Global Courant
Cecilia Chang said bluntly to her two children: You have to try harder because of who you are.
She believed that admission to elite colleges disadvantaged Asian Americans — “You’re competing for a very small number of places with all these qualified Asian kids,” she said.
Still, she doesn’t think the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to abolish affirmative action will change much. She supports college officials trying to bring in students from “all walks of life,” and she thinks they’ll find a way to achieve the racial diversity they’re looking for.
“It means nothing to us,” says Chang, who runs a disability-related nonprofit and came to the US from South Korea when she was 13. the other.”
Chang’s children, who attended public schools in Fullerton and Santa Ana, did well despite their mother’s warning. Her son is an up and coming junior at Claremont McKenna studying math. Her daughter, an aspiring lawyer, will be attending Williams this fall.
Whether affirmative action discriminates against Asian-American students has been at the center of the lawsuits that led to the ruling.
But like Chang, some Asian Americans believe college officials will find ways to get around the ban and make sure they admit enough underrepresented students, including those in the black and Latino communities.
Affirmative action was only at play in a small number of selective schools. But many Asian immigrant parents and their children aspire to those schools — especially those from countries where college admission is based on a single, high-stakes exam and a name-brand school is everything.
The odds of getting in are so low, with Harvard’s 2023 admission rate of less than 4%, that some say it’s an impossible goal not made easier by giving up racial affiliations. The removal of standardized testing requirements for many colleges means admissions are even less predictable and harder to secure just by studying hard.
Colleges “want diverse classes, and they’re going to get it,” says Janice Kim, 56, a Korean American living in Las Vegas whose daughter will be a sophomore in high school. “If your last name is Kim, how are you going to hide it?”
Pedestrians walk on the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California, April 9, 2019. Stanford University applicants may be affected by the ruling.
(Jeff Chiu/Associated Press)
In California, after the approval of Prop. 209, which banned affirmative action at public universities, plummeted the number of Black and Latino students at UC’s most competitive campuses, including UCLA. Asian American enrollment remained stable.
In Fall 2022, UC admitted Asian Americans with the highest percentage of all freshman California applicants: approximately 73% compared to 63% for Latinos, 57% for whites, and 56% for black students.
But Asian-American California residents who earned admission to the fall 2020 freshman class had higher SAT test scores than most other groups. For example, students of Chinese descent had test scores more than 250 points higher than those of Latino and black students and 80 points higher than the scores of white students.
Such data reinforces the perception among many Asian Americans that they have to work harder to get the same opportunities. Some high school students are hesitant about whether or not to check the box on their college applications to indicate they are Asian, fearing they will be at a disadvantage.
Tanya Anand, who is preparing to enroll in colleges as a senior at a Los Angeles private school, which she declined to name for privacy reasons, said she values diversity on campuses and supports affirmative action as a way to level the playing field for future generations to equalize. .
But she believes colleges are trying to find students who are “a good fit” and the Supreme Court ruling won’t change that.
Admission to a highly selective university like Harvard is hopeless nonsense, and the lack of a standardized testing requirement has turned the application process into a “super gray area,” she said.
Berkeley University student Calvin Yang, center, flanked by Edward Blum, left, and Adam Mortaraw, speaks Thursday at a news conference regarding the Supreme Court’s affirmative action in the college admissions decision at Washington’s Press Club.
(Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press)
“I don’t know what to submit, which is optional,” says Anand, who is of Indian descent. “The college process is so unclear in how it works and what it doesn’t.”
Heather Brown, a counselor at Hollywood High School, said she is concerned that the end of the affirmative action could make a bad situation worse for those Latino, Black and other underrepresented students with fewer resources.
Her Asian-American students will continue to thrive, as many have parents willing and able to pay for private college counselors, tutoring and SAT prep classes, she said.
Sally Chen of Chinese for Affirmative Action, who wrote an op-ed for The Times last year arguing that affirmative action helped her get into Harvard as the daughter of low-wage Chinese immigrants, said many Asian-American parents still want their children go to university. schools that “are and will remain very exclusive”.
After the Supreme Court’s decision was released Thursday, Chen said she hopes discussion will continue about “how our current system is failing so many students.” There is a “really deep sense of sadness” about how the decision treats college admissions like a zero-sum game, said Chen, the organization’s director of education equality policy.
