Should Race be included among the many Factors considered for Admission to Selective Colleges?



Race and College

Summary of Salient Points

Following is the summary of three salient points from the article.

Affirmative action in the admission process of colleges and universities and race sensitive admission policies not only create a more diversified, open and enriching learning experience for students, but it also ensures that a larger number of minority students could be prepared to take up leadership positions in the future (Bowen, et al., 1998).

Admission process of selective colleges and universities is far more comprehensive to be labeled as a “numbers game” and people making those decisions go far beyond considering test scores and GPA. A substantial portion of competitive minority applicants gets rejected because the educational institutions make their decisions based on objective, as well as, subjective considerations. The latter includes leadership ability, passion, enthusiasm, intellectual curiosity and others (Bowen, et al., 1998).

Racial inequality within the United States is a serious and inescapable issue and race sensitive admissions are the best way to tackle this issue as opposed to geographical location, income class and others. Empirical evidence suggests that, many of the minority applicants that have received an opportunity to study at selective colleges and universities have performed better than the rest of the student population. Furthermore, significant gains have become apparent in terms of improving the SAT scores of minority students over the period of 1976-1995 (Bowen, et al., 1998). There is no empirical evidence which could suggest that placing less scoring minority students into much better educational institution has resulted in institutions ending up wasting its resources on low achieving students.

Contribution of Article in enhancing understanding of ethnography

First, the commonly held assumption regarding race sensitive admissions is that it increases the opportunity costs as admitting less qualified ...