Some thoughts on the Affirmative Action debate

Well, more of a rambling with a bit from an Asian American's perspective.

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With the recent 6-3 Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action there has been a ton of arguments over what this would mean in the coming years for minority students.

As an Asian American, I generally fall into Shrodinger’s minority- the left clamors to use my ethnicity to argue against the initial concerns over COVID with remarks such as “hug an Asian”, but then remain quiet when it comes to brutal assaults usually perpetrated by other minority groups made against Asians in extremely liberal cities.

College serves as a fascinating paradigm where the oppressed minority mantra does not work, especially for those of Asian background given the rate of admission that Asians see in the most prestigious US universities.

I’ll argue that I was not the best student in high school. I took plenty of AP courses, did well on my SATs (relatively speaking), and was head of many organizations in school, although my GPA was never really the best (I had a problem of never doing homework…), so for me the prestige of an Ivy League institution was out of the question, and I even had some difficulties with in-state schools.

However, as these comments over Asian discrimination became more apparent, it’s hard to think what role my Asian background had in my admissions.

I’ll let that slide when it comes to myself in particular, but even in high school there was evidence that Asians had to do more to game the college admission process, such as a few South Asian friends who, likely jokingly, suggested that they should write down they were of Hispanic/Latin American heritage because their last names were either “Hernandez” or “Gomez”, as placing that they were Asian may actually lower their SAT scores.

Even a few years back, when I worked as a tutor there was a serious concern among the Asian students that they would struggle to get admitted into Ivy League schools. At this point, it was even more apparent that Asian students were aware that they were being actively discriminated against, as it became a point of conversation with either myself or other tutors that the children were seeing who would bring it up as a rather defeating realization.

Unlike my mediocre GPA, these students were at the top of their class, taking Calculus their freshman year of high school (or even earlier), who were in all of the extracurriculars they could get into, and who still were made to see tutors to make sure they could get into the best schools possible- otherwise all of these efforts would be in vein.

This includes students who were either 50-100 points from a perfect SAT score. I can’t remember the number of students who were taking the SATs for the 5th or 6th time because they were JUST THAT CLOSE to a perfect score; just to push them above the rest of the applicants.

All of this occurred at a tutoring center where the cost to sign a student up could rival some universities. Imagine the amount of time, effort, and money these parents-many of whom were immigrants with limited finances themselves- had to dish out in the hopes that their child got into one of the best schools in the country.

I guess my comments to some students that state schools would be just as good (partial scholarships to an Ivy League can’t rival full scholarships to in-state schools) weren’t met with good reception by some parents, but all of this made me curious of one thing: are all of these efforts taken by both Asian parents and students alike done in an attempt to get these students into the top schools, or are some of these efforts done in an attempt to overcome the newer hurdles Asian students were facing in college admissions, so that they may still be competitive in this race-obsessed environment?