“A lot needs to be done to challenge the idea of meritocracy, the idea of hyper-competition, and make sure that ultimately the student as a whole takes precedence,” she said.
The decision ignores the tremendous diversity among Asian Americans, said Sissy Trinh, executive director of the Southeast Asian Community Alliance.
Southeast Asian Americans, who enroll in college at much lower rates than East or South Asian Americans, may feel even more excluded from top schools. Trinh said many of the high school students she works with are told by counselors not to bother applying.
“They’re not going to apply because they feel like it’s not for them,” she said.
Some Asian-American high school students fear that with the end of affirmative action, they will move to colleges with less diverse student organizations.
Brielle “Yuuki” Lubin, who will be a senior at the same Los Angeles private school as Anand, worries that in college he will miss different perspectives and backgrounds that would challenge his worldview.
Lubin, an aspiring filmmaker, also worries that if schools don’t consider race for admission, they might not appreciate his experiences as a half-Japanese LGBTQ+ person.
That concern may be allayed by the majority opinion of Judge John Roberts, who said universities could “consider an applicant how race affected his or her life, whether through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” as long as the applicant is. treated on the basis of his or her experience as an individual – not on the basis of race.”
Olivia Brandeis, an up-and-coming junior at a public high school in Danville in the Bay Area, is conflicted about affirmative action. She supported the policy because she wants to have classmates with different perspectives and backgrounds, but she feared it would be more difficult for her to get into a good university.
But she’s more concerned about other issues that she believes play a much bigger role: GPA inflation, students setting up “fake” nonprofits to boost their resumes, kids of alumni getting an unfair advantage.
The end of affirmative action won’t do much to solve those problems, or the general arbitrariness of college admissions, said Brandeis, who is half Indian and half white.
She also believes colleges will continue to diversify their classes through recruiting programs and scholarships aimed at people of color. Despite the perceived disadvantage of being Asian-American, she is able to emphasize her biracial background in her job application essays.
“Diversifying their campus, whether through the admissions process or through other initiatives, helps them stay on top,” she said.
At South Pasadena High School, that’s 28% Asian Americanup-and-coming junior Luke Wang calls himself a “mediocre” student, despite having a GPA of 3.5 and running cross-country.
Wang, 15, who was adopted from Taiwan at age 2 and grew up in a Taiwanese-Korean household, doesn’t think race should play a role in college admissions. He welcomed the Supreme Court ruling, citing “fairness”.
“You are what you are worth,” said Wang. “If you’re smart enough and you get those grades, I think you should have a place in college no matter what.”
He’s targeting CSUs and UCs and doesn’t think he’ll apply to Ivies. If he doesn’t attend a university of his choice, he will see it not as a result of his race, but as a matter of his credentials and the extreme competitiveness of college applications.
“I think I’m just not good enough,” he said.
His mother, Ann Wang, a children’s book author, said the ruling was a “big mistake”.
She fears it will help “the top-achieving Asians” at the expense of low-income Asians and recent immigrants.
“People come from different backgrounds and we didn’t all start in the same place, and we need to help people who have had a harder time,” said Wang, who was born in Korea and came to the US as a young boy. child.
Her eldest son Ian, who will be a senior at UC Berkeley this fall, said when he applied to colleges he was trying to differentiate himself from “the traditional Asian-American student, who plays the violin and has good test scores and is good.” . in math.”
He leaned on his interest in environmental science and the outdoors and his long list of extracurricular activities, including track and field, cross-country skiing, jazz band, and boy scouts.
“I feel like if I had a more racially neutral last name I wouldn’t have ticked Asian as a box,” he said. “I felt like it hurt my chances. But it’s Wang, so I was like ‘I can’t.’”
While Ian believes affirmative action is necessary, he doesn’t think the ruling will change much in the college application landscape.
“Part of me feels like people reading admissions are still thinking about race,” he said. “As long as people read applications, I think people will have unconscious racial biases.”
And the demise of affirmative action doesn’t change the advice he gives his younger brother.
“Focus on what makes you unique and what you have to offer an institution,” he said. “If that means your racial identity… (or) what you got out of a sport or an extracurricular activity. What makes you special and why would they want you.
Times staff writer Teresa Watanabe contributed to this report.
