CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Two freshman friends sat across from each other in a common room, comparing notes on how exactly they got into Harvard. In some ways, their situations were opposites: One was a “double legacy,” with two parents who had received Harvard degrees. The other was the son of a police officer and on full financial aid.

The legacy student, Iman Lavery, remembered feeling self-conscious during a conversation when she first arrived at school: A classmate had contrasted people who were “super qualified to be here” with legacies. For her friend on financial aid, Joseph Felkers, it had been the frequent questions from new acquaintances of “What’s your thing?” — how did you get in? — that set him on edge, making him wonder if his “thing” was his passion for poetry, or simply that he was poor.

For many freshmen at Harvard who have started school as a lawsuit challenging the university’s use of affirmative action in admissions plays out in court, the case has been personal. It has sharpened the usual freshman-year doubts about how they ended up among the less than 5 percent of applicants chosen from a pool of 42,749. And it has forced uncomfortable questions about which circumstances beyond their control — like race, wealth, or legacy status — got them or their classmates here.

Both Ms. Lavery and Mr. Felkers said that the case was not talked about much among freshmen, though they said they had discussed it here and there, at dinner or between classes. Mr. Felkers described it as “kind of an elephant in the room.”