<p>My ethnic identity is a bit complicated. For the most part, my dad is white and my mom is Filipino. However, my mother has Spanish grandparents and her father speaks Spanish in addition to Tagalog. Overall, I could technically check Hispanic in addition to Filipino on the Common app, given the unique prominence on my mother's side. </p>
<p>Only question is, should I? Neither of my parents can speak Spanish, but I recently became proficient in Spanish through spending two summers in Latin America and completing rigorous independent language study. On my transcript, it says I skipped from Freshman year Spanish 1 to Senior AP Spanish Lit. </p>
<p>Does it look more impressive to learn Spanish without having any Hispanic descent? I just want the fact that I worked really intensively to gain my language skills to show. I also am not sure if that would be strategic, given Filipino is a greater minority group. I realize this thinking is truly awful, and I'm quite ashamed to be resorting to these measures, but I just need to know what the more strategic move would be with regards to college admissions.</p>
<p>The Spanish competency of yourself, your parents, or other family members (whether learned in the home or elsewhere), is not relevant to whether or not you should mark that you are Hispanic. The only thing that counts is if you identify as Hispanic. See this article from the Pew Center:</p>
<p>No more that it does to learn any other language.</p>
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<p>As moderator of this subforum, I strive to leave questions of race/ethnicity up to the honesty of the individual student, as only they know how they identify. So, I don’t look at this as a strategic decision, but rather one of truthfulness: before the college admissions process, have you considered yourself Hispanic as part of your ethnic identity?</p>
<p>Adcoms are very familiar with diversity issues, which makes them both aware of all of the subtleties of ethnic and racial backgrounds and also conscious of how definitions can sometimes be used beyond their intent in the admissions process.</p>