This seems incredibly unlikely to be true - if 34% of students lied, and 48% of people who lied claimed to be Native American, then ~17% of college students should be Native American. Which they're not, suggesting that this is probably bullshit.

EDIT: Yes, this really seems extremely fishy, see: https://twitter.com/Daniel_Laurison/status/14530269295110553...

> here's a quick reality check that @insidehighered could have done - took me under a minute to find this report. Less than 1% of applicants using the Common App said they were Native American in the 2 states I've looked at so far.

> Ok ok, on a bit of further reflection if this (48% of 34% of white applicants say they're native american) were accurate it wouldn't be 17% of all apps, it would be 17% of all apps that SHOULD say white. Which is at least 53% of all apps, probably more.

> 0.48×0.34×0.53 = 0.86 = at least 8.6% of all apps should claim to be NA (or 2 or more races). More to the point, if 34% of white applicants are saying they're not white, you'd expect some over-reprentation of "non-white" applicants, which is not what you see.

More here, same conclusion: https://twitter.com/JonBoeckenstedt/status/14528649227657830...