<p>I'm half Caucasian, half Hispanic and was wondering if I should check the Hispanic box on college applications. My last name isn't Spanish, and neither are my parents'. I plan on incorporating aspects of my culture into my common app essay. I am Hispanic and want to be honest, but would this seem fishy to admissions officers?</p>
<p>I’d say go for it. As someone who is three-quarters Italian with the last name O’Neill, I take the strange looks, give a little explanation and move on.</p>
<p>If being half-Hispanic is something that matters to you, it should matter to colleges. You could even write a supplementary essay about it if you are worried they won’t believe you - about how being half-Hispanic defines you, if you believe it does.</p>
<p>I feel like people could easily lie on those Common App extracurricular sections about the number of hors they spent picking up trash at the park, etc. Colleges have to just take things at face value. ALSO: people who are 1/16th or 1/32nd Native American get a free college education (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/407748-how-prove-claim-native-american-heritage-college-applications.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/407748-how-prove-claim-native-american-heritage-college-applications.html</a>), so being half anything seems to be worth something to colleges.</p>
<p>William Blaine Richardson III has a very un-Hispanic sounding name, but the former governor of New Mexico is of mostly Mexican descent, and spent his childhood in Mexico.</p>
<p>Hispanic is a cultural identification. People with all sorts of family names, facial features, skin colors, religions, and political orientations consider themselves Hispanic. Check the box and stop worrying about this.</p>
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<p>Please read the sticky thread about the definition of Hispanic. Hispanic is an ethnicity, while Caucasian/white is a racial category. Hispanics can and are of any race(s). As hm1 states, last name has nothing to do with being Hispanic.</p>
<p>As with anything on your application, if you are truthful, it will not sound fishy.</p>
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<p>Be very careful of comments like this, colleges do actually ask for proof of tribal affiliations for NA applicants. And while they don’t ask for proof of other ethnicity or race information (just as they don’t ask for proof of ECs), they are knowledgeable and experienced with reading college apps. And contrary to popular belief, being a URM is not a automatic admit to your school of choice.</p>
<p>I would politely argue that being Hispanic isn’t necessarily always about cultural identification. Sometimes it is about racial identifcation and all that comes with that. As stated before, my oldest son is 1/2 Puerto Rican, 1/2 Caucasian. Culturally, we are a “white” family. Racially, my son identifies more as being Puerto Rican. I think it might have taken on new importance to him as he recently may have had his first brush with “racial profiling” by the law based on how he looks. It was new to him and he denies that is what happened. Nonetheless, it has opened his eyes to an aspect of life that he has mostly been inoculated from but one that will no doubt present itself again. We don’t say it’s good or bad, what happened; we simply make a note.</p>
<p>At any rate, my son will identify himself at Puerto Rican and Caucasian on college applications (with a decidely non-Hispanic sounding last name) though we are not an “Hispanic” family.</p>
<p>The purpose of this forum is to clarify for students how Hispanics are defined in the college admissions process, ie. using the US Census definition. According to this definition, Hispanic is considered an ethnicity and Hispanics can be of any race(s). </p>
<p>Race is a biological concept:</p>
<p>[Race</a> - definition from Biology-Online.org](<a href=“http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Race]Race”>Race - Definition and Examples - Biology Online Dictionary)</p>
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<p>The ‘racial’ profiling of Hispanics derives from perceived heritable racial characteristics. Because the vast majority of Hispanics in the US have backgrounds from Mexico, mestizo physical features/complexion/etc. are thought by many here as ‘Hispanic’ racial characteristics. While racial profiling is always simplistic, it is particularly so for Hispanics. Hispanics cover the range of races and racial characteristics from Asian (eg. ex-President of Peru, Alberto Fujimura), to white (eg. Spaniards, the majority of Argentines who are descendants of immigrants from Italy), to AA (eg. Dominican Republic) to OP (eg. a substantial part of the populations of Peru & Ecuador). </p>
<p>Each student and family determines how they choose to define their own personal racial and ethnic identity and experience. The definitions cited on CC are not personal ones, but rather standardized ones used by the CA and college admissions.</p>
<p>So my son would be one in the vast minority of Hispanics since his particular combination is African, Native American, and Spanish Spain?</p>
<p>I’m still confused because different colleges seem to ask different questions or at least ask the questions differently.</p>
<p>The majority of colleges are using the CA these days, they ask the questions like this:</p>
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<p>If you check ‘yes’ for Hispanic, you get a drop down box with these options (at least this is what it said last year, you only get the drop down box when logged in and I can’t see the current year application online):</p>
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<p>So going on what you have said, for the first question, your S would check ‘Yes’ and Puerto Rico. For the second question, he would check ‘White’ (Spain), AA and AI/NA (and state ‘not enrolled’). This last designation can be argued, but going strictly by the CA definition which states “Original Peoples of the Americas”, with an ‘s’, people with ancestors who were indigenous inhabitants of Latin American countries are included, even though the category is intended mostly for members of N. American tribes. My usual advice is that unless a person knows for sure that they have OP ancestry, it’s probably best not to mark the AI/NA designation.</p>
<p>If you can cite how some of the other schools ask this question, that would make for great discussion (in a new thread or on the Definition sticky thread, as that would help for others searching for this kind of information). </p>
<p>I hope this helps clarify the categories, I agree that it’s confusing, and the schools and CA haven’t helped; in the past they have lumped Hispanics in with racial categories and have only given people an option for a single designation. That really doesn’t work in a world where people have increasingly varied backgrounds.</p>