I have heard a lot of stories about Asian candidates all seeming very similar (good at math and classical music) which makes it very difficult to stand out and therefore be admitted. As an Asian, my main extra-curriculars are debating and classical music, both of which I love and am very committed to. Should I focus more on my debating in order to seem less like a typical Asian candidate?
Many students applying to college â both Asian and non-Asians â look the same on paper. Therefore, itâs difficult to stand-out from the crowd and get noticed by Admissions when you appear identical to hundreds of other students. So, the more unique your ECâs, the better your chances â the theory being that itâs easier for an Admissions Committee to admit a student who is a trapeze artist than yet another editor of a school newspaper.
If you google âtypical Asian activities in college admissionsâ you will find articles that detail what other Asian studentâs are doing to look less Asian, including not listing music on their EC list. Whether thatâs something you want to do, is up to you. Hereâs a quote from one of those articles
If you love debate, I would continue with it. Ditto with music. But, you also might want to look into other areas that many Asians donât normally participate in â theater, drama, dance, non-racket sports, non-martial arts sports, humanities-based writing competitions, etc. And when it comes to writing your essay, one of the articles has this advice
@gibby Thanks for your detailed response! One more thing - would being female counteract some of the disadvantages of being Asian and interested in math and computer science?
Unfortunately, not. FWIW: both my kids, who are white, attended Stuyvesant High School, which is currently 72% Asian. At Stuy Asian females have the same college application issues as male Asian students.
Thatâs a pity 
in your observations, do you think the Asians who are less âAsianâ tend to do better in college admissions?
If you are an excellent boxer and sousaphonist, good at Italian, (along with great stats) you may be more interesting to H than yet another student council president and violinist good at math. But if you do unusual ECs just as an admissions strategy, not out of true interest, it wonât work.
@sansculottes: Are you a rising senior? If so, your extracurricular activities are what they are. Sure, you could do something new in September, but last minute âjoinsâ might be viewed by Admissions as resume padding that may come across as @snarlton said âlacking true interest.â
If you are applying to college in the fall, there are three things that are in your control, or partially in your control, that might help you come across as âless Asian.â
- Your essays. The Common Application essay, the Harvard supplemental essay about an extracurricular activity or job, and Harvard's optional additional essay. The topics you choose to write about can color Admissions's perception of you. So, choose your topics wisely. Think what the "typical Asian" student might write about and then choose something different -- something that is so specific to you that only you could write about the topic. Several years ago, I wrote this thread about the new Common App essay. Please read it over and see if anything "rings true" for you, including this post: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-essays/1526461-pitfalls-or-traps-in-the-new-common-application-essay.html
- Teacher recommendations. Harvard has this tip on one of their websites
What that means is that a student could be academically prepared for college, but might be rejected because they lack âfuture promise to society.â Collegeâs learn about an applicantâs âfuture promiseâ through their teacher recommendations.
Most students ask their âfavoriteâ teachers for recommendations, but donât allow their teachers to get to know them outside of the classroom. In September, ask your recommendation writers out to lunch or to have coffee with you after school. Talk to your teachers about your hopes and dreams and what you want to accomplish in life. Talk to your teachers about your desire to appear âless Asian.â Tell them specifically what that means to you . . . and how you are different and unique. This will allow your teachers to get to know you better, and it will help them write a better recommendation that speaks to what Harvard needs to hear.
- Interview reports. The way you come across in your alumni interview is extremely important. Do you have a "firm" handshake? Do you look the interviewer in the eye? Do you come across as mature and responsible? Are you wise beyond your years? Could the interviewer imagine having you as an entryway mate? What would other Harvard students learn from you? Are you repeating the opinions of your parent's or have you personally wrestled with the issues that you will talk about.
All of those things can greatly influence the outcome of your application whatever your ethnicity. Although studentâs donât have that much control in the applications process, they have way more control than they think they do.
@gibby Wow thank you so much! Yes I am a rising senior - I wasnât really thinking about starting new activities, more how I ought to present myself, e.g. how I should rank my extra-curricular activities, and what to really work on over the summer.
The Common Application asks studentâs to rank their extracurricular actives in the order of importance to them, so you should do just that. If youâre applying to Harvard, whatever EC or job you write about for the Harvard Supplement should probably be listed as #1-3 on your Common Application EC list.
