities section.

“My final essay, it felt true to myself. But the difference between that and my other essay was the fact that it wasn’t the truth that I necessarily wanted to share,” said Decker, whose top college choice is Tulane, in New Orleans, because of the region’s diversity. “It felt like I just had to limit the truth I was sharing to what I feel like the world is expecting of me.”

SPELLING OUT THE IMPACT OF RACE

Before the Supreme Court ruling, it seemed a given to Imani Laird that colleges would consider the ways that race had touched her life. But now, she felt like she had to spell it out.

As she started her essay, she reflected on how she had faced bias or felt overlooked as a Black student in predominantly white spaces.

There was the year in math class when the teacher kept calling her by the name of another Black student. There were the comments that she’d have an easier time getting into college because she was Black .

“I didn’t have it easier because of my race,” said Laird, a senior at Newton South High School in the Boston suburbs who was accepted at Wellesley and Howard University, and is waiting to hear from several Ivy League colleges. “I had stuff I had to overcome.”

In her final essays, she wrote about her grandfather, who served in the military but was denied access to GI Bill benefits because of his race.

She described how discrimination fueled her ambition to excel and pursue a career in public policy.

“So, I never settled for mediocrity,” she wrote. “Regardless of the subject, my goal in class was not just to participate but to excel. Beyond academics, I wanted to excel while remembering what started this motivation in the first place.”

WILL SCHOOLS LOSE RACIAL DIVERSITY?

Amofa used to think affirmative action was only a factor at schools like Harvard and Yale. After the court’s ruling, she was surprised to find that race was taken into account even at some public universities she was applying to.

Now, without affirmative action, she wondered if mostly white schools will become even whiter.

It’s been on her mind as she chooses between Indiana University and the University of Dayton, both of which have relatively few Black students. When she was one of the only Black students in her grade school, she could fall back on her family and Ghanaian friends at church. At college, she worries about loneliness.

“That’s what I’m nervous about,” she said. “Going and just feeling so isolated, even though I’m constantly around people.”

The first drafts of her essay focused on growing up in a low-income family, sharing a bedroom with her brother and grandmother. But it didn’t tell colleges about who she is now, she said.

Her final essay tells how she came to embrace her natural hair . She wrote about going to a mostly white grade school where classmates made jokes about her afro. When her grandmother sent her back with braids or cornrows, they made fun of those too.

Over time, she ignored their insults and found beauty in the styles worn by women in her life. She now runs a business doing braids and other hairstyles in her neighborhood.

“I stopped seeing myself through the lens of the European traditional beauty standards and started seeing myself through the lens that I created,” Amofa wrote.

“Criticism will persist, but it loses its power when you know there’s a crown on your head!”

Ma reported from Portland, Oregon.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

Ultimate Guide to Writing Your College Essay

Tips for writing an effective college essay.

College admissions essays are an important part of your college application and gives you the chance to show colleges and universities your character and experiences. This guide will give you tips to write an effective college essay.

Want free help with your college essay?

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Avoiding common admissions essay mistakes

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Stuck on what to write your college essay about? Here are some exercises to help you get started.

How formal should the tone of your college essay be?

Learn how formal your college essay should be and get tips on how to bring out your natural voice.

Taking your college essay to the next level

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Student Stories

Student Story: Admissions essay about a formative experience

Get the perspective of a current college student on how he approached the admissions essay.

Student Story: Admissions essay about personal identity

Get the perspective of a current college student on how she approached the admissions essay.

Student Story: Admissions essay about community impact

Student story: admissions essay about a past mistake, how to write a college application essay, tips for writing an effective application essay, sample college essay 1 with feedback, sample college essay 2 with feedback.

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College advisers vow to ‘kick the door open’ for Black and Hispanic students despite affirmative action ruling 

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WILMINGTON, Del. — Striding into a packed community center filled with high school seniors, Atnre Alleyne has a few words of advice for the crowd, members of the first class of college applicants to be shaped by June’s Supreme Court ruling striking down race-conscious admissions.

“You have to get good grades, you have to find a way to do the academics, but also become leaders,” said Alleyne, the energetic co-founder and CEO of TeenSHARP , a nonprofit that prepares students from underrepresented backgrounds for higher education. “In your schools, do something! Fight for social justice.”

Many of the TeenSHARP participants gathered here, who are predominantly Black or Hispanic, worry that their chances of getting into top-tier schools have diminished with the court’s decision. They wonder what to say in their admissions essays and how comfortable they’ll feel on campuses that could become increasingly less diverse.

On this autumn night, Alleyne and his team are fielding questions from the dozens of students they advise, on everything from early decision deadlines to which schools are most likely to give generous financial aid and scholarships. The changed admissions landscape has only increased the team’s determination to develop a new generation of leaders, students who will fight to have their voices represented on campuses and later on in the workplace.

“I want them to kick the door open to these places, so they will go back and open more doors,” Alleyne said.

That goal is shared by successful alumni of the program Alleyne and his wife, Tatiana Poladko , started in a church basement 14 years ago. Several are on hand tonight recounting their own educational journeys , culminating in full scholarships to schools such as the University of Chicago and Wesleyan University, where annual estimated costs approach $90,000.

Before the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, highly selective colleges served as a beacon of hope and economic mobility for students like those TeenSHARP advise. Many are first in their families to attend college and lack legacy connections or access to the private counselors who’ve long given a boost to wealthier students .

Related: Colleges decry Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, but most have terrible records on diversity

But even before the high court ruling, Black and Latino students were poorly represented at these institutions, while the college degree gap between Black and white Americans was getting worse. For some students, the court decision sends a message that they do not belong, and if they get in, they worry they’ll stand out even more.

“I felt really upset about it,” Jamel Powell, a high school junior from Belle Mead, New Jersey, who participates in TeenSHARP, said about the affirmative action ruling. “This system has helped many underrepresented minorities get into these Ivy League schools and excel.”

While the full impact of the ruling on student demographics remains unknown, representatives of 33 colleges wrote in an amicus brief filed in the case that the share of Black students on their campuses would drop from roughly 7.1 percent to 2.1 percent if affirmative action were banned.

The uncertainty of what the decision means is taking a toll on students and school counselors nationally, said Mandy Savitz-Romer, a senior lecturer at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. As colleges sort through how they can meet commitments to diversity while complying with the law, students wonder if mentioning race in their essays will help or hurt them.

In his majority decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that race could be invoked only within the context of the applicant’s life story, making essays the one opportunity for students to discuss their race and ethnicity. But since then, Edward Blum, the conservative activist who helped bring the case before the court, has threatened more lawsuits, promising to challenge any essay topic that is “nothing more than a back-channel subterfuge for divulging a student’s race.”

The Department of Education has published guidelines saying that while schools cannot put a thumb on the scale for students based on their race, they “remain free” to consider characteristics tied to individual students’ life experiences, including race. The National Association of College Admission Counseling issued similar guidance, while the Common App introduced new essay prompts that include one about students’ “identity” and “background.”

Because of the uncertainty,school counselors need specific training on crafting essays and how or whether to talk about race, Savitz-Romer said during a Harvard webinar last month on college admissions after affirmative action. “We need counselors and teachers to make students understand that college is still for them,” she said.

It’s a tall order: On average, public school counselors serve more than 400 students each , which offers little time for one-on-one advising.

Related: Why aren’t more school counselors trained in helping students apply to college?

That reality is why nonprofit advising groups like TeenSHARP toil alongside students, guiding them through an increasingly confounding admissions system. TeenSHARP’s team of three advisers works intensively with roughly 140 students at a time, including 50 seniors who often apply to as many as 20 colleges to maximize their chances.

That’s a fraction of those who need help, another reason why the group’s leaders rely on their network of more than 500 “Sharpies,” as alums are known.

