How Fair Is the College Admissions System?

In Maus, one of the biggest issues discussed is racism. After all, it was the cause of the Holocaust. However, I don’t think racism will ever only be something of the past. Even in the novel, Spiegelman described a scene where his father, a surviving Jew, despised an African American hitch hiker. In fact, America has more obvious contemporary examples of unfair treatment towards certain races. Our voting system is one example, though I will not focus on this topic today.

Okay, I know this will be getting further away from the word “racism,” but I want to talk about something that I’m sure many of us are getting ready for: college applications. I think we can pretty much agree on how it is established that our college admissions system is flawed. I always remember listening to speakers on the radio claiming how our schools need more diversity… and how they should include every race “equally” since we all know that we are in a nation of equality… right?

I can never seem to agree with any of those speakers or their passionate addresses… I know there will be many who disagree with me, but I do not consider “equality for all races” as meaning setting different, or actually unfair standards for different races. In his article “Applying for College while Asian,” Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, says that “The Center for Equal Opportunity, a think tank opposed to racial preferences, in a 2005 study looked at a male applying to the University of Michigan from in state who had no parental connection to the school. If he had a 1240 SAT score and a 3.2 GPA, he had a 92 percent chance of admission if black and 88 percent if Latino. If white, he had only a 14 percent chance, and if Asian, a 10 percent chance.” These statistics explain one of the main reasons why some would rather not check the box of their race when applying to universities. I do not know how much these numbers have changed now in 2017, or will change when we juniors apply next year in 2018.

As an Asian American myself, I do know how complicated it would be to decide on how college admissions should work. Universities do not want to get reputations of them only being for certain races, and therefore attempt at diversity on their campuses. This attempt, however, ultimately leads to unfairness sometimes. It would be impossible to change this current situation without transforming our society as a whole in terms of our views. Perhaps this should be when we think about how individuals are able to bring initiatives for change in societies, and attempt to do so to achieve a better future for upcoming generations.