<p>Can you guys really not pick up sarcasm? SMH.</p>
<p>^Lawl, you’d think the ‘OMGOMGOMGOMG’ would give it away even if the all-caps didn’t.</p>
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<p>You aren’t as crazy as your name suggests then :)!</p>
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<p>I laughed a little when I saw your post for the first time.</p>
<p>Ok i just want to add my two cents to this issue, before the thread is closed.
Simply put, affirmative action is NEEDED, however not in the present form it exists.
I believe affirmative action should be socioeconomic-based, not racial-based, as stated by IceQube so eloquently before.
After all, affirmative action was first established to assist BOTH MINORITIES and WOMEN in receiving equal oppurtunity due to decades of oppressment, leading to a lower SES status, and consequently the exact opposite of a headstart in the (as we all know) frenzied college admissions race.
Without AA, we would not have as many successful and middle/upper class minorities/women.
Surely you all could not dispell the fact that education is one of the greatest factors contributing to upward socioeconomic mobility?
Those who remain ignorant of the fact that socioeconomic AA is still needed in today’s (still not completely equal, just take a look at comparative salaries of white male ceos,white women ceos,and minority ceos e.g.) society.
Those blessed to have parents who emphasize education (this plays a great factor!), go to a private school, and have a myriad of resources at their disposal to succeed in the college admissions process take for granted their status and “for the most part” disregard how much harder those of lower SES have to work.
In addition, I wholeheartedly agree that AA is not the sole way discrimination/inequality should be reformed in the US. Major and serious reforms need to be made starting at the K-8 level to eliminate the inequalities regarding education in addition to familial and political reforms.
As a disclaimer, yes I am an African-American, however I will agree with most of you when you state that RACIAL AA lowers standards of URMs (which I believe is contrary to the eventual goal of AA, universal equality).
And as a last point I would just like to throw in how laughable the fact that affirmative action is so controversial, whereas legacy admissions is not. Someone please explain to me the value in keeping the rich (and in some cases not deserved due to inheritance and inherent inadequacy) richer by promoting an upper-class form of affirmative action!?</p>
<p>P.S. Future apologies for my rather lengthy post/incorrect grammar and if any of my points/opinions seem haphazard; I was simply trying to extricate and get all my thoughts out before they were dispelled from my mind. I don’t normally comment on these types of things but I felt compelled to this time?</p>
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<p>Why, thank you for your kind summary. </p>
<p>However, all I intended with that link was to provide an interesting read to this thread.</p>
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<p>$99 this thread gets locked.</p>
<p>Why would they lock this thread? We’re just discussing an aspect of the admissions process and whatever happened to Freedom of Speech?</p>
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<p>Thank you :). </p>
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<p>So what? I have had my say, and I’m glad that the mod responsible for censoring discussion about affirmative action - tokenadult - is on vacation.</p>
<p>$9999 you will never earn the ability to lock a thread on this forum :).</p>
<p>AA just hurts the Black/Hispanic population. When I see black and hispanics at my college, I always wonder if they got in just cause of AA. Even if they had 4.0/2400. AA makes me biased against them, which is unfair for the Blacks and Hispanics that had great stats and deserve to be there.</p>
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<p>I hope you are not serious</p>
<p>Um, socioeconomic based Affirmative action has few merits over race based. Again, like I’ve stated before, and I believe IceQube should agree with this, all forms of AA should be if circumstance based. Has your family’s income affected your ability to perform? If yes, then AA comes. Has your race affected your ability to perform to the best of your abilities? Again, if yes, then use AA. Otherwise, the problem is blindly taking poor kids/black kids/hispanic kids.
A huge problem I have with socioeconomic AA is COL isn’t taken into decision making. Someone with a family income of 60k where I live in suburban NJ is considered extremely poor, considering the COL. Someone with that same income in Montana is quite wealthy, and gets tuition free at many colleges, despite having about the same worth as someone making over 100k in NYC. That’s absolutely ridiculous.</p>
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<p>How does one quantify the factors you’ve given? E.g. how do you quantify if your race has “affected your ability to perform”?</p>
<p>You cannot “quantify” the factors. The admission officers should see your academic records, see your situation, etc. If a student wants, they can show the adversity they faced, and college admissions officers, should allow a student to present a case as such. They take into consideration “special circumstances”. I believe that it would be much more equal in the admissions process, if the colleges looked at race and SES as “special circumstances” and not as AA. Then we’d essentially abolish affirmative action.</p>
<p>In essence, affirmative action should be the student saying “I was disadvantaged because of ______<strong><em>" and the officers saying "you were disadvantaged because of </em></strong><strong><em>" or "Your </em></strong> had no effect on your ability to perform.”</p>
<p>There are Asian Americans and Caucasians who have had their race negatively affect them. They deserve as much AA as the African American or Hispanic students.</p>
<p>AA is not the solution, it is not the prevention. What we need is a high quality education for all at the lower levels, and then AA in higher education would be nonexistent.</p>
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<p>That just sounds like a lot more work for adcoms, and remember - humans are subjective. What’s heart wrenching to one adcom may be shrugged at by the next adcom. And what is the criteria for hardship?</p>
<p>Well, you do know that for special circumstances the same things happen as well, right? And that’s worked just fine. It would be much simpler a process if we just threw race and SES as special circumstances. Something that’s there, something that you couldn’t control, and it might or might not have had an affect on your ability to perform. I think each adcom should define hardship as he/she sees fit.</p>
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<p>Sounds cool. </p>
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<p>Happy holidays everybody.</p>
<p>The argument for race based affirmative action is based on the idea that regardless of their circumstances some minorities groups aren’t going to be as successful as majority groups or even as other minority groups. They think that by lowering the standards you are opening up opportunities to them. The problem is that there are other people who worked much harder for that opportunity and while they are overlooked the recipient of affirmative action benefits isn’t using that opportunity the way they should.</p>
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<p>You are making the college application process even more subjective. And how will the hardship be verified? Plus, if there are extenuating circumstances, you can write about it in your essay. Plenty of kids write about divorces in their essays, for example.</p>
<p>Bottom line: admissions to college should be merit based. The whole legacy crap should be abolished, along with the racial preferences.</p>
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<p>How mature of you to call me a three-letter word :mad:. I see how you act as a mouthpiece for the moderators. Let me give you a piece of advice though: moderators do not call other forum members by offensive three-letter words that must be censored. If you have something intelligent to contribute, then by all means, say it. And note how I used the [url=<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive_mood]subjunctive[/i][/url”>Subjunctive mood - Wikipedia]subjunctive[/url</a>] mood. OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG.</p>