This is why Asian Americans are anxious about checking boxes in college admissions | Chao
After carefully perfecting her college essay and retesting to raise her standardized score, my daughter had to face her most difficult decision: whether to admit she was Asian when she filled out the common application for college and university admission.
To check the box or to not check the box? Admit to being Asian — and face the penalty. Or — simply check the white box as a biracial applicant and receive fair consideration.
The Asian penalty in applying to elite colleges is well known in Chinese American, Korean American and Indian American circles. For years, I contemplated whether my daughter should have had to check the Asian box when it came time to apply to college. After all, with her auburn hair and her father's surname, she could pass for white.
According to research from Princeton University, students who identify as Asian must score 140 points higher on the SAT than whites and 450 points higher than Blacks to have the same chance of admission to private colleges.
My daughter worked hard as a young student. She stayed up late to tweak projects and she passed up social events to study. Can you imagine if it was your child who worked tirelessly toward a goal and admitting that the child is Italian, Irish, Ghanian or Jewish meant that the goal post would be moved farther? Would that even fly with any other racial group?
This week, as the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a pair of cases brought against Harvard and the University of North Carolina to test affirmative action and diversity-driven admissions standards, the issue of race-based elite college admissions took center stage.
The organization named as plaintiff in both cases, Students for Fair Admissions, was created by conservative legal strategist Edward Blum. He claims Harvard's race-conscious admissions policy unlawfully discriminates against Asian American applicants in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.