Asian-Americans fear race will still be a "hidden factor" in college admissions, after the Supreme Court's landmark decision last June banning affirmative action, the Los Angeles Times reported.
A coalition of Asian-American students and advocates argued that Asian applicants were being racially discriminated against in the admissions process at Harvard University and University of North Carolina. The Supreme Court granted them a victory, ruling that the two schools' admissions practices violated the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
However, Asian-American immigrant parents shared that they still feel "desperate and in the dark," about what it takes for their children to be accepted into elite universities, fearing the court ruling won't stop universities from rejecting their applications based on race.
Some families are even paying tens of thousands of dollars for consultants to help their families navigate the college system. These families need to be strategic when applying,"to avoid anti-Asian discrimination," one consultant told the LA Times.
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Sunny Lee, who emigrated from South Korea in 2006 and is raising three sons in Southern California, described mothers she knew having "mental breakdowns" over the stress of their high-achieving children not getting into top-tier schools.
Lee said neighbors were hiring athletic coaches and academic consultants for kids as young as elementary school.
"A student known as a genius at San Marino High ended up going to Pasadena City College," Lee told the Times. "Moms were having a mental breakdown."
California high school senior Sam Srikanth is a second-generation American who also worries about her chances of getting into a top school, despite stellar academics and achievements. She holds a 4.41 GPA, is captain of her varsity swim team, and has taken the maximum number of AP classes her high school offers. Despite having her admissions essays reviewed by school staff and a private counselor, she admits her expectations of getting into a top school are "low."
The student told the paper her "hopes got a little bit higher" after the Supreme Court decision, but she still fears her race will be used against her because of her last name.
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"You actually fill out the application and realize there’s no way colleges won’t figure out what race you are," she said.
Her older sister, who had similar accomplishments, was rejected from 18 of 20 schools she applied to five years ago.
"I can’t be let down if my expectations are already so low," Srikanth told the Times.
Conservative education activist and North Carolina congressional candidate Kenny Xu said he still hears worries from Asian-American families that colleges will ignore the Supreme Court ruling. But if they do, they should be held liable, he told Fox News Digital.
"The Supreme Court gives no room at all for universities to discriminate against Asian-Americans. If schools continue to do it, they are liable for civil damages. They will have to pay reparations costs to Asian-Americans. So there is a strong incentive not to do it," he explained.
At the same time, colleges need to be more open with their admissions process, Xu said.
He's advocated for Congress to pass legislation requiring colleges to release anonymized data revealing the background and academics of their students, to ensure everyone is being treated equally.
"There should be a policy that colleges have to reveal an anonymous dataset of their students' race, GPAs and S.A.T.s, to ensure that there are no differing standards on average between the races, based on who's admitted, because that is discrimination," he told Fox News Digital.
"One of the big problems is that college admissions are still very opaque. There is no transparency in the admissions process. College should make it very clear what their criteria are, and then judge them based on the criteria. It should be your GPA, your S.A.T. score, and your objective performance on a personal essay. There should be fewer, not more, factors, because the more factors that there are, the more it opens people up for exploitation, as we've seen," Xu added.
