<p>They should consider social class, but that doesn’t mean eliminating AA on the basis of race. As far as I’m concerned, a college with like a 2% black/Hispanic population should give an offer of admission to most of the qualified black and Hispanic applicants they come across.</p>
<p>Well I go to a diverse school were all of the kids come from poor families. But no matter how poor they are people in general seem to expect more from the Asians and Whites. I feel that Blacks are next in line and finally people expect the least from Mexicans. So yea we should consider both race and money. But a poor black should get AA over a poor White.</p>
<p>I have always been on the fence about affirmative action…</p>
<p>I can see both the pros and the cons, and I definitely believe it served a vital purpose long ago. The problem is, whether it is regarding socioeconomic status or race, AA creates a “double-edged sword” situation for both sides…</p>
<p>In regards to race or socioeconomic status: White or rich students are held up to higher standards and are expected to naturally excel more than others. This unfair pressure that is cast upon them can be quite daunting and hinders them when they don’t measure up to the elevated standards. URMs or poor students are practically slapped in the face by AA because it implies that they cannot naturally measure up to the standards held for white or rich students. It’s as if to say, “We’re going to help you out because, naturally, you couldn’t have gotten into this university otherwise”.</p>
<p>In all honesty, I don’t know what the best action would be to take…</p>
<p>I absolutely think so. I completely disagree with affirmative action based on race. It makes much, MUCH more sense to practice it based on income level & circumstance</p>
<p>Sassy, that dilema is very easy to solve (unless you believe Black are inherently not as smart as Whites, which opens up a whole new can or worms), tell Blacks and other URM students that they are just as capable as everyone else, and then treat everyone the same. </p>
<p>The question really should be: What’s more important, having the best possible canidates, or having the best from each race/socioeconomic strata. When you go with the first you end up with colleges being entirely White, Asian, and Indian, when you go with the 2nd you have to reject Whites, Asians, and Indians who are much better than some of the people you admitted, who were rejected purely because they were either White, Asian, or Indian. To me, not having the reverse-racism is more important than forcing diversity, but not to everyone.</p>
<p>What about this illustration: AA prefrence given to Whites over Blacks, how would anyone who was Black or other URM feel about that?</p>
<p>Every blanket generalization like “minorities should get preference” or “poor people should get preference” are inherently flawed because of how different these situations can be, despite having the same label.</p>
<p>My family’s income is below the federal income poverty line. We need food stamps and food pantries to get by sometimes. I have no problem saying these things because they’re true. However, I would never say that I am “inherently disadvantaged” because of my financial situation, because I have a parent with a master’s degree that has pushed me to succeed academically for my whole life. While my income may be the same as someone else’s, they may be in an entirely different situation.</p>
<p>So, does that mean that we should base it on first-generation status alone? Of course not. The only way to have a fair AA system is to allow admissions officers to take comprehensive looks at the entire lives of their applicants. Unfortunately, this probably isn’t possible. So we have to settle with something like income, which I think is the next closest indicator.</p>
<p>Well, as a whole, it is harder for people in poor financial situations to get into the same universities. The wealthy student can afford hours of additional SAT prep; the wealthy student can afford a “feeder” school; the wealthy student can afford tutors; the wealthy student may not have to work to support his family during the schoolweek; the wealthy student may have easier access to resources, technology, etc. </p>
<p>Do any of those things make the wealthy student more qualified to enter a university than a poor student? No.</p>
<p>Dwight, the idea is that you are inherently better, because you have parents who pushed you your whole life, than the person who had parents who didn’t care, and was of the same income level. The issue is what opportunities you’ve had vs. others. The idea is that certin groups of people get a handicap becasue they wern’t exposed to the same opportunities as others. The argument is whether that race is the indicator of what opportunities someone has, or whether income level. You obviously didn’t get any tutoring, ACT classes, anything like that, where as someone from an upper income family might have. You could say it’s like “taking scores with a grain of salt.”</p>
<p>Though I come from a middle/upper-middle class family, and I didn’t have any private tutoring or ACT classes (though my high school is pretty good), income definately would correlate better to what opportunities someone has than race (it’s also far less enraging and offensive). </p>
<p>Though the entire upper part of my post was typed before I read your very last sentence, and I don’t really want to revise it, so there… (It seems we see this the same way).</p>
<p>I think we agree more than we disagree. My personal example was not to say income isn’t a factor, but to say that a blanket preference for income is an oversimplification, just as a blanket preference for race is an oversimplification.</p>
<p>Yes, low income leaves a student with less opportunity for tutoring, prep, etc. But I would argue that the < poverty line student in a home environment conducive to education is more inherently advantaged than the middle class student without such a home environment. Thus, in this case, income is an inadequate basis for affirmative action.</p>
