Mia Cathell – Any day now, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue rulings in a pair of landmark cases Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) has brought forth against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, alleging that their race-based college admissions practices actively discriminate against high-achieving students who don’t fit the woke mold, often Asian American applicants.
Townhall has conducted a series of sit-down interviews, in the lead-up to the much-anticipated SCOTUS decisions, with Asian American community members outraged over the Ivy League’s racial gatekeeping and affirmative action’s trickle-down effects, now seeping into suburbia. As an affront to the race-obsessed Left’s forever war on meritocracy, and in unyielding defense of the American Dream, which we, like many, believe is well worth fighting for, here are their firsthand accounts from the frontline:
Jon Wang, Harvard University reject now-attending the Georgia Institute of Technology
Harvard hopeful Jon Wang, currently a freshman at Georgia Tech double-majoring in mathematics and computer science, was rejected by the Crimson’s guard despite submitting a near-perfect SAT score. Achieving an elusive 1590, just 10 short of the total possible points, Wang outperformed 99 percent of all other test-takers, which also meant he placed among the top 1 percent.
“It’s harder to gain acceptance as an Asian American…” Wang, remaining “cautiously optimistic” at the time, recalled his high school counselor telling him, in essence. “They didn’t really give me much advice other than to try to appear a bit less Asian.”
For example, Wang said, “Don’t write your essays about Chinese traditions or things commonly associated with Asian culture.”
On paper, Wang was surely a shoo-in for the Ivies: Aside from graduating with a 4.65 GPA, extracurriculars-wise, he was captain of the academic QuizBowl team, a competitive golfer, making headlines at junior tournaments across the country, and co-founded a start-up company that provides golf-data analytics to the Chinese market via an app he had developed the backend code for.
“Obviously, race plays a factor in it,” Wang stated, noting that based on SFFA’s acceptance-percentage model, his approximately 20-percent possibility of being admitted into Harvard as an Asian American would have skyrocketed to a 77-percent chance of admission if he were Hispanic, with the liklihood climbing to 95 percent if his race was black. “The model’s results are pretty clear…” Wang said of the calculations. “The fact that I’m Asian—I don’t think makes my accomplishments any less valuable.”
Shortly after the Harvard-rejection letter arrived, Wang joined SFFA in hopes of changing the racially rigged game for younger college-bound Asian Americans facing the feat soon as well as applicants of the coming generations. “Maybe my kids in the future,” Wang, the son of first-generation Chinese immigrants, mused, “so they don’t have to deal with unfairness in the system.”
Yun-Lung Yang, Montgomery County Public Schools college/career counselor
White Oak Middle School resource counselor Yun-Lung Yang, a veteran advisor who’s spent almost over a decade entrenched in the American education system, has been offering an array of academic guidance ranging from career counseling to tactics for navigating the college admissions process. Back when he was working with prospective students at the high school level, Yang advised Asian American college applicants not to denote racial identity on their applications to avoid hurting their chances.
Growing up in an immigrant household, Yang recalled being told, “You’re not Caucasian, and you also don’t have affirmative action. So, what you need to do is be the best. And if you’re the best, they’ll pick you.” However, …
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SF Source Townhall Jun 2023