Do you think there should be affirmative action and race should be considered?
It doesn’t seem a bit fair that a minority gets into Harvard with a worse GPA and SAT than someone else.
Minorities don’t get in because they’re minorities. Minorities who have stats lower than the median scores are admitted because more often than not, they have gone through and overcome some struggle or obstacle. It could be because of their race or in most cases, it could be attributed to the fact that race has a non-trivial correlation with socioeconomic class.
That being said, affirmative action does play a small role in the admissions process, but there’s much more than just race that bolsters someone’s low GPA and SAT scores.
And those minorities, Asians, Caucasians, etc get in at similar proportions every year so that black student is not “taking away” a slot from a Caucasian student but from another black student.
I favor affirmative action, although I’d prefer it to have a more clear link to socioeconomic class.
Looks like you are claiming that colleges use racial quotas, even though they are frowned upon legally and the colleges deny using them.
Affirmative Action is very important, especially for blacks. What many fail to realize is that blacks (and many other URM’s) undergo discrimination everyday which constantly impedes their success despite their socioeconomic status.
I also agree with @marvin100 . Being poor is also generally an impediment to academic success, however; colleges want money and are harsh af
When colleges don’t take race/ethnicity into account, they end up like UC Berkeley and UCLA: 40% or more Asian. Colleges have a reasonable interest, imo, in maintaining diversity. It would be nice, though, if that diversity initiative did a better job of selecting for lower socioeconomic class.
They just want to have a diverse class. It’d be the same as someone from an underrepresented state like Wyoming getting in easier.
When will some races understand that admissions is not a race to 4.0/2400, so the closest to it will not necessarily win. What is the difference between a 3.9/2300 and a 3.7/2150? Maybe a few more A’s and few more questions answered correctly, per Sat test sections. The difference is actually pretty small, therein other holistic factors, like EC’s are considered. It’s not a race thing, both literally and figuratively!
Rejected applicants seem to like blaming the small number of URM students admitted with slightly lower stats (but capable of doing college level academics) for their rejection, rather than considering the thousands of white applicants with higher stats who were also rejected because there simply isn’t enough room for every applicant.
Students have an advantage from being in a diverse classroom. Discussions would be pretty boring and useless if every student came from the same racial/economic/political/cultural/religious background and experience.
Google Tony Jack, Amherst, New York Times. You will understand more after reading that…it is probably 8 years old, he now has a PhD from Harvard…
- "Rejected applicants seem to like blaming the small number of URM students admitted with slightly lower stats (but capable of doing college level academics) for their rejection, rather than considering the thousands of white applicants with higher stats who were also rejected because there simply isn’t enough room for every applicant.
Students have an advantage from being in a diverse classroom. Discussions would be pretty boring and useless if every student came from the same racial/economic/political/cultural/religious background and experience." *
@KKmama I completely agree. If the Ivies accepted every single applicant with a 4.0/2350+ and impressive extracurriculars, it would have to admit upside 10,000~15000 applicants yearly (something they can’t afford to do, prestige-wise). I think it’s cool - not to mention beneficial - to have kids from different background interacting - they get much more out of their college experience that way. Anyways, the graduation rates on most schools that use AA are high, showing that URM’s * are * capable of doing the work once admitted.
It’s called diversity and not racial quotas. They do the same thing when admitting people from different states and internationally. You want to say they have state quotas now too?
@InfinityMan ,I don’t think you meant to come across mean with your comment “showing that URM’s are capable of doing the work once admitted.” Please don’t assume that all URM’s are admitted with lesser than stats. My daughter was in the top 25% of her tippy top school, yet a couple of years into her UG I asked her if some students assumed she got in with lower stats. She said that her freshman year, there were assumptions made but other students quickly realized that she was a top student. I find it sad that she had to prove herself simply because she is black. Nobody would make that assumption about any white or Asian student.
There have been numerous threads started to discuss Affirmative Action, and CC policy is that there is one official thread to discuss it. Therefore this thread will be closed and members can look to that thread to continue the discussion.