<p>“URM is practically racist because they are saying some races arent as good as others so we should give them an advantage. They should not look at race or income.”</p>
<p>It’s done to somewhat counteract all of the other “isms” out there, such as nepotism, favoritism, autism, etc…</p>
<p>Showing some favoritism to poor American students is good because, to some, it helps to level the playing field. It’s like comparing two babies: Baby 1 (the poor one) is blindfolded, has earplugs, has its legs tied, neglected, and is forced to find its own food; Baby 2 (the rich one) sits in a high chair, has perfect vision, perfect hearing, given attention, and is spoon fed the best baby food available. Naturally, Baby 2 is going to grow up to be stronger and healthier.</p>
<p>College admissions are merely attempting to give Baby 1 a chance. Not a difficult concept at all.</p>
<p>Yeah, to echo what some others have been saying, I did not mean to imply that because the Ivy League and other similar schools are populated mostly by those who are wealthy, that those schools specifically look for those students. The reasoning that the school is composed of mostly upper class students is that they’re (typically) more exposed to elite private schools, legacy, etc, not because the school searches for them specifically. </p>
<p>Conversely, I was making the point that because they have this negative wine-and-cheese stigma attributed to them, they may branch out and specifically look for students who don’t fit into that typical, non-URM/athlete mold. </p>
<p>And thank you tokenadult for all that reading material.</p>
<p>To get their quota of everything they’d like, there has to be overlap. So a black legacy is a plus as is a first generation athlete. The same is true for low income, it will often overlap with the other hooks except for legacy. I don’t think any college decides to get their quota of low income separate from the other categories, they are likely to go hand in hand.</p>