<p>The UC’s don’t practice affirmative action and are legally barred from doing so. If you got in, it’s unrelated to your ethnic background. Right now, the UCs operate exactly the way you suggest: They’re allowed to look at financial circumstances, but a poor Hispanic kid and a poor Caucasian kid would be looked at the same way otherwise the university would get in big trouble. And since there are people/groups that would love nothing more than try and prove bias, they’re very careful to respect the law under which they operate.</p>
<p>In addition, “level playing field” acknowledges that treating everyone the same is exactly what’s unequal. It means the field is not, in and of itself, level. Think of it like the 1,000 meter race: the further from the center an athlete is, the further up the track they start. This “levels the playing field” because even if all are running around the same track, not all have the same distance to run in order to reach the finish line. That’s the way it works in admission.</p>
<p>Note, by the way, that you may hear protests against affirmative action, but rarely against legacies (who often enjoy as much of a boost as minorities and in some cases more of a boost), which is hypocritical. And of course you could not find many people in favor of your system if it included athletes.</p>
<p>Finally, remember that education is more than getting in. There is value in being surrounded by intellectual peers who come from a variety of cultures, countries, and backgrounds, with different academic and personal strengths. Resilience and determination have value, too, and in fact recent research shows it matters more for success, especially academic, than many other factors (one of the least “correlated” factors is test scores.)</p>