Divya Tulsiani, a student with Indian American roots who is pursuing a master’s degree in sociology and law at New York University, in New York, July 4, 2023.
But in the days following the court’s ruling, interviews with some two dozen Asian American students revealed that for most of them — no matter their views on affirmative action — the decision was unlikely to assuage doubts about the fairness of college admissions. The universities said they would comply with the ruling. Harvard added that it “must always be a place of opportunity, a place whose doors remain open to those to whom they had long been closed.”In a community as large and diverse as the Asian American community, opinions on affirmative action were wide-ranging. A recent Pew Research Center poll conveyed the ambivalence of Asian Americans.
Students already feel pressure to write about hardship, said Rushil Umaretiya, who will go to the University of North Carolina in the fall. He wrote in his essay about how the women in his Indian immigrant family were the breadwinners and intellectuals, and how his grandmother rose through the white, male-dominated ranks at the Roy Rogers restaurant chain to become a regional manager.
Some Asian American students believe, contrary to the dominant narrative in the court case, that they have benefited from affirmative action. Evidence introduced in court showed that Harvard sometimes favored certain Asian American applicants over others. For instance, applicants with families from Nepal, Tibet or Vietnam, among other nations, were described with words like “deserving” and “Tug for BG,” an abbreviation for background.