Fighting the Stereotype: How Some Asian Americans Navigated College Admissions

You may have seen the headlines about the Affirmative Action case being argued in front of the Supreme Court. If you haven’t, hold tight and we will explain that in a forthcoming post. But in the meantime, what you need to know is that Harvard University is being sued by Students for Fair Admission, an advocacy group, on the basis that Harvard is discriminating against Asian Americans. 

According to a recent New York Times article, there may be something to this. Asian Americans who are in the process of applying for college are being advised to leave achievements and interests that seem too stereotypically Asian out of their applications. Take 20 year old Marissa Li, for example, who was advised against including her chess championships in her college applications. Li grew up playing competitive chess and devoted a great amount of time to studying the matches of her idols, including Bobby Fischer. Li said in a recent interview,  “It is a little sad now that I think about it, I wasn’t really able to talk about the activities that meant the most to me.”

Li is not alone in this situation. Many Asian students are given the same advice when preparing their college applications. According to Students for Fair Admission,“an entire industry exists to help them appear ‘less Asian’ on their college applications.” The group references a popular test prep guide published by the Princeton Review that encourages students of Asian descent to conceal their racial identity. This is the same advice given by several preparatory consultants interviewed in the article, who tell their clients not to study traditionally Asian things such as Chinese language, piano, or violin. 

While this is trouble news for sure, there is another side to the story. In fact, not all the evidence supports the idea that Asian American applicants are discriminated against. According to the New York Times, “They [Asian Americans] made up about 28 percent of those admitted [to Harvard] this year, up from nearly 20 percent in 2013. By comparison, Asians make up about 7 percent of the country’s population. (About 15 percent of admitted students this year were Black; 13 percent were Latino; and 3 percent were Native American.)”

We at Ivy Link will have much more to say on this topic in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!