<p>In general, though, I still think income is the least inadequate basis.</p>
<p>I understand the point of the comic. But all the things mentioned are socio-economic; well except the “everything goes to rich white men” which all the Indian and Asian doctors/lawyers would probably disagree with. I think most would agree that such a horrible situation as presented in the comic would stunt anyone’s academic growth. (Yet I still don’t agree with socio-economic affirmative action.) I think the quote is in regards to racially based affirmative action which is clearly absurd.</p>
<p>I’m not disagreeing with you, but the race information was all (of course) the Collegeboard had.</p>
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<p>Standardized testing is not a fair opportunity for all. It is a standardized means to test different traits for different people. Have you ever taken a math standardized test for your state? It isn’t meant to be equal for everyone, it’s meant to test you. To see how well you’re doing. If one group - say, African American students - all scored a 50% and all of the white students scored a 75%, you don’t think that would be significant? This melting pot means we are and except all kinds of race and ethnicity and that we treat them all the same under the law (AA does exactly that - attempts to even out opportunities under the law… whether it’s working is for another post).</p>
<p>If a black person and a white person statistically come from incredibly different backgrounds, you’re saying that that cannot play a part in their role. I’m talking about the statistically average student. If you took two students that were statistically average (black, low-income and white, middle class) for their own races, and each one scored in the 98th percentile compared to people of a similar situation, the white student would score about a hundred points higher on the SAT. Given that, if purely based on “skill” or SAT scores, the black student would probably not get into any private university.</p>
<p>Based on this, the white applicant would always be the more qualified applicant because white students score significantly higher than black applicants on SAT scores. Because black applicants often come from poorer high schools and tougher family lives, like all minorities, a black student and a white student could be equally intelligent and equally capable of succeeding, but is a victim to circumstance. If colleges accepted students only based on “academic achievement” and the strength of their application, there would be almost no minority showing because minorities score much lower on standardized tests and probably have weaker applications (working/family instead of ECs, school doesn’t offer ECs, low grades from a poor school or tougher life, has to apply for financial aid, etc.).</p>
<p>Whose more likely to succeed in life? Both students are equally likely to succeed. If success = “class mobility” (I don’t really think so), then the statistically average black student is more likely to succeed. The black student with a 600 could be statistically the same as a white kid with a 700, all factors taken into account.</p>
<p>That being said, I’m for AA based on socioeconomic status. It doesn’t have anything to do with race; it has a lot to do with income. African American students score lower not because they are less intelligent because, statistically speaking, they are more likely to come from low-income families. I don’t think race has anything to do with it. Not all black students are low income, and not all white students are middle class. How would we execute AA based on socioeconomic status? Beats me.</p>
<p>Colleges accept individuals, not averages. So who cares if blacks are the poorest group when, let’s say, an INDIVIDUAL black applicant grows up in Beverly Hills? They should look at individuals, not them relative to their group.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what you’re showing me here. As income increases, so do SAT scores. I agree with that. It also shows that white students from low-income homes are likely to score higher than black students than low-income homes. This is surprising to me, and I wonder why - but it is also in tune with my argument. Could you tell me what you’re seeing? Sometimes I have trouble with graphs (take a look at my science ACT scores… ugh). The graph definitely doesn’t show whether black families or white families make less money, but this one does:</p>
<p>So a student who has a 3.45 at a tough prep school should be equally compared to a student that has a 4.0 at an academically-poor rural or inner city school? Should all GPAs be looked at unweighted, since the weighting system compares AP students only with other AP students and not with students who attend normal classes?</p>
<p>I think one problem with this discussion, and others like it, is that there is little consensus about what colleges are trying to achieve with affirmative action, and what they should be trying to achieve.
If they are trying to achieve “diversity,” then obviously they should consider all factors, including race and economic class.
If they are trying to identify those most likely to succeed in college, I don’t see why they should consider race or economic class.
If they are trying to make admissions “fair” to those who have been disadvantaged by circumstances beyond their control, then it seems to me that they should consider economic class, but also race to some extent. (But notice that nobody ever thinks that Harvard should admit stupid people, even if they were born that way.)
If the process is supposed to make up for past wrongs, then race is more important than economic class.
Take your choice!</p>
![http://www.robrogers.com/cartoons/2003/images/062603%20Affirmative%20Action.gif[/url]](http://www.robrogers.com/cartoons/2003/images/062603%20Affirmative%20Action.gif%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-Income2.png]File:1995-SAT-Income2.png](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-Income2.png%5DFile:1995-SAT-Income2.png){kind=link}
