At Think Progress, Casey Quinlan points out who really gets a sweet deal from college admissions officers.
H/t Greg Dworkin.Conservatives have argued for years that affirmative action policies that allow admissions officers to consider race and ethnicity — in addition to a number of other factors, like participation in extracurricular activities, leadership qualities, test scores, and essays — disadvantage white people. But if conservatives were truly concerned about leveling the playing field rather than making it even easier for white people, who have benefited from the accumulation of wealth over generations, to get a leg up in college admissions, they would turn their attention to legacy and other preferences afforded to mostly white, wealthy people.
The legacy factor in college admissions, whereby a student is admitted if one of their relatives, usually parents or grandparents, also attended the same university, is one of the most overlooked policies tilting the playing field. By its very nature, legacy privileges wealthy, white students over students who may have stronger academic performance or a better overall application.
... A 2015 Kaplan Test Prep survey of admissions officers at 400 top colleges and universities confirmed what many people already know — that connections through wealth or political status matter. Twenty-five percent of respondents said they felt “pressured to accept an applicant who didn’t meet (the) school’s admissions requirements because of who that applicant was connected to.”
It's unclear what is going on with the Justice Department on this as it is claimed it is a complaint by Asian-American students claiming they are not getting a fair deal. All minorities are not created equal evidently where it comes to affirmative action...
ReplyDeleteExcellent account that tells it like it is -- the racism that naively exists through false assumptions. Absolutely, a whole segment of new college admissions occur on the basis of relationships, other factors than academic and related criteria. Eliminating affirmative action now would be a major mistake. If there's one thing we should have learned in this past almost decade it is that racial and more recently other inequalities have overtly resurfaced in ugly ways.
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