Emily Rodriguez, a TeenSHARP senior who attends Conrad Schools of Science in Wilmington, decided to address race head on in her college essays: She wrote about her determination that she would not “play the role of the poor submissive Mexican woman.”

“Admissions officers assure us that their commitment to diversity hasn’t changed. But we will have to see. We’ve explained to families and students that this year is a learning year.” Tatiana Poladko, co-founder, TeenSHARP

Hamza Parker, a senior at Delaware’s Smyrna High School who moved to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia as a sixth grader, said he was against writing about his identity at first. “I feel like it puts you in a position where you have to have a sob story for your essay instead of talking about something good, like, that happened in your life,” he told Alleyne and Poladko during a counseling session over Zoom.

But in the session Alleyne and Poladko encouraged him to draw from his own story, one they know something about from working with his older sister Hasana, now a junior at Pomona College. The family had a difficult move from Saudi Arabia to New York City and later Delaware, where Hamza joined the Delaware Black Student Coalition.

Hamza decided to revise his essay from one focused on linguistics to describe experiencing racism and then embracing his Muslim heritage.

“I am my normal social self and my Muslim faith and garb are widely known and respected at my school,” he wrote. “My school even now has a dedicated space for prayer during Ramadan.”

Related: The newest benefit at top companies: Private college admissions counseling

Alleyne and Poladko typically work with students who are beginning their first year of high school, so the pair can guide the entire college application process, much as some pricey private counselors do — although TeenSHARP’s services are free; as a nonprofit it relies on an array of donors for support.

Neither Poladko nor Alleyne attended elite schools. They met as graduate students at Rutgers University and became committed to starting TeenSHARP after helping Alleyne’s niece apply to colleges from a large New York City public high school.

Astonished by how complicated and inaccessible college admissions could be, the two decided to make it their life’s work, writing grants and getting donations from local banks and foundations so they could serve more students.

“I felt really upset about it. This system has helped many underrepresented minorities get into these Ivy League schools and excel.” Jamel Powell, a high school junior from Belle Mead, New Jersey, who participates in TeenSHARP, about the affirmative action ruling.

Their work is now largely remote: During the pandemic, the couple relocated from Wilmington to Poladko’s native Ukraine to be closer to her family, leading to a dramatic escape to Poland with their three young children when war broke out. Poladko is taking a sabbatical from TeenSHARP this year, although she still helps some students via Zoom. Alleyne flies from Warsaw to Wilmington to meet with students in person, often at the community center downtown that once housed their offices.

They also rely on relationships they’ve built over the years with college presidents and admissions officers at schools like Boston College, Pomona College and Wesleyan, along with both Carleton and Macalester Colleges in Minnesota, many of whom have welcomed TeenSHARP applicants.

“We need more ‘Sharpies’ on our campus,” said Suzanne Rivera, president of Macalester College, in Minnesota, and a member of TeenSHARP’s advisory board. “Their questions are always so smart and so insightful.”

Sharpies also tend to become campus leaders, in part because TeenSHARP requires that its students develop leadership skills. That’s something William Garcia, who graduated from the University of Chicago last spring, told seniors in Wilmington.

“If Black high school seniors no longer feel like they are welcomed on predominantly white campuses, they are less likely to apply and even less likely to enroll even if they are offered admission.” Chelsea Holley, director of admissions at Spelman College in Atlanta

At first, he felt isolated in Chicago, reticent to talk about his experiences as a Hispanic man. “I was in your shoes five years ago,” Garcia said. He later realized his background could be an asset, and drew on it to turn an ingredient for one of Mexico’s most popular liquors into a business venture for his own agave beverage company.

“Embrace your story; tell your story,” Garcia said. “I would tell my story and people would be really interested and would start to help me.”

Alphina Kamara, a 2022 graduate of Wesleyan University, urged seniors to aim high and look beyond state schools and local community colleges that have lower graduation rates and fewer resources — campuses she might have ended up at it not for TeenSHARP.

“I would have never have known that schools like Wesleyan existed, and that I, as a first-generation Black woman, had a place in them,” said Kamara, the child of immigrant parents from Sierra Leone.

Related: Beyond the Rankings: College Welcome Guide

Still, there will always be some TeenSHARP students who don’t want to be on campuses that had terrible track records for diversity, even before the court’s decision.

Tariah Hyland, who in high school co-founded the Delaware Black Student Coalition, knew she’d be more comfortable at one of the country’s more than 100 historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. She told the Delaware audience that she’s thriving in her junior year at Howard University, where she is studying political science.

Powell, the New Jersey junior, is eyeing both Howard and Atlanta’s Morehouse College and said he’ll likely only apply to HBCUs.

“When I was in public school, I was the only Black boy in my classes,” said Powell, who now attends Acelus Academy , an online school. “I was always the minority, and so by going to an HBCU, I would likely see more people who look like me.” 

That’s no surprise to Chelsea Holley, director of admissions at Spelman College in Atlanta, who said she’s expecting “more interest from Black and Brown students, now that the Supreme Court has made what I believe to be a regressive political decision.”

HBCUs like Spelman — whose graduates include Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman and author Alice Walker — are already seeing more applications and are becoming even more competitive.

“If Black high school seniors no longer feel like they are welcomed on predominantly white campuses, they are less likely to apply and even less likely to enroll, even if they are offered admission,” Holley said, adding that students may be worried about further assaults on diversity and inclusion on college campuses and believe they will be more comfortable at an HBCU.

Still, not everyone predicts the court ruling will precipitate a permanent drop in Black and Hispanic students at predominantly white, selective colleges. Richard Kahlenberg, an author and scholar at Georgetown University predicts the drop will be temporary, and that the affirmative action ban will eventually lead to a fairer landscape for low-income students of all races.

Kahlenberg, who served as an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions, said he wants to see an end to legacy preferences as well as athletic recruiting, so that colleges can give “a meaningful boost” to “disadvantaged students of all races” and “you can get racial diversity without racial preferences.” Challenges to legacy admissions are mounting: The Education Department has opened an investigation into Harvard’s use of the practice, and a recent bipartisan bill calls for colleges to end it.

As mid-December approaches, Alleyne and Poladko are anxiously waiting to see how the handful of TeenSHARP students who applied for early decision will fare.

“Admissions officers assure us that their commitment to diversity hasn’t changed,” Poladko said. “But we will have to see. We’ve explained to families and students that this year is a learning year.”

Until that time, both Poladko and Alleyne will continue pushing students to help those who come after them.

“Our goal is to figure out the game of admissions and give our students an advantage,” Alleyne said. “And our job is to teach them how to play the game.”

This story about TeenSHARP is the first in a series of articles, produced by  The Hechinger Report in partnership with Soledad O’Brien Productions , about the impact of the Supreme Court ruling on race-based affirmative action. Stay tuned for an upcoming documentary and part II. Hechinger is a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter .

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Should college essays touch on race? Some feel the affirmative action ruling leaves them no choice

Hillary Amofa listens to others member of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. (AP Video: Noreen Nasir)

Hillary Amofa listens to others member of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

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Hillary Amofa, laughs as she participates in a team building game with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Hillary Amofa stands for a portrait after practice with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, sits for a portrait in the school library where he often worked on writing his college essays, in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

Hillary Amofa stands for a portrait after practice with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Hillary Amofa, second from left, practices with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, stands for a portrait outside of the school in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

*Hillary Amofa, reflected right, practices in a mirror with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, sits for a portrait outside of the school in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

Hillary Amofa, left, practices with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Hillary Amofa sits for a portrait after her step team practice at Lincoln Park High School Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

FILE - Demonstrators protest outside of the Supreme Court in Washington, in this June 29, 2023 file photo, after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, saying race cannot be a factor. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

CHICAGO (AP) — When she started writing her college essay, Hillary Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. About being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana and growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. About hardship and struggle.

