We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Fourth Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here.

Below, an essay by Matteo Wong, age 16.

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The Asian Misnomer: What the Affirmative Action Debate Misses

One Scantron bubble and five letters: “Asian.” That’s all the College Board needs to encompass the heritage of thousands of students and 48 countries. Those five letters are also what many college admissions officers use as the basis for establishing diversity through affirmative action. While some institutions provide options such as “Chinese,” “Asian Indian” and “Other Asian,” a glance at official demographics reports shows that they don’t actually care; all of these ethnicities are still homogenized as Asian.

Proponents of affirmative action commonly argue that diversity improves critical thinking, creativity and race relations. Colleges like Caltech, which admitted 42 percent Asians in 2016, are then doing a disservice to their students by not exposing them to a variety of perspectives. This train of thought assumes that all “Asians” have similar cultural values, namely prioritizing academic achievement and exam scores.