Name Change During College Admissions?

Okay, here’s my situation. I’m a Chinese immigrant (came here in 1992) and now a junior in high school. My legal name is clearly Chinese, and is generally unpronounceable to non-Chinese speakers. However, everyone I know calls me Jimmy, a name that I adopted when I was 6. Literally no one except my Chinese relatives calls me by my Chinese name.

My parents and I have been considering a legal name change for quite some time now, so I won’t have to deal with such an unwieldy legal name in college and beyond. Is the end of junior year, when all the colleges already have my unpronounceable Chinese legal name on their files, and I’ve already got SAT/PSAT/AP scores under a certain name, a bad time to legally change my name?

Furthermore, is it a good idea to have a more common and pronounceable name for college application purposes? It seems to me that it would add a greater sense of familiarity and casualness as opposed to appearing to be a complete foreigner when an adcom reads my application.

Thanks for your feedback

<p>Hey Jimmy, I'd say that you should contact the collegeboard and talk to them directly. Hopefully, they would make it as painless as possible and resend your scores under a new name.</p>

<p>This would probably be the best time to do it. If you don't do it soon (by the end of the acedemic year or beginning of the next), then you will have to wait. Things could get cloudy in transition.</p>

<p>So, if you want to, do it now.</p>

<p>P.S. You could use it to your benifit in mentioning it in the application. It could help, or just subconciously make your name stand out in the readers mind. I don't mean to use an important decision like this to gain admission, but every little bit counts.</p>

<p>i am Chinese too, but i am currently in China. if i get accepted into one of the colleges in the U.S., i am thinking just to use my Chinese name in "PINYIN" format. My name isn't that hard to pronounce in an ...English way. :) Thanks, mom and dad!</p>

<p>i was born in america and i have a chinese name. my chinese name is my legal first name and my english name is my legal middle name. </p>

<p>i generally use my english name for daily use. so my scores and transcripts use my english name. i used my full legal name on apps. but colleges shouldn't get confused cuz they have my social security number to use</p>

<p>Heh. Check out my pinyin name: Sizhe</p>

<p>That's right. Good luck with that. </p>

<p>Hey, post #600, cool</p>

<p>I have a name that no one can pronounce too. One time, at an awards ceremony, the principle called me up and started trying to procounce my name and was like "....Whatever..." Haha! That was funny.</p>

<p>Many college applications have a "name you would prefer to be called" field.</p>

<p>Washington and Lee University has been sending me stuff with my legal name on it and everything had me legal name on it but when I got to campus for an honors scholarship competition, my nametag had my preffered name and so did my materials. That really made my day.</p>

<p>Yeah, lots of places do have a "preferred name" slot, but several others do not. At any rate, would your permanent file have your "preferred name" or your legal name?</p>

<p>"Sizhe" isn't that bad. "Nietzsche" (the German philosopher) is harder to pronounce.</p>

<p>I would say worry about name changes after you get into college, unless you want to go through all the complications. I have not heard anything about the "name" being a factor in admissions.</p>

<p>Agreed, but Nietzsche doesn't really have to worry about his name anymore, being dead and stuff. =P The problem with Sizhe is, English speakers see the z and the h next to each other and just panic.</p>

<p>I took the SAT I in October of my junior year, and then naturalized a month later. When I called CollegeBoard, they said they could not transfer my scores to an account with a different name, even if I had the same SSN, address, etc. I got a 1540 in October, meaning I had to retake it in January and potentially get a lower score. </p>

<p>So what I'm saying is, it's not a big deal, but if you do change it, you will not be able to use your earlier scores and only send once. </p>

<p>Because I wanted to be ethical, I just sent them my scores from both accounts, and since my SSN was the same, they were easily accepted into the system. No problem. </p>

<p>Hope that helps.</p>

<p>OMG i had the exact same problem!! My legal name is Korean, but I go by my American name for everything--it has caused some major problems when I was getting my license and stuff. In terms of college, I wrote a letter explaining my situation to every college I applied to and I have not had a problem.</p>

<p>dude my chinese name uses a hyphen in the form i use in my legal name. and since some government computers "can't handle" hyphens... i don't know why... the guy at the social security office was giving me a lecture about how my name was "different" because he foudn my name without the hyphen in the computer... it was all really dumb...</p>