Then she deleted it all.

“I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18-year-old senior at Lincoln Park High School in Chicago. “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.”

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in higher education, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. For many students of color, instantly more was riding on the already high-stakes writing assignment. Some say they felt pressure to exploit their hardships as they competed for a spot on campus.

Amofa was just starting to think about her essay when the court issued its decision, and it left her with a wave of questions. Could she still write about her race? Could she be penalized for it? She wanted to tell colleges about her heritage but she didn’t want to be defined by it.

In English class, Amofa and her classmates read sample essays that all seemed to focus on some trauma or hardship. It left her with the impression she had to write about her life’s hardest moments to show how far she’d come. But she and some of her classmates wondered if their lives had been hard enough to catch the attention of admissions offices.

“For a lot of students, there’s a feeling of, like, having to go through something so horrible to feel worthy of going to school, which is kind of sad,” said Amofa, the daughter of a hospital technician and an Uber driver.

This year’s senior class is the first in decades to navigate college admissions without affirmative action . The Supreme Court upheld the practice in decisions going back to the 1970s, but this court’s conservative supermajority found it is unconstitutional for colleges to give students extra weight because of their race alone.

Still, the decision left room for race to play an indirect role: Chief Justice John Roberts wrote universities can still consider how an applicant’s life was shaped by their race, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability.”

“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination,” he wrote.

Scores of colleges responded with new essay prompts asking about students’ backgrounds. Brown University asked applicants how “an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you.” Rice University asked students how their perspectives were shaped by their “background, experiences, upbringing, and/or racial identity.”

Hillary Amofa, reflected right, practices in a mirror with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

WONDERING IF SCHOOLS ‘EXPECT A SOB STORY’

When Darrian Merritt started writing his essay, he knew the stakes were higher than ever because of the court’s decision. His first instinct was to write about events that led to him going to live with his grandmother as a child.

Those were painful memories, but he thought they might play well at schools like Yale, Stanford and Vanderbilt.

“I feel like the admissions committee might expect a sob story or a tragic story,” said Merritt, a senior in Cleveland. “And if you don’t provide that, then maybe they’re not going to feel like you went through enough to deserve having a spot at the university. I wrestled with that a lot.”

He wrote drafts focusing on his childhood, but it never amounted to more than a collection of memories. Eventually he abandoned the idea and aimed for an essay that would stand out for its positivity.

Merritt wrote about a summer camp where he started to feel more comfortable in his own skin. He described embracing his personality and defying his tendency to please others. The essay had humor — it centered on a water gun fight where he had victory in sight but, in a comedic twist, slipped and fell. But the essay also reflects on his feelings of not being “Black enough” and getting made fun of for listening to “white people music.”

“I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to write this for me, and we’re just going to see how it goes,’” he said. “It just felt real, and it felt like an honest story.”

The essay describes a breakthrough as he learned “to take ownership of myself and my future by sharing my true personality with the people I encounter. ... I realized that the first chapter of my own story had just been written.”

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, sits for a portrait in the school library where he often worked on writing his college essays, in Portland, Ore., March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

A RULING PROMPTS PIVOTS ON ESSAY TOPICS

Like many students, Max Decker of Portland, Oregon, had drafted a college essay on one topic, only to change direction after the Supreme Court ruling in June.

Decker initially wrote about his love for video games. In a childhood surrounded by constant change, navigating his parents’ divorce, the games he took from place to place on his Nintendo DS were a source of comfort.

But the essay he submitted to colleges focused on the community he found through Word is Bond, a leadership group for young Black men in Portland.

As the only biracial, Jewish kid with divorced parents in a predominantly white, Christian community, Decker wrote he constantly felt like the odd one out. On a trip with Word is Bond to Capitol Hill, he and friends who looked just like him shook hands with lawmakers. The experience, he wrote, changed how he saw himself.

“It’s because I’m different that I provide something precious to the world, not the other way around,” he wrote.

As a first-generation college student, Decker thought about the subtle ways his peers seemed to know more about navigating the admissions process . They made sure to get into advanced classes at the start of high school, and they knew how to secure glowing letters of recommendation.

Max Decker reads his college essay on his experience with a leadership group for young Black men. (AP Video/Noreen Nasir)

If writing about race would give him a slight edge and show admissions officers a fuller picture of his achievements, he wanted to take that small advantage.

His first memory about race, Decker said, was when he went to get a haircut in elementary school and the barber made rude comments about his curly hair. Until recently, the insecurity that moment created led him to keep his hair buzzed short.

Through Word is Bond, Decker said he found a space to explore his identity as a Black man. It was one of the first times he was surrounded by Black peers and saw Black role models. It filled him with a sense of pride in his identity. No more buzzcut.

The pressure to write about race involved a tradeoff with other important things in his life, Decker said. That included his passion for journalism, like the piece he wrote on efforts to revive a once-thriving Black neighborhood in Portland. In the end, he squeezed in 100 characters about his journalism under the application’s activities section.

“My final essay, it felt true to myself. But the difference between that and my other essay was the fact that it wasn’t the truth that I necessarily wanted to share,” said Decker, whose top college choice is Tulane, in New Orleans, because of the region’s diversity. “It felt like I just had to limit the truth I was sharing to what I feel like the world is expecting of me.”

Demonstrators protest outside of the Supreme Court in Washington, in this June 29, 2023 file photo, after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, saying race cannot be a factor. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

SPELLING OUT THE IMPACT OF RACE

Before the Supreme Court ruling, it seemed a given to Imani Laird that colleges would consider the ways that race had touched her life. But now, she felt like she had to spell it out.

As she started her essay, she reflected on how she had faced bias or felt overlooked as a Black student in predominantly white spaces.

There was the year in math class when the teacher kept calling her by the name of another Black student. There were the comments that she’d have an easier time getting into college because she was Black .

“I didn’t have it easier because of my race,” said Laird, a senior at Newton South High School in the Boston suburbs who was accepted at Wellesley and Howard University, and is waiting to hear from several Ivy League colleges. “I had stuff I had to overcome.”

In her final essays, she wrote about her grandfather, who served in the military but was denied access to GI Bill benefits because of his race.

She described how discrimination fueled her ambition to excel and pursue a career in public policy.

“So, I never settled for mediocrity,” she wrote. “Regardless of the subject, my goal in class was not just to participate but to excel. Beyond academics, I wanted to excel while remembering what started this motivation in the first place.”

Hillary Amofa stands for a portrait after practice with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

WILL SCHOOLS LOSE RACIAL DIVERSITY?

Amofa used to think affirmative action was only a factor at schools like Harvard and Yale. After the court’s ruling, she was surprised to find that race was taken into account even at some public universities she was applying to.

Now, without affirmative action, she wondered if mostly white schools will become even whiter.

It’s been on her mind as she chooses between Indiana University and the University of Dayton, both of which have relatively few Black students. When she was one of the only Black students in her grade school, she could fall back on her family and Ghanaian friends at church. At college, she worries about loneliness.

“That’s what I’m nervous about,” she said. “Going and just feeling so isolated, even though I’m constantly around people.”

Hillary Amofa reads her college essay on embracing her natural hair. (AP Video/Noreen Nasir)

The first drafts of her essay focused on growing up in a low-income family, sharing a bedroom with her brother and grandmother. But it didn’t tell colleges about who she is now, she said.

Her final essay tells how she came to embrace her natural hair . She wrote about going to a mostly white grade school where classmates made jokes about her afro. When her grandmother sent her back with braids or cornrows, they made fun of those too.

Over time, she ignored their insults and found beauty in the styles worn by women in her life. She now runs a business doing braids and other hairstyles in her neighborhood.

