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The Truth About Holistic College Admissions By Sara Harberson

1802 Words8 Pages

In the article, “The Truth about ‘holistic College Admissions”, Sara Harberson expresses how universities that are not allowed to use racial preferences on college admissions, are still devising strategies to work around the laws to produce the same result. Harberson states how the institutions are using what is called “holistic admissions”, which allows a college to factor in a student's background, race and income. By filtering out the minority groups, they are creating a less-diverse community, preventing students of certain backgrounds from a proper education, and taking away opportunities from students based on their ethnicity.
Colleges are using racial segregation in the admission process so that they can have a white-favoring campus …show more content…

As Ratana explained, “It is unconstitutional for any institution to employ a racial quota under the Equal Protection Clause. Also, state laws do not supersede the law of the land. Affirmative action just factors in race as one of the many criteria that institutions use in the consideration of who to admit into colleges and employ”. One of the main purposes of the Affirmative action policy was to create a more diverse community. However, some universities have argued by saying that the ban of the policy is so that they can ensure a diverse community. By accepting certain percentages of each ethnicity, which would require the use of racial preference in the admissions process, the universities feel that it would be easier to maintain racial equality or as Harberson called it a “racial quota”. Harberson, who once worked as an admissions counselor for schools such as the University of Pennsylvania and at Franklin & Marshall College, stated how “Nowadays nobody on an admissions committee would dare use the term racial “quotas”, but racial stereotyping is alive and well. And although colleges would never admit students based on ‘quotas’, they fearlessly ‘sculpt’ the class with race and gender percentages in …show more content…

According to Justin Pope’s article, “Race-Neutral Admissions Can Work: Richard Kahlenberg’s Century Foundation Study”, Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and prominent advocate of class-based affirmative action, recently conducted a report showing the number of minority attendees in relation with the amount of white attendees and the dramatic difference that is still present in some universities. “Kahlenberg also acknowledges that highly selective universities like UCLA and the Universities of California-Berkeley and Michigan haven’t recovered from drop-offs in minority enrollments after voters in those states outlawed racial preferences.” Although voters have banned the use of the policy to “better” the issue, the issue is only becoming significantly worse, thus proving that the affirmative action policy was not to blame for the falling numbers of minority

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