What can we do instead of Affirmative Action?

[glassesarechic]

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1. Just because you don’t necessarily see a legacy boost, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
2. If legacies are so qualified then legacy has no place. Why are we helping people who don’t need it?

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<ol>
<li><p>Of course. But I do think the legacy boost is dropping: I remember one poster noted that the Penn legacy admit rate used to be about 60% and has since dropped to 30%. Compare that 30% to the admit rate of legacies at other top schools, who are likely to have attended top high schools and have top scores, and I bet the boost is pretty small. </p></li>
<li><p>…But none of that’s to say that the legacy boost should exist. I agree with you on that.</p></li>
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What we need is transparency. Colleges should post a huge authoritative list of all the things they look for, all the things that make a candidate a definite admit including Sat scores and extracurrics (like winning Intel). Socioeconomic AA should be built into the system(I suspect it already is). Colleges could assign a point value to the intangibles and if one amasses a certain amount of points- one should get into the college.

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<p>That violates the principle of holistic admissions. There aren’t certain things that make anyone a sure admit. Individuals aren’t evaluated on individual merit so much as a piece of a bigger puzzle. (Besides which, assigning a point value to race is illegal.)</p>

<p>I do think, though, that more transparent admissions process would be better for everyone, but I think that comes from publishing admissions results for different SAT scores, GPAs, geographic regions, sexes, races, etc after the fact, not from making the process itself more straightforward.</p>