“I stopped seeing myself through the lens of the European traditional beauty standards and started seeing myself through the lens that I created,” Amofa wrote.

“Criticism will persist, but it loses its power when you know there’s a crown on your head!”

Ma reported from Portland, Oregon.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

SUBMIT A STORY IDEA

UArizona receives $3M for retention and career prep programs for Hispanic students

Students in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese's Critical Service-Learning Program participated in a three-day delegation with BorderLinks, an educational network in Tucson, to learn about the complex issues surrounding immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border. The program, which started in 2014, connects students with local organizations for community-based projects, outreach and internships. The program will be expanded campuswide as one component of the new Project ADELANTE.

Julius Scholosburg

The University of Arizona will receive $3 million for a new project aimed at strengthening retention, degree completion, career readiness and post-graduation success for Hispanic first-generation and low-income students.

Project ADELANTE: Advancing Culturally Responsive Place-Based Educational Opportunities for Latinx Students in the Borderlands includes three components – an internship and career readiness program to connect undergraduates with community businesses and nonprofits, professional development fellowships for UArizona faculty and staff, and a first-year writing program curriculum based on the Latin American "testimonio" tradition of personal narratives.

The funding comes from the U.S. Department of Education's Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program. The competitive grants are designed to assist Hispanic-Serving Institutions in expanding educational opportunities for Hispanic students. The university was designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution in 2018. The designation requires that a higher education institution's full-time undergraduate student enrollment is at least 25% Hispanic.  

The $3 million grant will support Project ADELANTE for five years. By the end of the grant period, it's estimated that the project's activities will have benefited more than 1,800 students.

"Aligned with HSI initiatives, this project embraces our proximity to the borderlands to offer an intentional suite of culturally responsive, place-based educational activities led by incredibly accomplished and equity-minded faculty and staff," said Marla Franco , UArizona vice president for Hispanic-Serving Institution initiatives. "I could not be more excited for this team to lead this important capacity-building work."

As of fall 2021, about 27.4% of UArizona students identified as Hispanic or Latinx, the gender-neutral term for those of Latin American descent. Among those students, 40.6% were first-generation college students and 78% were Arizona residents, many of whom were raised in Southern Arizona communities. Project ADELANTE seeks to build on UArizona's strengths as a land-grant HSI near the U.S.-Mexico border and provide Latinx students with classes and internship opportunities that fit into their cultural context.  

"The University of Arizona's designation as a Hispanic-Serving Institution comes with additional responsibilities as well as new opportunities to make sure we are doing everything we can to make a difference for our students," said University of Arizona President  Robert C. Robbins . "It's encouraging to see faculty from across the campus collaborating on new programs that seek to connect culturally with students and ensure they have the tools they need for successful and fulfilling lives after they graduate."

After UArizona was designated a Hispanic- Serving Institution in 2018, a series of forums was held with members of the campus and the broader community, who identified a primary institutional need: to create more culturally responsive educational experiences.

In 2020-21, faculty members Lysette Davi , assistant director of student engagement for the W.A. Franke Honors College , and Daniel Martinez , assistant professor of sociology, were selected as UArizona HSI Fellows, joining a community-building, career development and leadership program. Davi and Martinez prepared a report exploring the use of binational collaborations to provide meaningful research and service experiences for students.

They found that despite the dozens of campus entities and nearly 100 employees engaging in collaborative work on the U.S-Mexico border, there was a lack of unity in the efforts, as well as a lack of clarity regarding who could help facilitate binational collaboration in teaching, research and service.

In response, Franco sought project proposals from dozens of faculty members, staff members and campus leaders engaged in work in the borderlands. Their ideas were compiled into the grant application for Project ADELANTE. The project name and acronym were chosen to reflect the meaning of the Spanish word "adelante," which means moving forward collectively.

Ana Cornide

"The project will provide students with a university experience that helps develop their identities as bilingual and bicultural civic-minded professionals," said Ana Cornide , project director and an associate professor of practice in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese . "We see the University of Arizona's in-state Latinx students as bearers of critical knowledge, bringing with them an understanding of key issues affecting their families and communities. Institutionally, the project will build on this cultural and social capital and connect it to academic contexts."

Making an impact through internships, fellowships and coursework

Project ADELANTE's Borderlands Service-Learning Program is a campuswide expansion of the Critical Service-Learning Program that Cornide developed in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Since 2014, Cornide has established partnerships with more than 60 local and regional organizations and supervised more than 650 internships through the program. The program will now connect students from across the campus with internships.

"By connecting students with community organizations in the region, the project aims to create a sense of place and belonging for first-generation college students, thereby increasing retention and graduation rates," Cornide said.

Students will be recruited for the program in partnership with the HSI Initiatives office, and a new borderlands-focused career-readiness course will serve as a pre-internship requirement.

The "testimonio" component of Project ADELANTE will be introduced to students in their first-year writing courses. Melani Martinez , a senior lecturer in the Department of English's Writing Program, will lead that part of the project.

"Now, we're working toward having a Borderlands Writing Program course, so it's not just one assignment, but a full spectrum of things from the beginning of the course to the end," she said. "Testimonio is a Latinx tradition and a form of literature as witness. Testimonio is a very different kind of reflection. It brings in more opportunities to talk about student experiences regarding justice, student experiences regarding their cultural or ethnic heritage."

Reaching students in their first year is especially important, Martinez said.

"The first-year student is trying to figure out, 'Do I belong at this institution? Am I going to be able to stay at this institution? Will I be able to finish my degree?' That pressure to succeed doesn't always line up well with the resources they have to find their path," Martinez said. "This grant is a new way for students to find their way in the university and create their academic self and to help guide them from the very first semester."

Project ADELANTE's Borderlands Fellowship Program will support three annual cohorts of 10 faculty and staff members who regularly engage with Hispanic low-income and first-generation students.

The fellowships will include educational workshops and trainings, mentorships and experiential learning opportunities in the borderlands. Nadia Alvarez Mexia , an assistant professor of practice in the Honors College and director of Transborder Education Initiatives in the College of Education , and Iliana Reyes , associate dean in the College of Education, will collaborate on this project component.

"From our previous research and outreach at the Borderlands Education Center with undergraduate and graduate students, we know that they long for connections and contributions to our Hispanic and multicultural communities," Reyes said. 

"ADELANTE is creating and embracing academic spaces and institutional capacity based on professional development for faculty and staff," Alvarez Mexia said. " This professional development component will facilitate experiential learning opportunities to cultivate a borderlands identity and develop educational experiences for students in the University of Arizona."

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Regions & Countries

How hispanic americans get their news, u.s.-born latinos overwhelmingly prefer to get their news in english; about half of immigrant latinos prefer it in spanish.

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand Hispanic Americans’ habits around news and information, including the languages in which they consume news and their engagement with Hispanic media outlets.

Most of the questions in this report are from Pew Research Center’s 2023 National Survey of Latinos, a survey of 5,078 U.S. Hispanic adults conducted Nov. 6-19, 2023. This includes 1,524 Hispanic adults on the Center’s  American Trends Panel  (ATP) and 3,554 Hispanic adults on Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel . Respondents on both panels are recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. Recruiting panelists by phone or mail ensures that nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. This gives us confidence that any sample can represent the whole population, or in this case the whole U.S. Hispanic population. (For more information, watch our  Methods 101 explainer  on random sampling.)

To further ensure the survey reflects a balanced cross-section of the nation’s Hispanic adults, the data is weighted to match the U.S. Hispanic adult population by age, gender, education, nativity, Hispanic origin group and other categories. Read more about the  ATP’s methodology . Refer to the topline for the questions used for our National Survey of Latinos , along with responses, and to methodology for more details.

