nognig wrote:
I disagree with you there. I don't think the presence or lack of Hispanics or African Americans has any real value in terms of diversity.
Like someone else stated, if a black guy went to the same school as you, had the same ECs, worked at the same place as you, what makes them diverse?
You could have a company full of white people that is still very diverse (Europeans, Russians, Australians, Iranians, etc).
Diversity of experiences and background is important, diversity of race isn't.
NN
I have to mostly disagree with you. Even if an African American or Latino went to the same school, had the same EC, and worked at the same place as you, their thought process is still VERY different from a caucasian's. I have many friends who has gone to college with me, do the same ECs, and work at the same company, but because I'm Asian and brought up by 1st gen Asian parents, and they're Caucasian and Latino, all of us approach problems completely differently just from cultural and family upbringing.
While I agree that one should NOT go for diversity for the sake of diversity, and race is NOT the only way to achieve diversity (it's the diversity of THOUGHT that matters), the reason for companies and schools going for diversity of race is because that is still an almost (I said "almost") a guaranteed way of getting two people with very different thought processes just because they were influenced by very different cultural norms.
I'm pretty sure that most schools out there will take race into account, but also look at your WE, schooling, ECs to get a "complete diversity" package. Purely race based quotas are no longer used at most b-schools (otherwise there would be a lot more disadvantaged American minorities at schools like Haas, Stanford, and UCLA, which I didn't see as many of, other than international students)