My father is white and my mother is asian (no, not a white woman born in Asia - actually Asian). Normally being biracial is not a big obstacle in my life and I can state my race comfortably. However, I am having difficulty deciding which to identify as on my college applications. Colleges want to see diversity, but I have read about studies that revealed that Asian college applicants typically had to score about 150 points higher on the SAT than white applicants to be admitted the same prestigious college. The gap got bigger when the Asian scores were compared to those of other nonwhite races.
On one hand, if I mark only white, schools might not accept me because it won’t diversify their student population. Leaving the race section empty automatically implies that I’m mostly/completely white as well. On the other hand, marking Asian could make my achievements seem less significant, even though I’ve worked hard for them. It seems like colleges want diversity, but they could also have unofficial quotas… The seemingly obvious choice would be to mark both, but I worry about that being seen as two issues instead of one.
Additionally, I hate that I feel like I have to know this, but I would also like to know if my choice should take region or political party of the state of each college I’m applying to into account, as well as prestige and type of school. (By type I mean a school known for engineering vs. a school known for economics, for example)
(My first name is Chinese and my last name is English/American, but I would guess that admissions officers cannot assume that I’m 50-50 based on that.)
Thank you for your input.