The OP isn’t baffled. The OP is trying to find a hook. I’m a no vote.
@austinmshauri If you really read my posts then you would know that there is no business, not even a non profit one. It’s an ambition to give underprivileged students a helping hand but not any time in near future. I do volunteer with a non profit and talk to college aspirants and parents around me as I’m naturally drawn to this subject.
As far as colleges calling GC to confirm it, he can get a DNA test himself and get it corrected in school system as well. It’s not fake Pocahontasing the system, if one is in fact 20% Hispanic or 25% AA and has a proof.
We have a stupid system where race is a booster for some and a disadvantage for others, it’s about time to change it so all underprivileged children of human race can benefit from it.
Read this thread:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/hispanic-students/641650-hispanic-latino-defined-aka-am-i-hispanic.html
I would say basically if you have one Hispanic Grandparent, you are “hispanic” if you also identify as Hispanic. My children do and one identifies as hispanic and one doesn’t.
The National Hispanic Recognition Program requires that you be 1/4 Hispanic.
Also since Spain is the root of the word Hispanic, then yes, Spain is Hispanic. Tell me how you are 1/5 hispanic though…
Here’s something else to read about this topic: http://www.census.gov/topics/population/hispanic-origin/about.html
Whether somebody is “Hispanic” or not is a matter of self-identification, but there are guidelines. (Note: Brazilians are not considered Hispanic, by the way.) It is my opinion that a person should not ethically self-identify as Hispanic without some clear connection to Hispanic background and culture. Thus, if (I speculate about OP) a person does not have a Spanish surname, does not speak Spanish, has no close relatives who were born in countries on the lists above, and has no significant ties to Hispanic culture, that person should not self-identify as Hispanic. A DNA test would not be enough, especially since Hispanic is not a racial designation in the first place.
hispanic is not a race or even an ethnicity. it is one of the most poorly understood/used terms and is actually silly.
we never confuse a black person from jamaica and a white person from scotland as being the same race or ethnicity simply because they both speak english.
if you think it will advantage you getting into school go for it. there is no shame in gaming the system.
happy1 there is no dna test for hispanic. maybe you can find out your relatives are of spanish european descent (the people who conquered south and central america)
or you can find out your ancestors are the the people who were conquered and the language and “culture” were forced upon them (minus a few local customs)
but if you are from a farm village in a jungle clearing in hounduras you probably already know your background and you also probably are not reading college confidential posts like this one.
Even if it were relevant to this question, DNA doesn’t work the way OP is proposing for Hispanic/Latino. Just because 40% of his mother’s DNA comes from Spain/Portugal, even if it were all from Spain, that doesn’t mean he received exactly half of it. Indeed, siblings can have differing percentages of ancestry DNA. It just isn’t that exact.
(A family I know has done 23andme for reasons unrelated to ancestry. The ancestry part is simply an entertainment feature. Their South American heritage presumably falls under the percentages of “Native American,” “East Asian” and “Southern European” DNA. Different kids in the same family have different percentages of each and in no case do the percentages add up to the fraction of ethnicity that would be accorded due to the grandparents.)
evergreen5
send in 5 different dna tets to those companies from yourself, and you will get 5 different results.
just change your info you submit and your name, those tests are iffy to put it nicely.
btw at just like 15 generations your gene pool is about 250,000 people and keep calculating that and you are at 1 million in 20 generations .so your ancestry is a little iffy to determine…and you are probably related to every person you have ever seen in person on tv etc…(just by the number of generations is the difference)
My father’s family claims to be 100% Spanish. I have my doubts that something else didn’t sneak in there along the way, but I don’t want to shatter the pride he has in his ethnic heritage so I leave it alone. 
He does speak Spanish fluently, though, as did his parents. My mother is mostly of English heritage with some Irish and Scottish, very fair skin with blue eyes. I was actually a fair skinned kid with medium brown hair and green eyes, but my skin took on more of an olive tone when I hit puberty. I would not say I looked Hispanic, but just a little more tanned all the time. 
When it came time to check a box (or not), I thought about who and what it was meant for and decided not to. A few people thought I was crazy, but I could not do it in good conscience. Unlike my father, I was not disadvantaged or “underprivileged” in any way, had no real exposure to Spanish culture or tradition in my household growing up, faced no discrimination, and always identified as white. I’m not going to get into the politics of whether those factors should be considered. That’s not the point IMO.
I was still accepted to my first choice, but would I have been kicking myself if I hadn’t? I would have been disappointed, but I made the decision with my eyes wide open. It was one of the most competitive schools in the country with heavy emphasis on holistic review, but I think it would have bothered me more to spend my life wondering if I’d been accepted over someone else simply because I checked a box.
I think it’s about who you identify as. If you don’t want to start identifying yourself as a lier and a fraud, don’t pick something because no one would find out. You know that’s not who you are and any place that makes you loose your authenticity and integrity, isn’t worth “fibbing” for.
How dark is your skin? If you look Twilight white and check the Hispanic box, it might get noted in an interview. If you “look Hispanic”, I doubt any college is going to be digging through your genealogy to verify your claim, especially if you can get your HS records updated to show status as Hispanic.
@roethlisburger Hispanic is, again, an ethnicity, not a race. You can be black and Hispanic, or white and Hispanic.
The census says: Hispanic origin can be viewed as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or ** country of birth** of the person or the person’s parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States. I think the OP is of Hispanic origin and should check the box.
But OP has no clue if the ancestors even came from Spain; all we know is that some percent of the mother’s blood is from someplace in the Iberian peninsula.
Hispanic, can include Portuguese, for example some government regulations define it as follows: Hispanic Americans,” which includes persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Central or South American, or other Spanish or Portuguese culture or origin, regardless of race.
However, most definitions of hispanic do not include Portuguese.
Sigh. This has nothing to do with it.
Correct. And as many citizens of Peru (among others) will successfully argue, Asian and Hispanic.
If the Common App or individual college fails to specify a definition, why shouldn’t the OP select the definition they feel is most advantageous?
Just sad all around to read messages in this thread. Trying to game the system by declaring a specific ethnicity, sigh. Just as I have told my students numerous times, sorry you are Asian, White and get no specific preference (and lucky if you don’t get reverse-discriminated). The system would be better off to declare no URM preference but to give preference to students who are qualified and able to thrive despite socio-economical challenges. Being an URM from a prep school cater high-income families is not the same 1st gen URM from the inner cities. JMHO.
“The system would be better off to declare no URM preference but to give preference to students who are qualified and able to thrive despite socio-economical challenges. Being an URM from a prep school cater high-income families is not the same 1st gen URM from the inner cities.”
The system DOES work that way. High school, first generation, income level, geographic area, etc. all come into play and are pieces of the admissions puzzle. It’s not as simple as checking a race/ethnicity box.
For the sake of admissions, can someone explain how a white Spaniard who has relatives from Europe be considered an underrepresented minority and get special consideration in admissions? Just curious. In my mind an URM has faced challenges due to the color of their skin. They have had unfair disadvantages in their lives, etc.
As @doschicos explained, URM is only one part of the equation. AO’s are savvy enough to note that a hispanic student who goes to Philips Exeter Academy and has 2 parents who are MD’s living in Beverly Hills is not disadvantaged and will base decisions accordingly.