This summer you should work on your essays. Both my kids spent MORE time writing, rewriting, editing and polishing their essays than they did on test prep, and it paid off for them. The summer before their senior year, each wrote about 6 to 8 complete essays on different topics. It was only after having so many essays on different aspects of their life that they were able to narrow down exactly what story they wanted to tell Admissions about themselves.
My son was accepted to 10 out of 11 colleges. On every single acceptance letter was a handwritten note from either the Dean of Admissions or the Regional Admissions Director. Each note made mention of my sonâs essay, as in âAfter reading your essay, the committeeâs vote was unanimousâ or âLoved your essay about your baseball coachâ or âWelcome! Based on your essay, we feel you will be a huge asset to our school.â
When my daughter applied to college six years ago, she received similar comments on her acceptance letters regarding her essays. Not one comment on either my daughter or sonâs acceptance letters said âGreat SAT scoresâ or âLoved your teacher recommendationsâ or âWhat a wonderful transcriptâ or âGreat ECâs.â
So, IMHO, essays are VERY important; they are how Admissions Directors get to know an applicant. They are how an Admissions Director remembers and differentiates you from other students. So, if you havenât started yet, you have your work cut out for you as good essay writing takes time.
Woah 6 to 8! I thought I was doing pretty well having already written 2 haha! I will definitely get working on more essays then.
I really appreciate all your advice - youâre a real asset to this site! 
I get where youâre coming from. If I may steer you a bit: I think itâs not about being âless Asianâ and more about being âmore uniqueâ. How do you do that with a school that gets 30K applications each year? The anti-Asian bias discussion will just get you bogged down. I think gibby has given you great advice. But also let me say this: you are who you are. What if youâre NOT unique among tens of thousands of high-achieving kids with great academic potential and get rejected from Harvard?
At the end of the day, youâre a high achieving kid with great academic potential, with a 99.9% likelihood of a fantastic college career, and like the other 29000 similarly rejected kids come April 2016. Thatâs not a terrible thing.
I agree that you should present the best version of yourself as possible â but most of what youâve done and who you are â is already set in stone. Thus, take some of the pressure off yourself. When I give admissions presentations for my alma mater (Yale), I tell students/families that the bulk of what will determine their eventual college outcomes has already occurred.
My story (take it for what itâs worth â Iâm much older than you and admit rates at HYP et al were less crazy (admit rate ~15%)), I applied w/o fear of rejection and simply went for it. I had already been accepted by some top engineering schools early on (UMich in October of my senior year!) so I wasnât worried. My story was unique (Chinese American, leader of various groups in a predominantly black urban HS), pursued ridiculous nos. of classes (most in my HSâ history) with reckless abandon â wasnât trying to nurse my GPA. Didnât do test prep (took ACT and SAT once each). Didnât care about class rank or how I looked. I got Bs in Junior year Honors Chemistry but I applied as either a Chemistry or Chem Engineer to all my target schools â because thatâs what honestly interested me! I put myself out there as a hungry learner who was intimately involved with my school community and extremely socially integrated. At my âreachâ schools, my ACT/SAT were about the 30th percentile of entering freshmen. I was ranked about 10th or 12th in my class. Wasnât in NHS or those academic clubs. I washed dishes at a restaurant and was very active playing sports with the guys in the neighborhood. Come April, I was blessed with 6 accepts and zero rejects. Youâll have to understand if I donât adhere to the âanti Asian biasâ thing much. I matriculated to Yale (my 1st choice) and now actively volunteer on its behalf â for more than 25 yrs. HTH. GL to you.
@T26E4 FWIW, I also attended a top Ivy and the world back then was completely different than it is today. Yaleâs admit rate was about 25% in the early 1980âs and 22% in 1987 (which may have been when you applied?). Thereâs a big difference between having a 1 in 4 or 5 chance vs. todayâs 1 in 18 -20 chance. Even in the early 2000âs when Yale started ED, the admit rate for ED applicants was about 38%.
Here is what someone posted in the chance thread about a recent Asian applicant:
The kid was actually the 2nd place Intel STS Grand Prize winner ($75,000) not the 1st but the other stats seem to check out. He also was a third degree black belt, active in sports and president of various clubs, etc. No way to know about his acceptance history though other than he does attend Harvard.
