The answer to your question may be “it depends.” My family lives in Asia and a couple of years ago I attended a talk by an admissions representative from a large, prestigious Midwest university. Her advice was that an Asian student (she was talking about kids living in Asia, so maybe a little different from your question) would have some demographic advantage in applying to schools in the Midwest and the Northeast. I think that advice was probably sound, although I suspect the advantage may extend to Southern schools as well. These are the areas where you will find LACs that are seeking to increase the diversity of their student bodies, including by increasing the number of Asian students. On the other hand, a lot of the LACs on the West Coast already have a relatively high percentage of Asian students. Still, an awful lot of the kids we know were fixated on applying to the big West Coast universities - USC, UCLA, UCB, etc. - and that was a tough road. In applying to any school, I think the main issue for Admissions is what you bring to the school, as a student and as a person. Helping a school increase diversity may be one aspect of that, but it’s just one aspect, and I would recommend that you focus on your whole package of attributes and not get too fixated on the perceived disadvantages of being an Asian applicant.