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Admissions? Whut?
There's one thing I don't understand about college.
They say that, when it comes to admissions, they have a no-discrimination policy.
..but then they want diversity so badly that they are more willing to admit, say, a less-qualified black person than a well-qualified caucasian. Cornell, for example, admitted an african-american student with an 80ish average, no extracurrics, etc. and deferred an asian student with a 90ish average in my school. I'm not being racist, I just think admissions should be based on your academic bg, extracurriculars, essay, etc. and not your ethnicity.
Anyway, my question? What do you think about this? Do they even have a right to do this? I mean I know they have a right to pick who goes to their college but still. SHouldn't it at least be fair?
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Welcome to the cruel reality of affirmative action. Disregard anyone that says that doesn't fit the description; it's a cookie cutter example. Razhie's examples are not applicable to this situation, period.
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For a college, admissions is all about the large scale numbers. Every year, US News and World Report ranks colleges on different factors, including selectivity (basically how many people they reject) and diversity. It pays to have good "stats", because then more people will apply and therefore, they will get more money from people that do come and will get better selectivity "stats" from people they reject.
It is true that hispanic, african american, native american, or other minority students will have more favorable chances when applying to a college than white or asian students. That is because the colleges want to improve their diversity "stats".
This is similar to the Affirmative Action debate (pertaining to employment), and some feel it is unfair while others do not. The fact remains that a private university has the right to accept anyone based on basically any reason or factor.
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I think you are a bit confused about what a nondiscrimination policy is.
It's not affirmative action, and it's not “We need X number of ethnic people in this damn school!”.
It's just what it says it is: It is the policy that says we WONT discriminate against you.So it's always good to read the policy, like this one from a Massachusetts College:
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
It says right there
“Application questions marked with an asterisk (*) are optional and used for summary reporting purposes to ascertain compliance with the college's guidelines only. These answers are not used as a basis for admission or in any discriminatory manner.”
You can keep reading if you'd like, for some more thoughts on applications, and why the student that appears 'best', might not actually be the best student for the program.
People often think, as you do, that a university should be taking just the people with the best resumes and grades. That's actually not always the case. Universities are also responsible for providing a service to their students, and part of that service is making sure that a class and a program is full of people from diverse backgrounds and paths. That isn't a racial. That is the way we best learn, it's by talking and discussing things with people who aren't all the same as us, and it's an integral part of a universities thinking, especially when it comes to smaller, or more advanced programs.
Imagine you were trying to create a class of 50 people to study Spanish History. Your top 50 people when it comes to grades all come from the SAME school. (They have some really great teachers there, and a whole bunch of them got inspired.) They all had the same teachers, all read the same book and all basically think the same way about the topic. Would you take them all in? Or would you take say, the 30 best of them, and then fill the rest of the program, with adult students who maybe don't have the same grades, but have work experience, or with people whose grades are less good, but Spanish is their first language. Or with surprising and unique people like an Asian American whose grades might be lower, but who wrote a passionate essay and traveled to Barcelona several times because they are so interested in this field of study.
Although those 50 students from the same school, might appear at first blush to be the 'most qualified' the school and the class isn't served well by allowing them all in. The school and the classroom will be more successful, interesting and varied, by admitting a variety of people with different experiences and interests.
Lets do another example. Say you have a first year program, that then splits off into three different specializations in second year. You know you only have a certain amount of room in each specialization, but your top 50 students are ALL interested in specialization #1. Well, obviously, that isn't going to work, people will be angry and disappointed in their second year and you can't change your curriculum and your teaching staff entirely because of that just for one year. Instead you will want to balance that group out a bit with students who you believe will like specialization #2 and #3 as well.
These things might not seem 'fair' to you, but don't you think it's also fair and sensible for the university to try and create a good learning environment and a successful and happy group of students who they know they can provide for?
I'd also be interested to see where you heard the report of the African American student vs the Asian American. In most cases I've heard of, it normally means these two student were apply to completely different programs. The African American might have been applying for a general BA, which has rather low requirements, and the Asian American to say, engineering, which would have some very high requirements and tough competition... Maybe they even were applying for the same thing! But the African American wrote a passionate essay and blew them away at the interview, whereas the Asian American was cooky and told them Cornell wasn't their first choice... Unless you know all the data, it's unfair to jump to conclusions.
I can't promise you that no university behaves the way that you fear. It might be. What I can promise you is that it is extremely unlikely and that universities have other reasons, like the ones I've mentioned above, for valuing diversity. There are watchdog groups watching admissions policies very closely and if a public university was seen to behave simply allowing 'X many of that-race people in' just 'cause, it would be disastrous for them. It would also probably make their programs suck! There are many reasons, besides ethical ones, to not behave this way. There are also many reasons, for the sake of all students and for the success of the university and learning environment to value and promote diversity. And 'diversity' doesn't always mean race.
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