4 Ways College Admissions Committees Stack the Deck in Favor of Already Privileged Applicants
It's time to stop stigmatizing affirmative action as an "unfair advantage" for historically unrepresented groups.
November 16, 2012 |
Photo Credit: Joy Brown via Shutterstock.com
Affirmative action has been the subject of much media debate recently, as the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments on October 10 involving the controversial Fisher v. University of Texas “reverse racism” case. The plaintiff, Abigail Fisher, alleges that she was declined admission to the university as a result of affirmative action policies that left her at a disadvantage because she is white.
Contemporary debates about affirmative action policies that take race into account tend to presume that, in our post-Civil Rights era, the U.S. is a pure meritocracy that rewards the best and brightest. But this isn’t quite true. Affirmative action is used to offset other arbitrary identifiers that admissions committees are allowed to consider, many of which further enshrine existing social hierarchies according to race and class. Here are just four criteria admissions committees are allowed to consider that reward already privileged students.
1. Legacy Admissions
Six years ago, I had a conversation with a Canadian professor who had earned his PhD at an Ivy League American university. He told me he could never understand the U.S. tolerance for legacy admissions (in which a student with a family member who attended a given university would be privileged in that school’s admissions process) and suggested that legacy admissions “amounts to affirmative action for the rich.” Another Canadian professor who had earned her PhD at an elite American university overheard our conversation and chimed in. She recalled teaching numerous legacy students whose academic performances she found substandard at best.
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http://www.alternet.org/education/4-ways-college-admissions-committees-stack-deck-favor-already-privileged-applicants