I am a quarter Japanese. Should I include that on my college application? Would I be considered Asian/White? Would that improve or reduce my chances of getting into good schools?
Is your name easily noted as Asian?
not at all
Unless you feel strongly connected to your ethnic Japanese heritage, I wouldn’t. If you do, there should be a biracial or multi-racial option. Or, you could address the Japanese part of your heritage in one of your supplemental answers/essay without ticking the box.
Really doesn’t make too much of a difference if you check asian, white or mixed race. You’ll be an ORM no matter what.
As long as you have a strong application and are a good fit for the school, doesn’t matter what race you are. I would focus more on writing good essays as those are often the make-or-break parts for an applicant.
Marking Asian isn’t a scarlet letter. I don’t buy into this bloated “anti-asian” bias stuff. I mark it as “anti-boring-student” bias. Don’t be boring. Being Asian, in and of itself is a non-issue, IMHO
Agree with T26E4 (with two Asian kids). And you can mark more than one box when describing your background so check Asian and Caucasian. It’s not a big deal though either way.
I think unless you are Asian from India or China, and Korea, it’s not hurting , but not helping either. For example, at my kid high school, it’s mostly Korean-American kids applying to top schools. So that’s the competition, because they all doing very similar ECs. Cello, violin, math or science competition, for example. You have to do something different to standout.
If your last name doesn’t give you away as Asian, I would put either Caucasian or mixed-race.
I wouldn’t bother. It won’t help and could hurt, especially since you are only a quarter so you don’t look like you are" gaming" the system