Nevertheless, contrast his accomplishments with your story and I think it highlights just how crazy competitive things are today. We had no internet back then and so it was pretty hard to see what other kids were doing or just what was expected of us. The model that I and all of my friends who got into top schools followed was simply to get good grades and test scores, play sports, join some clubs, and do volunteer work (actually, most didnât do this). If we checked off that we didnât need financial aid (which we actually all did need) our chances went up. If any of us were a legacy (I was, sort of), our chances shot up. Our essays were not perfect because it took so darn long to type each one up (and every college had their own unique essay questions) and making corrections was a huge pain.
I fully subscribe to theory that many of us (not you, but me certainly) who are walking around with Ivy League degrees would not have been accepted to these schools in todayâs hyper-competitive environment.
Top schools are always looking to increase female participation in math and CS irrespective of ethnicity. (Although, in the last few years the number of female applicants looking to study CS has been skyrocketing so this is becoming much less of a âhookâ at top schools.) You can google Mark Zuckerberg coming back to Harvard in 2005 to give a lecture in Harvardâs CS50 class and youâll see that there were probably 20-30 kids in the class. If he gave that lecture today, there would be close to 900 kids. Nevertheless, If you have a strong track record of accomplishment in math and CS, you will still stand out from those who write about wanting to work in these areas but have little demonstrated interest in them so far.
Oh, I certainly find it hard to believe that I could be competitive these days. Iâm just trying to impart to the OP that regardless, the earth wonât split if he/she gets into a so-called âtopâ college. Iâm sure you feel that âbeen there done thatâ â and regardless of how wonderful I may view my time at an Ivy â Iâm also cognizant that broader society imparts much more to our exclusive club than is warranted.
âSo, IMHO, essays are VERY important;âŠâ
I agree. The essay is often the only direct point of contact the admissions committee gets with the applicant. It is a direct sample of the applicant. Itâs where the applicant can connect with the admissions committee.
@T26E4 I certainly agree that one doesnât need to go to a top school to be successful - far from it. Also, youâre right that way too much is made of these schools. On the other hand, I would be remiss if I were to say that I didnât think that I benefited greatly in my career from having gone to the school that I did. The people you meet at school and the alumni network alone are worth the price of admission and I can see from my daughterâs first couple of years at Harvard, things havenât changed.
@Falcon1 Not entirely sure where that user got his information about Kevin Lee, but some of it is wrong (for example, he actually did get into Stanford). Another thing to note is that many of those awards, especially some of the huge ones (STS, Davidson, ISEF, etc.) were awarded after the college application season, which means colleges either received the news as a last-minute update or not at all.
Anyways, I completely agree with the statement about the hyper-competitiveness of todayâs environment; to the OP, just do â and hope â for the best, and everythingâll fall in place, one way or another.
Hmm. Thatâs interesting @InquisitiveMom2. Was he also waitlisted and then accepted at Harvard or is that apocryphal too? I think my daughter knows him at college but that would be an awkward question
I wish the best to OP as well.
Re the Kevin Lee person: What in the world could possibly motivate someone to take seven SAT II subject tests?Not to mention both the SAT I and the ACT? Thatâs insane! A minimum of five testing dates, and maybe more, for someone who was clearly going to be fine with two (and thatâs true even if he needed superscoring to get his top scores). The SAT II tests are not very interesting, and when he was applying to college only a handful of schools required any of them, but three at most. You can only take three at a time, and he took four extra, completely unnecessary tests.
Honestly, if I were an admissions person, that alone would make me hesitate about him. Obviously, he is someone who is highly intelligent, but the over-testing makes me wonder if his head may be screwed on wrong, and if he is more focused on racking up pseudo accomplishments and accolades than on actual learning and growth.
I admit this only because I think it illustrates something important. I have absolutely no negative reaction to this kidâs ethnicity, but I have a very negative reaction to something that seems apparent about his values. Of course, I am aware that the two may be linked, that cultural factors may be in play, and that I should be cautious about my negative reaction. On the other hand, if I were an admissions department (not just one staff member), I would also be aware that lots of ethnic Asian kids are not test-obsessed. And I might decide to admit, not Asians who seem less Asian, but Asians who seem less effed up.
As an Asian I donât find that offensive at all - itâs so true.