Affirmative Action In The College Admissions Process

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Affirmative Action in the College Admissions Process Racial inequality has alway been a major topic of debate and criticism throughout United States history. America and racism have almost always gone hand and hand. However, in the last half-century, the narrative that the United States is unfair to minorities has started to change. Through Affirmative Action programs, especially with regards to colleges, many of the racial prejudices and inequalities of the past have disappeared, bringing up an important question; “Are Affirmative Action policies still necessary in today's society?” Although historically heavy Affirmative Action policies were necessary in order to ensure equal educational opportunities for minorities, the need for these outdated …show more content…
In fact, some colleges have an overrepresentation of minorities when it comes to pure percentages of the population due to Affirmative Action. A students race and social status has played an important factor in the college admissions process for many years due Affirmative Actions encouraging colleges to become more diverse. Case in point, the University of California system, which for a long time used students race and gender as key criteria in the admissions process to “help shape the student population” to be more inclusive (Douglass, John Aubrey). Douglass justified the use of Affirmative Action in the college admissions process by stating that it was a“legitimate method to help shape the student population.” Although Douglass agrees with the use of Affirmative Action, he also shows that despite the banning of racial or gender preferences for college admission by the state of California in 1998, minorities still get representation in colleges. It was expected that the old ways of racially segregating minorities would return. However, that notion was weakened when in 2002, just four years after Affirmative Action policies were banned, the University of California system “admitted more minority students than it did when it relied on race-based admissions policies.” (The Chronicle …show more content…
The inequalities created by the wrongful and misguided implementations of Affirmative Action are similar to the discrimination that these policies are fighting to overturn. In a 2017 article from The Economist, it was found that an “Asian applicant to a top college needs as much as 450 additional points out of 1600 on the SAT” (The Economist). This high discrepancy between required scores creates a level of competition and contempt for others that urges social inequality. Top performing Asian and white students feel like their accomplishments are being lower because they have the “privilege” of being born into a certain race. This creates a level of contempt towards other races, who they perceive to have an easier path to college applications solely based on
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