I found this excellent article about adopted children applying to college. A must read for those seeking advice and guidance.
That wasn’t our experience at all. My totally American daughter thought about checking the ‘Asian’ box for a while, I told her it really didn’t matter but that it was up to her, and in the end she did check the box.
In the end, I don’t think people notice what is checked on the application. She shows up and they still do a double take when a Chinese kid answers to an Irish name. After she’s there 2 minutes, they realize she is just a regular American kid and has no Chinese culture or ethnicity to her, box checked or not (not my fault! I dragged her to language classes and heritage camps and once all the way to China)…
We have two daughters from China, the oldest about to enter high school. I wonder about some schools where Asians are considered to be “over-represented” (I’m looking at you Duke and Carnegie Mellon) and wondering if she checks the Asian box, will that be detrimental to her chances.
My D from China thought a lot about what box(es) to check and decided that checking both White and Asian best captured it for her; I think the question is ‘check those with which you identify’ or some such, and she identifies with both. She was invited to diversity weekends at LACs where she was a URM and admitted to Cornell, Carnegie Mellon and other places where she was an ORM.
“I don’t think people notice what is checked on the application.”
They may notice, but as you say, the backstory is implied when Colleen O’Brien from Minnesota checks the Asian box.
Most schools use the boxes to comply with federal reporting requirements. You check it, they turn it in.
We had neighbors who were a Korean war orphan who was adopted by Caucasian parents in OR and an ethnic Chinese woman who was born in Hong Kong. They met at U of OR and married. They had two sons, and their dad’s Caucasian last name. They were very popular and ended up being student body president in grade and high school.
We kept my adopted son’s Chinese name. I suspect that will be a dead giveaway, regardless of what box he eventually checks off.
I kept our daughters’ Chinese names as their middle names - another dead giveaway, lol.
They do check the Asian box because, well, they are. They are not, however, applying to colleges where they would be in the majority. If anything, their ethnicity will add to the less than two percent Asian population on those campuses so maybe it will help.