For now, Students for Fair Admissions has but one goal in mind: to bring race-based college admissions to an end.
The affirmative action practice that has allegedly sidelined high-achieving Asian Americans now sits before the U.S. Supreme Court, awaiting its fate that, depending on the outcome, could alter the review process for college applications for the foreseeable future.
Its fate could also weigh heavily on the academic futures of people like 18-year-old Jon Wang, a Florida native who scored a 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT, with a perfect score on the math section. Combined with a 4.65 high school GPA, most would see him as a shoo-in for any elite university.
Somehow, the numbers still weren't high enough.
"The top-tier schools I applied to were MIT, CalTech, Princeton, Harvard, Carnegie-Mellon and U.C. Berkeley," he said.
Wang was rejected by all of them.
But the rejection letters didn't come without warning. Wang told Fox Nation he talked to friends and school guidance counselors going into the application process, and they all issued a bizarre warning.
"They all told me that it's tougher to get in, especially as an Asian American. I just took it as gospel."
Wang, the child of two first-generation Chinese immigrants, is one of the people behind the Plaintiff group taking on Harvard University and the University of North Carolina – two institutions whose race-based admissions practices have emerged at the epicenter of affirmative action practices for public and private institutions.
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He shared his story in the Fox Nation special "The Diversity Verdict," which is available for streaming, Thursday.
Fox News' Laura Ingraham hosts, walking subscribers through the court case that could shape the future of higher education and shift focus to a merit-based system.
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Last fall, the high court heard two cases dealing with the issue, deciding to keep them separate since Harvard is a private institution and UNC is public, creating distinct legal concerns.
At stake in the Harvard case is whether the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by discriminating against Asian-American applicants. The UNC case, in contrast, looks at UNC's unwillingness to adopt a "race-neutral alternative."
Either of the two cases could overturn 2003 precedent case, Grutter v. Bollinger, wherein the court ultimately ruled that the use of race as an admissions factor was not unconstitutional as long as it was narrowly tailored to further the compelling interests of obtaining the educational benefits available in a diverse student body.
But, is getting accepted to college more difficult for Asian American applicants? Ingraham said The Princeton Review, a company that provides college prep and test-taking advice for high schoolers hoping to go to college, agrees with Wang's concern.
A passage from its book, "Cracking College Admissions" notes that the high success of many Asian-American students has generated concerns among some schools who allege there are "too many" on their campuses.
As explored in the Fox Nation special, the book says applying to college as an Asian American could be a "distinct disadvantage" at many elite schools. It also instructs applicants to refrain from including a photo of themselves in their application and withhold optional answers about ethnic background, if possible, as well as to avoid writing admissions essays about the significance of identifying with two cultures.
"I was scared of getting backlash on social media for it [raising awareness about unfair admissions]," Wang said. "For fighting for what I think is a really important issue."
But he found a space among Students for Fair Admissions.
"I gave them my test scores, and then they must've ran the model on that… [they] told me I had a 20% chance of getting accepted to Harvard as an Asian American and a 95% chance as an African American," he said.
Wang also found a home at the Georgia Institute of Technology – better known as Georgia Tech – a high-profile Atlanta-based university that specializes in engineering and other STEM degrees.
Despite the risk of backlash in his career and elsewhere, he said he's never going to stop fighting for the right cause and for future generations of Asian Americans.
"I feel like, if I'm looking back, ten or 20 years from now, if I didn't do it [speak up], I'd be pretty upset with myself."
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Decisions in Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College could come before July 4.
Fox News' Ronn Blitzer and Haley Chi-Sing contributed to this report.
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