Does anyone else think affirmative action is unfair?

DreamSchlDropout
Wed, 13 Nov 2013 17:59:27 +0000

I come back to this again and again, because it so neatly sums up so many realities about college admissions at selective schools:

AdmissionsDan from Tufts answers “Here’s one: how does Affirmative Action play a role in admissions?” on Red*it:

"Finally, a tough one.

In a completely different way then how you think. First, and this will sound sort of cliche: every single admit we make is an affirmative action. It’s not like there’s a magic list of kids we’re “supposed” to admit and then we take some out and put others in if they are from minorities (which is what I assume you’re asking about). No one is an admit if I can’t find the reasons to advocate for them.

Perhaps the most important non-quantitative reason to advocate for an admit is how you think and (tied to that) how you perceive. A huge piece of that is your life and your background. Too often, diversity is presented as a function of race, and I think that’s idiotic. There’s socioeconomics, religion, geography, rural/urban, sexual orientation, and a whole bunch of other things. There’s politics, ideology, interests, the differences between linear thinking and creativity, emotional vs rational (kirk v Spock). All of this matters because it builds a class that learns from each other as much as it does from a professor.
So race matters. I’m not afraid to say it: we want a racially diverse class, and some groups are significantly underrepresented, so they tend to have higher admit rates. But what we’re doing for race is the same as what we do for a farm kid in a pool dominated by the suburbs, or the conservative kid who wants to come to a campus filled with liberals."

If you take one thing away from that, let it be this: “No one is an admit if I can’t find the reasons to advocate for them.” That’s an implicit confession that not only are admissions fundamentally unfair, they are fundamentally subjective. It’s a craft or an art, not a science.

Picasso’s blue period was arguably unfair to the color orange. How dare he prefer blue!

But if you’re the color orange, what is your goal? To convince Picasso how unfair he’s being, or to simply convince Picasso to put you on a canvas?