The questions about how often people get news from various platforms, which platforms they prefer for getting news, and which social media sites people get news from are from an ATP survey of 8,842 U.S. adults, including 1,193 Hispanic adults, conducted Sept. 25-Oct. 1, 2023. Refer to the topline for t he questions used for this survey , along with responses, and to the methodology for more details.

Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. This is the latest report in Pew Research Center’s ongoing investigation of the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age, a research program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The terms  Hispanic  and  Latino  are used interchangeably in this report.

Hispanic/Latino Americans, Hispanic/Latino adults , and Hispanics/Latinos are used interchangeably in this report to refer to survey respondents who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino in the United States. They include those who say their race is White, Black, Asian or some other race and those who identify as multiracial. Hispanic/Latino Americans live in the U.S. but are not necessarily U.S. citizens.

U.S. born  refers to people born in the 50 states or the District of Columbia.

Immigrant  refers to people born outside the 50 states or D.C. For the purposes of this report, immigrants include those born in Puerto Rico or another U.S. territory. Although individuals born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens by birth, they are grouped with immigrant respondents because they were born into a Spanish-dominant culture and because on many points their attitudes, views and beliefs more closely resemble those of Hispanics born outside the U.S. than Hispanics born in the 50 states or D.C., and even U.S.-born Hispanics who identify as being of Puerto Rican origin.

Second generation  refers to people born in the 50 states or D.C. who have at least one parent born in a different country, Puerto Rico or another U.S. territory.

Third generation   or higher refers to people born in the 50 states or D.C. who have two parents born in the 50 states or D.C.

Language dominance  is a composite measure based on self-described assessments of speaking and reading abilities.  Spanish-dominant  people are more proficient in Spanish than in English (i.e., they speak and read Spanish “very well” or “pretty well” but rate their English ability lower).  Bilingual  refers to people who are proficient in both English and Spanish.  English-dominant  people are more proficient in English than in Spanish.

“Middle income” is defined here as two-thirds to double the median annual family income for panelists on the American Trends Panel. “Lower income” falls below that range; “upper income” falls above it. Refer to the methodology for more details.

Hispanic news outlets are those outlets that focus on providing news and information specifically to Hispanic audiences. These can include newspapers, radio or TV stations, podcasts, or social media accounts created for and by Hispanic people. Their content could be in Spanish, English, both languages or another language.

Country of origin refers to the country that survey respondents, their parents or their Hispanic ancestors came from.

Just over half of U.S. Hispanic adults (54%) get their news mostly in English – far higher than the share who get their news mostly in Spanish (21%). About a quarter of Hispanic Americans (23%) say they consume news in both languages about equally.

There is an almost identical pattern on the question of preferred language for news: 51% prefer to get their news in English, 24% prefer Spanish and 23% say they do not have a preference.

But a new Pew Research Center survey of adults who identify as Hispanic or Latino finds major differences in news consumption habits between U.S.-born Hispanics and those who immigrated from other countries .

While U.S.-born Latinos overwhelmingly get their news in English, and prefer it in English, those born outside the United States have much more varied habits: 41% get their news mostly in Spanish, 26% get it primarily in English and 31% do both about equally. Similarly, 47% of Latino immigrants prefer to get their news in Spanish, while 22% prefer English and 31% do not express a preference.

Among Latino immigrants, those who have spent more years in the U.S. are less inclined than more recent arrivals to get news in Spanish, and more inclined to get it in English. There is little difference in the shares who get news in both languages about equally.

Jump to more information on the languages in which U.S. Latinos consume news.

We asked these questions to better understand how a group that makes up nearly one-in-five Americans stays informed, especially as its demographics and use of Spanish continue to change. Immigrants are declining as a share of all U.S. Hispanics , and the share of Hispanics who speak Spanish at home has also dropped – even though the number of Hispanics who speak Spanish at home has increased due to overall growth in the Hispanic population.

Other key findings about Hispanics’ news consumption include:

Most Latino adults prefer digital devices for news

Latinos get their news from a variety of sources, but most say they prefer to use digital devices over other platforms. Nearly nine-in-ten (87%) say they get news from digital devices at least sometimes, and 65% say they prefer this form of news over TV, radio or print. Digital devices have become an increasingly common source for news among Latinos – and among Americans overall – in recent decades, a shift driven by the rise of the internet .

Latinos are more likely than White Americans (55%) and Black Americans (50%) to prefer getting news from digital devices. Latinos also are more likely than White and Black adults to get news from social media, at least in part because Latino adults tend to be younger than other groups, and young adults are more inclined to use social media for news.

Nearly three-quarters of Latino adults under 50 (73%) prefer to get their news on digital devices, including 27% who prefer social media specifically.

Jump to more information on the platforms where U.S. Latinos get news.

Attention to news is declining among U.S. Latinos

About one-in-five Latino adults (22%) say they follow the news all or most of the time, while an additional 36% follow the news some of the time. The share of Latinos who follow the news all or most of the time has fluctuated in recent years but has dropped by 9 percentage points between 2020 (31%) and 2023 (22%), similar to a pattern seen across the general U.S. public .

In recent years, Hispanic Americans have followed the news less closely than Black and White Americans. Again, the high share of young adults within the Hispanic population plays a role, because young people are less likely to follow the news closely. Among Hispanic adults ages 18 to 29, just 10% say they follow the news all or most of the time – far below the share of Hispanics ages 65 and older who do so (44%).

Jump to more information on U.S. Hispanics’ news consumption habits.

Half of Hispanic adults get news from Hispanic news outlets

Half of U.S. Hispanic adults say they at least sometimes get news from Hispanic news outlets – those that specifically cater to Hispanic audiences. This includes 21% who say they do this extremely or very often. Just over half of Hispanics (54%) get news about their or their family’s country of origin at least sometimes, including 24% who do this often. 

Hispanic immigrants are much more likely than U.S.-born Hispanics to get news from Hispanic outlets and about their origin country. In both cases, about seven-in-ten immigrants say they at least sometimes get these types of news: 69% get news from Hispanic outlets and 72% get news about their country of origin. Among Hispanic adults who were born in the U.S., 33% at least sometimes get news from Hispanic outlets, and 38% get news about their family’s country of origin.

There are further differences among U.S.-born Hispanics: Those whose parents were also born in the U.S. are even less likely than those with one or more immigrant parent to get these types of news.

Jump to more information on Hispanic news outlets and news about Hispanic Americans’ origin countries.

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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FAQ About the Race/Ethnicity Section of the Common Application

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How the end of affirmative action impacts admissions, faqs about the race/ethnicity section of the common application, application tips for students of color, what are my chances of admission.

As you may already know, the Common Application asks questions designed to learn more about an applicant’s background as part of its “Profile” tab. These questions range from inquiring about an applicant’s religious preferences to their military affiliation to their race/ethnicity.

Many applicants wonder about how they should go about addressing that last topic. There are various misconceptions regarding the race section of the Common App, which can lead to uncertainty or even anxiety for students filling out the Common App. In this blog post, we’ll answer some of the most common questions about the race section of the Common App. First, however, we’ll break down how to approach the race/ethnicity questions in particular.

It’s impossible to talk about this section of the Common App without mentioning the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action in college admissions, which will have a significant impact on the diversity of college campuses. Affirmative action was a policy that aimed to increase opportunities for historically disadvantaged groups. It had been used in college admissions for decades, but the Supreme Court ruled in June 2023 that colleges and universities could no longer consider race as a factor in admissions decisions.

Without affirmative action, minority students are less likely to be admitted to selective colleges, as they often have less access to the kinds of experiences that lead to successful applications to these schools. So, colleges will need to find new ways to ensure that their student bodies are diverse. 

Later in this post, we’ll discuss how students who are concerned about how the end of affirmative action will impact their college admissions chances can ensure they’re submitting a competitive application.

Is the Race Section Mandatory?

