Ryan Kerns
With the increasing competition for college admissions, students have become well aware of what colleges are looking for in potential candidates. Most colleges usually look for good grades, rigor of the high school schedule, and extracurricular activity. However, why do colleges still consider race in their application process? What many people don’t know is that colleges usually have to have a “quota” of races to uphold. With the developments of integrating schools over the past couple of decades, schools have really pushed for trying to keep a balance of different races in their classrooms. Unfortunately, colleges don’t always realize that this can sometimes jeopardize their academic standards. More specifically, colleges will sometimes reject students who may be more qualified in order to keep a certain number of students of a particular race. Mark C. Long helps to prove this in his study in the Review of Economics and Statistics for MIT. He claims that, “the preferences given to minority applicants under affirmative action are large and that the minority share of admitted students in top-tier institutions would fall substantially after eliminating these preferences.” This becomes apparent in colleges like Georgia Tech where the majority of the students are Caucasian males. When a school is so dominated by a specific race, the school looks as if they are trying to reject minority students. As a result, many colleges set a small “quota” in order to look like they are not discriminating. However, progress has been made recently with a plan called Affirmative Action. This action basically makes it illegal to make race, gender, or religious affiliation a factor in the decision of acceptance into a college. Unfortunately, colleges still try to make it look like they are not trying to discriminate in their acceptances. According to Christopher Edley Jr. in his book, Chilling Admissions: The Affirmative Action Crisis and the Search for Alternatives, “institutions cannot be allowed to undermine their educational and social missions by excluding capable under-represented minorities.” This creates lot of grey area in between the two extremes making it very difficult for colleges to decide how they want to diversify their schools. Unfortunately, it usually comes at the cost of more than qualified students of the race they already have too much of. This begs the question, when will colleges take off the “What is your race” question off of their applications?
With the increasing competition for college admissions, students have become well aware of what colleges are looking for in potential candidates. Most colleges usually look for good grades, rigor of the high school schedule, and extracurricular activity. However, why do colleges still consider race in their application process? What many people don’t know is that colleges usually have to have a “quota” of races to uphold. With the developments of integrating schools over the past couple of decades, schools have really pushed for trying to keep a balance of different races in their classrooms. Unfortunately, colleges don’t always realize that this can sometimes jeopardize their academic standards. More specifically, colleges will sometimes reject students who may be more qualified in order to keep a certain number of students of a particular race. Mark C. Long helps to prove this in his study in the Review of Economics and Statistics for MIT. He claims that, “the preferences given to minority applicants under affirmative action are large and that the minority share of admitted students in top-tier institutions would fall substantially after eliminating these preferences.” This becomes apparent in colleges like Georgia Tech where the majority of the students are Caucasian males. When a school is so dominated by a specific race, the school looks as if they are trying to reject minority students. As a result, many colleges set a small “quota” in order to look like they are not discriminating. However, progress has been made recently with a plan called Affirmative Action. This action basically makes it illegal to make race, gender, or religious affiliation a factor in the decision of acceptance into a college. Unfortunately, colleges still try to make it look like they are not trying to discriminate in their acceptances. According to Christopher Edley Jr. in his book, Chilling Admissions: The Affirmative Action Crisis and the Search for Alternatives, “institutions cannot be allowed to undermine their educational and social missions by excluding capable under-represented minorities.” This creates lot of grey area in between the two extremes making it very difficult for colleges to decide how they want to diversify their schools. Unfortunately, it usually comes at the cost of more than qualified students of the race they already have too much of. This begs the question, when will colleges take off the “What is your race” question off of their applications?
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