Ethnic minority?

[terefere]

Question to American applicants: what ethnicities are considered minority ethnicities in the US? Is there like a percentage threshold below which a particular ethnic group is considered an ethnic minority? I found this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries.jpg

Does it mean that if, say, my ethnicity is outside of the top 5, I am considered minority applicant or are there some other official rules?

I am totally not familiar with how these things work in the US.

[PizzaCat93]

On applications, there are certain options for race/ethnicity - white, black, Asian (maybe?), Native American/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino. There is really no other place to state one's specific ethnicity other than, say, in an SOP, but that would likely be fairly irrelevant, I think. If you are not an American citizen, they will obviously know your nationality, but otherwise, no. If you have European ancestry, for example, you would just be choosing "white" in that section of the application. Does this answer your question? 

[kaykaykay]

International students are not considered ethnic minorities no matter what ethnicity they are in the US. ( African students from Africa do not add to the diversity in my department). I think the consideration is about historically disadvantaged groups to which international students do not belong.

Edited December 15, 2015 by kaykaykay

[TakeruK]

It's complicated because there are many different definitions used by different programs to gauge progress towards different goals! For one very common definition (I believe the term is "under-represented minority"; URM), they only apply to American citizens, as kaykaykay points out. In many applications, you are asked the citizenship/PR question first, and you only answer the minority question if the first response is "yes". 

The definition of a URM is strictly these five categories: African Americans, Mexican-Americans, Native Americans (American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians), Pacific Islanders, and mainland Puerto Ricans. So, I know that my school is required to report numbers of students, postdocs, staff and faculty in these categories because of US national law.

However, that's just one definition for one reporting responsibility. Just because you don't fall under this definition does not mean that the school does not care about you! The way my school's administration puts it: they care about both human diversity as well as the legal definition. By human diversity, they care about attracting and supporting international students (our population is over 40% international). They care about the different needs of students with families. They care about the LGBTQ community. These are just some examples. I can't speak for every program and school, but I know that at my program and my school, faculty and administrators are approaching admissions with the goal of ensuring that we are welcoming and supportive of all types of diversity. We want our graduate student population to be reflective of the world, not just certain majority groups.

[terefere]

Thank you for your replies, they are very helpful! I have encountered questions that ask about racial diversity, so these are pretty straight forward I think. I come from Eastern Europe, btw. However, that one school asked about ethnic diversity and there was a field to indicate one's ethnic group, once you chose 'Other'. It seems that as international applicant I still have to answer this question. I don't want to falsely claim to be an underrepresented group, so I thought I would ask first. While for the racial category I would probably fall under the category 'White', even though it's a little bit more complicated than that, nobody in my country really identifies with a particular racial group but more so with an ethnic group. I guess I will just play safe and answer 'No'. They have information on my citizenship so hopefully they will draw inferences based on that, if needed. Thanks once again!