One of the most common misconceptions is that you are required to disclose your race when applying via the Common App. In fact, this section is optional​​, which means you can submit a completed Common Application without answering these questions.

The Common App states the following about the demographics section as a whole: “The questions in this section, while helpful to colleges, are entirely optional, and you’re welcome to move on without answering them. Before you do, please confirm for us that you’ve completed this section to your satisfaction.”

It’s worth noting that even with the end of affirmative action, discussing your race or ethnicity in your application could still provide an admissions boost if it helps to represent a unique part of your story or background. Colleges are still allowed to factor diversity into their decisions in a more general sense, so if your race or ethnicity helps illustrate your potential as a college student, filling out this section could be a good idea.

That being said, again, choosing to list your race or any other demographic information is entirely up to your discretion. If for whatever reason you feel uncomfortable doing so, you can choose to skip this section and move on to other parts of the Common App.

What Counts as an Underrepresented Minority Race?

You may have heard the term “underrepresented minority,” or URM, being used during the application season. Because URM students are generally considered to be one type of applicant that colleges look to “hook,” you may be wondering to whom the term applies.

Generally, URM races are those that have been traditionally underrepresented at American universities. This includes students of Hispanic/Latino, African American, Pacific Islander, and Native American origin or background, though what is considered an underrepresented minority may change depending on the school in question. 

It should be noted that, with the end of affirmative action, your URM status is no longer directly considered in the admissions process.

Will Putting Down a URM Race Help my Chances at Admission?

With the end of affirmative action, colleges are no longer allowed to give admissions boosts to URM applicants based on their racial background.

Will Listing a Race Such as Asian or White Hurt My Chances of Admission?

Historically, one of the main reasons some students felt uncomfortable about the race section of the Common App was they worried that responding in certain ways could adversely impact their application.

However, due to the end of affirmative action, all races must be held to the same standards for admission. Thus, Asian and White students should not expect to see lower acceptance rates compared to other races, as may have been the case in the past.

Can I Choose Not to Put My Race?

As we mentioned earlier, the entire demographics section of the Common App is completely optional. If for whatever reason you do not wish to specify your race, you are completely entitled to do so. You may simply skip this section and move on with the rest of your application.

That being said, your race is often “given away” by other aspects of your application, such as your last name or your parents’ names (or where they went to school). And since affirmative action has ended, not stating your race explicitly will probably change little when it comes to your chances.

I’m Hispanic/Latino, but Hispanic/Latino is Considered an Ethnicity, Not a Race, on the Common App. Which Race Should I Select?

The Common App first asks students whether or not they are Hispanic/Latino. After that, students are asked to select one or more of the following racial options, regardless of their answers to the last question: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, or White.

If you are Hispanic/Latino and unsure of what to list as your race, you have several options. Most Hispanic/Latino individuals are a mixture of African, European, and Native American races. If you identify with one of these races, select that option. If not, you may put all three, or none at all. Keep in mind that you do not have to answer this question, so if you feel that listing your ethnicity as Hispanic/Latino and not including a race best reflects your racial identity, then you should do so.

I Don’t Identify With Any of the Races Listed on the Common App. What Do I Do?

You can choose to leave the question about race blank, and if you choose to do so, discuss your race/racial identity in other parts of your application. For instance, you could mention or elaborate on your racial identity in one of your essays and flesh out your identity and its importance to you in detail. The “Diversity” supplemental essay , which has become an increasingly popular one this year in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, is particularly conducive to this kind of topic.

Another option is to include your racial identity in the “Additional Information” section of the Common App , which gives you more freedom to expand on your identity than just checking one box or another.

The end of affirmative action will likely affect acceptance rates for Black, Hispanic, Native American, and multi-racial students at selective colleges. In light of these changes, it’s imperative for students from these backgrounds to be especially proactive and meticulous when preparing their college applications.

Strengthen Your Academic Profile

• Target High Test Scores: Aim to score well above the average SAT or ACT scores reported by the schools to which you’re applying. Many free and paid resources are available to help you prepare.
• Advanced Courses: Take as many AP, IB, or honors courses as you can manage without compromising your GPA. This shows admissions committees that you are intellectually curious and willing to challenge yourself.
• Academic Achievements: Win or at least place in academic competitions, if possible. Not only will this make you a more compelling candidate, but it also provides excellent material for essays and/or interviews.
• Recommendations: Choose teachers who know you well and can write detailed recommendations that highlight your more intangible qualities, like leadership and initiative, in addition to your academic accomplishments.
• Consider Applying Test-Optional: If the schools you’re aiming for have a test-optional policy and your test scores aren’t as strong, it may be advantageous to withhold your scores. Be strategic in deciding whether or not to submit your SAT or ACT scores based on each school’s criteria.

Invest in Extracurricular Activities

• Leadership Roles: Pursue leadership positions in clubs or activities that interest you. Leadership experience shows colleges that you can manage responsibilities and have skills that will contribute to campus life.
• Community Engagement: Engage in community service or volunteer work that aligns with your interests or intended field of study. This will help demonstrate that you’re committed to making a positive impact on your eventual college campus.
• Unique Skills: Develop a unique skill or hobby that sets you apart from other applicants. Whether it’s planting your own garden, playing a rare musical instrument like the kazoo, or excelling in an unusual sport such as rock-climbing, a unique skill can make you more memorable to admissions officers.

Craft a Strong Personal Statement

• Narrative Arc: Develop a compelling narrative arc for your essay. Start with a hook that grabs the reader’s attention and leads them through the events or thoughts that have shaped you.
• Be Authentic: Authenticity resonates with readers. Share experiences or challenges you’ve faced that have helped define your identity. Don’t shy away from discussing obstacles you’ve overcome—resilience is a trait colleges value highly.
• Customize: If possible, customize your personal statement for each school you’re applying to. Relate your experiences to specific programs or opportunities at the school and explain why you’re a good fit.
• Identity: As touched on in a few places earlier on, while colleges can no longer make their admissions decisions based on race alone, they can evaluate it as part of the broader picture of who an applicant is. So, if your race is a fundamental part of your identity, consider dedicating your personal statement to an explanation of why, as otherwise admissions officers will be incredibly limited in their ability to consider your race.
• Editing: Don’t underestimate the power of editing. After writing your initial draft, set it aside for a day or two. Then, revise, get feedback from people you trust, and revise again until it’s polished. If you want feedback on your essay before you submit, check out CollegeVine’s free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. If you’d rather have a college admissions expert review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

Additional Strategies in Light of Policy Changes

• Build a Realistic School List: Add extra safety schools to your list to mitigate the impact of decreased acceptance rates. Use chancing tools to get a realistic estimate of your odds at various institutions.
• Demonstrated Interest: Even if you aren’t able to travel to campus, attend webinars and learn as much about each school on your list as possible. Schools want to accept students who are genuinely interested in what they have to offer, so if you can demonstrate that in your essays and interviews, you’ll be giving yourself a boost.

By integrating all these elements, you’ll be better equipped to navigate the complexities of the college application process during this transitional period.

Navigating college admissions involves balancing various elements like academic performance, standardized test scores, leadership activities, and compelling essays. Universities aim to admit multifaceted individuals who can enrich their communities. Evaluating your acceptance odds might seem daunting, but CollegeVine’s updated chancing engine simplifies the process. 

By analyzing a wide array of factors, from your GPA to your extracurricular involvements, the tool estimates your personalized likelihood of gaining admission to your chosen schools. Importantly, the algorithm has been adjusted to reflect the recent discontinuation of affirmative action, in order to give you the most up-to-date assessment of your chances.

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Latinos, Shifting Toward Trump, Land at the Center of the 2024 Campaign

Donald Trump’s rising support has turned many Latino voters into swing voters.

