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<p>You’re confusing holistic admissions with affirmative action. They’re not the same thing. Proposition 209 was a blow against affirmative action; URM enrollment went down as a result of it (at least at top schools like UCLA and Berkeley) while Asian enrollment increased. AA is ‘discriminatory.’ ‘Holistic admissions’ is not discriminatory. Holistic admissions doesn’t try to systematically promote URMs at the expense of ORMs. The whole point of holistic admissions is that it’s supposed to be personalized based on the whole applicant. They’re easy to confuse with each other. However their distinction provides a small, but nevertheless important, political point for the universities that engage in these practices. For example, it would be illegal for UCLA to engage in affirmative action (due to prop 209) however it’s not illegal for them to use holistic admissions.</p>
<p>This doesn’t mean that this argument goes unchallenged. </p>
<p>[UCLA</a> accused of illegal admitting practices - Los Angeles Times](<a href=“http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/30/local/me-ucla30]UCLA”>UCLA accused of illegal admitting practices)</p>
<p>Now, maybe holistic admissions doesn’t do as good of a job as AA (which is what i assume you’re trying to argue) but that was never it’s intended purpose.</p>
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<p>First of all, those lawsuits are rare. The vast majority of the people who apply to publics aren’t people who exactly have the spare income to get a lawyer to sue the university. Of those that do, if they were denied from the public, they were probably admitted to a better private, and hence don’t care. But even when these lawsuits do take place, the university can easily argue that it simply felt that student x wasn’t as good of a fit for the university as some student Y. This can be defended through something that isn’t quantifiable like a personal essay. Now, whether they’ll continue to be able to do that in the future is something that’s going to be debated by SCOTUS.</p>