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By Jennifer Medina and Ruth Igielnik

Former President Donald J. Trump’s growing support among Latino voters is threatening to upend the coalition that has delivered victories to Democrats for more than a decade, putting the politically divided group at the center of a tug of war that could determine elections across the country.

Polls show that Mr. Trump’s standing with Latino voters has grown since his defeat in 2020, with some surveys finding him winning more than 40 percent of those voters — a level not seen for a Republican in two decades. That strength has Democrats playing defense to maintain the large majority of Latino voters whom they have relied on to win in recent years.

The shift underscores a stark reality of the 2024 election: Neither party can win with white voters alone.

As the fight for both the White House and Congress shifts more squarely to racially diverse states, both parties will need to rely on coalitions that include Black, Asian and Hispanic voters.

Latino voters will make up an estimated 15 percent of eligible voters this year, and 33 percent of eligible voters in California, where several swing districts are poised to determine control of the House. Races in Arizona and Nevada, where Latinos make up roughly one in four eligible voters, are positioned to tip the balance of power in the Senate.

The fight for the presidency has expanded in recent elections from battlegrounds in the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt. President Biden relied on victories in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada to win in 2020. This year, both parties are investing heavily in those states to persuade the large numbers of Hispanic voters they believe are up for grabs.

“The Latino electorate used to be seen as a massive liability for Republicans. Now, it’s turning out to be an asset,” said Daniel Garza, the executive director of the Libre Initiative, a conservative group that targets Latino voters and is funded by Americans for Prosperity, the group founded by Charles and David Koch. “Republicans can’t win without them — it would be political malpractice not to have them in a winning coalition.”

The shifts among a large and diverse demographic group defy simple explanation. Differences across regions, generations and economics all play a role.

Mr. Trump has found new support among Latinos who work in law enforcement along the Mexican border, Cuban Americans in Florida averse to policies they view as approaching socialism, evangelical Christians attracted to Christian nationalism and second- and third-generation U.S.-born Latinos who are more likely to identify with and vote like their white peers.

One of the clearest trends is the education divide. Tracking the gap among voters overall, Mr. Trump is increasingly doing better among Hispanic voters without a college degree than among college-educated Hispanics.

“The nation’s Latino population is so big now that it is multiple stories,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, who is the director of race and ethnicity research at the Pew Research Center. “This has changed before, and it can change again, but even if the shares don’t change, the numbers are going to keep going up — and that is going to have important implications.”

The changes raise a tantalizing prospect for Republicans: The parties may be seeing a political realignment, with Republicans pulling some Black and Latino working-class voters out of the Democratic coalition and Democrats winning over a slice of the upper-income, college-educated white voters who once would have landed in the G.O.P. It is a voter swap that could extend a lifeline to Republicans, whose dependence on white voters in a diversifying country has had strategists predicting doom for years.

“A moment like this would have been unfathomable in 2016,” said Patrick Ruffini, a pollster who argues that the G.O.P. is assembling a more multiracial coalition. “The belief was that Republicans needed to moderate on immigration reform. Now, you have a figure who not only ignores that but completely turns it on its head. It debunks decades of conventional wisdom.”

However, it is unclear how major and lasting the Trump-era changes will be. Polling on partisanship shows that Latino voters have been fairly steady in their partisan identification, though have more recently started to drift toward the Republican Party. Republicans have gained some support with Black voters in polls, but there is no clear evidence of a mass movement.

Some Democratic strategists believe that current polls are overestimating Hispanic support for Mr. Trump, in part because they may exclude too many voters who primarily speak Spanish. They also believe that many Hispanic voters will move back toward President Biden in the coming months, arguing that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric will repel them.

“Democrats are balancing two realities — the polls have been off and we have won, but there are still warning signs,” said Tory Gavito, a Democratic strategist who conducts focus groups with Hispanic voters. She said she often heard those voters focused on their economic security.

“Status threats are potent because Latino voters know that they are in a race to avoid last place,” she said. “They don’t want to be a loser, and they know it is an uphill climb.”

It is difficult to overstate the vast growth of Latino voters in the last 20 years. An estimated 36 million Latinos are eligible to vote this year, an increase of nearly four million just from 2020 and more than double from 2008.

Many Latino voters have long had a tenuous allegiance to either party. In 2004, for example, roughly four in 10 Latino voters chose George W. Bush, the most support on record from Latinos for a Republican presidential candidate.

Just four years later , the Democratic advantage nearly doubled, with nearly 70 percent of Latino voters choosing Barack Obama over Senator John McCain of Arizona, according to exit polls. In 2020, with Mr. Trump, support for Republicans ticked back up.

Since 2020, Republicans have increased outreach to Hispanic voters. They have attracted more Hispanic candidates, particularly in parts of Florida, Texas and New Mexico, and reached out to voters in Spanish more frequently. Major evangelical groups that once focused largely on white congregations have expanded their political outreach to Latino churches.

“This election will be decided at the margins, and we are going to reach out to these voters aggressively,” said Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign. “If we can keep this momentum, if we can stave off support from Biden, we will win.”

Many Democrats have been stunned by Republicans’ inroads, as Mr. Trump has continued to unleash incendiary rhetoric about immigrants, including those from Latin America, “poisoning the blood of our country” and promised draconian policies such as mass deportations. He has advanced the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, claiming that Democrats welcome undocumented immigrants into the United States because they will allow them to vote illegally for the party.

Interviews and surveys suggest many Latino voters do not see themselves as the target of Mr. Trump’s comments. Instead, they often say they welcome his talk about a border crackdown and see him as helping business owners and the economy.

“Democrats are letting us down and over and over,” said George Rodriguez, 57, who lives in Las Vegas and calls himself a Chicano Republican. “They’re losing us because we don’t want handouts. We don’t want — we don’t need your hug. We want a direction. We want jobs.”

Some polling shows that Latino voters ’ views about the Democratic Party remain positive. A Pew Research Center survey last year found that nearly 80 percent of Latino voters thought the Democratic Party “really cares about Latinos” and roughly 70 percent said the party “worked hard to earn Latinos’ votes,” compared with 45 percent for Republicans.

To some extent, the shift among Latino voters may be as much about dissatisfaction with Mr. Biden as enthusiasm for Mr. Trump. Young Latino voters — like other young voters — are moving away from Mr. Biden out of frustration over the economy and the war in Gaza. And Latinas have shifted toward Mr. Trump at a similar rate as Latino men, worrying some Democratic strategists who are counting on abortion rights to be a driving issue this fall.

“I want to hear something positive more often,” said Elisa Iñiguez, 69, who emigrated from Mexico to Southern California more than 40 years ago. She has almost always voted for Democrats and plans to vote for Mr. Biden, she said, but has grown frustrated in recent years. “We have to care more about people who are already here. We all want the same rights.”

The Biden campaign says it is particularly focused on two groups: people who voted for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, in 2016 and switched to Mr. Trump in 2020, and a much larger group of new or inconsistent voters. Latinos make up a significant share of both categories.

“The president’s campaign isn’t asking but earning the support of our community,” Michelle Villegas, the Latino vote director of the Biden campaign, said in a statement.

Biden campaign officials said they had spent some $25 million, and had plans to spend another $30 million, on advertising on television, radio and online platforms that attract large Latino audiences.

The political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, known as BOLD PAC, has also encouraged candidates to use Spanglish in advertising as a way to reach native-born English speakers, who make up a vast majority of Latino voters.

“Our party hasn’t done the best job of really speaking to the Latino community, because we’ve too often been seen as monolithic and taken for granted,” said Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost, Democrat of Florida and an Afro-Cuban American, who is leading some of those efforts.

Mr. Frost said he had so far been encouraged by the party’s outreach this year. “The president does not have to do it alone.”

An earlier version of this article misstated how the Biden campaign had spent $25 million for advertising. It was across television, radio and online platforms, not only radio.

How we handle corrections

Jennifer Medina is a Los Angeles-based political reporter for The Times, focused on political attitudes and demographic change. More about Jennifer Medina

Ruth Igielnik is a polling editor for The Times, where she writes and analyzes surveys. She was previously a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center. More about Ruth Igielnik

Our Coverage of the 2024 Elections

Presidential Race

Donald Trump and Republicans are trying to keep voters’ attention on the border as President Biden and Democrats grow more optimistic about their ability to center the campaign on abortion after a pair of court rulings out of Florida.

Trump called for Israel to “finish up” its war in Gaza , urging an end to the conflict with no insistence on freeing Israeli hostages first, alarming conservatives.

Trump, who ends many of his rallies with a churchlike ritual, has infused his movement with Christianity .

Other Key Races

Tammy Murphy, New Jersey’s first lady, abruptly ended her bid for U.S. Senate, a campaign flop that reflected intense national frustration with politics as usual .

Kari Lake, a Trump acolyte running for Senate in Arizona, is struggling to walk away from the controversial positions  that have turned off independents and alienated establishment Republicans.

Ohio will almost certainly go for Trump this November. Senator Sherrod Brown, the last Democrat holding statewide office, will need to defy the gravity of the presidential contest  to win a fourth term.

FAFSA delays and end of affirmative action are colliding for a chaotic college admissions season

Ailine Rodrigues was accepted to all 11 colleges she applied to. An aspiring first-generation student, she still doesn’t know if she can afford her top choice or other four-year institutions because of delays with the federal government’s financial aid program.

“It’s really frustrating,” Rodrigues said. “My mom all the time [is] asking me if the college has said anything about how much we’re going to pay, and I don’t know how to answer her questions. So I come to my college counselor, and I ask them, but they don’t know either.”

The lengthy logjam in the financial aid program is disrupting the college acceptance season this spring just as colleges and applicants learn how the US Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action last year — and the schools’ efforts to mitigate it — will affect diversity on campus. About one month before students are typically expected to secure their spots at universities, the federal government has not told many families how much aid they will get.

“This has been a disaster,” said Jade Franco, program officer for the Boston Foundation’s Pathways to Postsecondary Success, which helps prepare low-income students in the Greater Boston region for higher education and careers. “The students who are coming from backgrounds that have more obstacles to overcome — those students have really struggled, and feel very frustrated and broken by this year’s financial aid process.”

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To apply for federal aid and scholarships, students have to provide extensive financial information to the federal government through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. Many colleges use that data as the basis for the financial aid packages they offer to students, usually by late March — often much earlier. Students are normally required to send deposits to secure their spots by May 1.

This year, however, errors , delays, and bureaucratic dysfunction disrupted the rollout of what was supposed to be a simplified FAFSA form. For example, students had trouble submitting their parents’ Social Security numbers, especially if one or both parents were undocumented, and faced long wait times for assistance. About 30 percent fewer students completed the federal financial aid form this year as of March 15, according to the National College Attainment Network’s FAFSA Tracker.

Financial aid will undoubtedly loom large in students’ decision-making. In 2020, about 72 percent of all undergraduates received some type of financial aid, according to the US Department of Education, including about 81 percent of Black students, 72 percent of Latino students, 70 percent of white students, and 66 percent of Asian students.

As a workaround, some schools are rushing to put together aid offers, collecting their own financial information, or are pushing back deadlines for students to submit deposits.

Higher education watchers worry the botched rollout means low- and middle-income students will not be able to weigh multiple offers and make informed decisions. And although students can request extensions for their deposits, students from marginalized backgrounds are less likely “to ask for help and raise their hand to ask,” Franco said.

“It’s adding more steps and red tape,” she said.

Bob Bardwell, executive director of the Massachusetts School Counselors Association, said he is concerned some students will instead take a job or a gap year, or attend a community college rather than enroll at a four-year school.

“FAFSA is a complete nightmare,” Bardwell said. “These are families who may decide higher ed is not worth it. That is a shame. The government is supposed to be helping them.”

A spokesperson for the US Department of Education said it remains “focused on helping students and families through this process and supporting colleges produce aid offers as quickly as possible.”

“We have now processed more than 6 million FAFSA forms and [are] now returning to normal processing timelines, which means colleges and institutions will receive student records within one to three days after submission,” the spokesperson said. “The department continues to encourage schools, states, and scholarship organizations to provide flexibility and as much time as possible for students to make important enrollment decisions.”

Heading into this year’s admissions season, some college leaders feared the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision would cause fewer students of color to even apply to elite colleges. In California, for example, applications to top public universities from Black and Hispanic high school graduates fell after the state banned affirmative action in 1996.

Preliminary data from this year’s admissions cycle, however, suggest that hasn’t happened: The number of Black, Latino, Native American, and Pacific Islander applicants to four-year colleges using the Common App was up 10 percent from a year earlier, and the number of first-generation applicants grew 4 percent, according to data published recently by the Common App. And several colleges, including Harvard University and Brown University, reported in December they accepted higher percentages of first-generation students in their early admissions rounds.

That may be in part because many colleges took steps last year to encourage Black and Hispanic students to apply, including sending representatives to talk with students at more high schools with high proportions of students of color.

“I was a high school counselor for six years, and that was a really big thing when you have a [college representative] come to school and talk to students,” said Kendra Grinnage, an associate principal with higher education consulting firm Kennedy & Company.

Colleges also developed stronger partnerships with community organizations that work with low-income high school students and retrained admission officers to ignore applicants’ race.

The high court’s decision did not end admissions policies where colleges consider factors such as applicants’ life experiences and the challenges they’ve overcome. Many colleges added supplemental essay questions to give applicants the opportunity to talk about how factors such as culture, ethnicity, gender, and community have influenced their identities, world views, and ambitions.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst, for example, now asks students to reflect on a community or group that has defined or shaped their world, and how being a product of that community would enrich the campus.

“Having just a little bit more information that puts things in context was very helpful,” said Jim Roche, vice provost for enrollment management at UMass Amherst.

However, these changes made the application process, already an opaque and stress-inducing experience, more confusing for some students, who questioned whether they should discuss race or not, said Adam Nguyen, founder of Ivy Link, which works with wealthy families and students to improve their chances of being selected to top colleges.

“Should I bring up race if I’m not in a previously protected class?” Nguyen said. “That is what students were wondering about. What challenges did I overcome?”

Some colleges admitted more students this year, which “gives them a better chance to end up with a diverse class,” said Wes Butterfield, an Iowa-based enrollment consultant with Ruffalo Noel Levitz who advises colleges. “You’re doing it based on volume.”

Applications to UMass Amherst surpassed 50,000 for the second year in a row, with accepted students up 1.5 percent from a year ago. UMass accepted 29,567 students this year; the first-year class is 5,275 students.

Applications from students in underrepresented groups, meanwhile, grew 11 percent, and admissions from those groups increased by 7 percent. African American, Latino, Native American, and Alaskan Native students account for 17 percent of the undergraduate population at UMass Amherst.

Rodrigues, a senior at the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter School in Hyde Park, moved with her family to Massachusetts from Cape Verde when she was a toddler. She was accepted to Northeastern University in Boston, UMass Amherst, and Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, N.H. Her top choice is Northeastern because of the school’s robust internship and co-op programs.

Northeastern’s total sticker price before financial aid for the current academic year is $86,821, while the average annual cost students pay to attend the school is $34,255, according to the Department of Education’s College Scorecard.

Her mother urged her to apply to community college if her financial aid packages don’t arrive before deposits are due.

“If FAFSA doesn’t give us any money, that would probably be my only choice, because we can’t pay that much,” Rodrigues said.

Hilary Burns can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her @Hilarysburns .