Is it true that poc are favored in college admissions?

21 comments

1. It’s called Affirmative Action and it’s likely getting struck down by the Supreme Court within the next six weeks

2. Yes, its called “[Affirmative Action](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action).”

3. It’s related to historic race relations, not poverty.

   The goal is to have jobs, colleges, etc have a similar makeup of the US at large, or to prevent de facto segregation

4. This is an extreme simplification.

   > If so, then why? Is that related to poverty?

   It’s an attempt to compensate for the different material and social conditions facing students of color.

5. There’s like…tons of academic research out there that talks about systemic issues with higher education and the barriers it has with many people. I’m sure you can go to your local library or Google and learn more if you’d like.

6. It’s a virtue signalling, diversity hire thing. It’s ironically racist that they favor certain races over others. Obv not every college does this but several do.

7. Yes, because schools value diverse student bodies, and in some cases, because of affirmative action laws, which to oversimplify legally requires a certain amount of diversity in institutions. These laws were enacted to reduce discrimination, but their continued use is highly controversial.

   Generally, admission requirements are much lower for black and hispanic students and higher for Asian students.

   This is somewhat of a touchy subject in American politics today.

8. Yes and no, it’s much more complicated than that.

   We have identified how systems in the past and today disproportionately harm or turn away opportunities to BIPOC in various aspects of our society/systems.

   Years ago, “Affirmative Action” (which is likely to be struck down soon) was a policy put in place to try and jump over those problematic policies and deliberately get more BIPOC into higher education. The problem is it never replaced or did anything about the problematic systems and practices already being put in place, so it ended up being two different directions or policies working against each other. The result is more BIPOC are in higher education, but the supports within those institutions necessary to keep those students enrolled/retained didn’t keep up with the admission rates. AA has had a profound effect, but many problems still remain…it hasn’t had the full effect that it was hoping to have.

   People also take issue with the fact that someone can be accepted over another person to a college simply by skin color or ethnicity. This is what makes the matter so complicated:

   **How do you dismantle decades…centuries of discriminatory systems and practices to create opportunity for one group while also not making policies that show blatant favoritism by factors that shouldn’t matter such as skin color?**

   Not only is that difficult, but it gets extra complicated when you add in all the other factors that inhibit opportunity and how different factors affect different racial or ethnic groups disproportionately (poverty, crime, K-12 education, job opportunity, etc). Right now “Affirmative Action” is the answer to getting around the problematic and discriminatory practices of our education system, but many feel there has to be a better way to do it…but no one has figured out how yet, or no one is willing to invest the time and money into it. That’s a problem in itself. Complex issues like this require time, energy, money, people…a rather large budget in terms of economics. Many who hold the power to make these changes and back these movements simply don’t want to take the risk.

   More and more are feeling that the biggest step that really needs to be taken, similar to the growing sentiment towards law enforcement is to “burn it down” and rebuild the higher education system completely…why it exists, what its mission/goals are, what are the strategic plans and processes for organization and operations, how institutions are governed, accreditation, federal and state admission policies, curriculum, structure requirements, and expectations, etc.

9. It depends on the university. “Affirmative Action” is not legal in my state currently. Our universities do collect data on the race/ethnicity of students, but that information is not available to those deciding who gets accepted. For universities that receive the majority of their students from their local area, the incoming freshman class should have similar demographics to the graduating high school classes in the area. If there is a significant difference between the demographics of those two groups, that deserves some further investigation to make sure there isn’t some barrier to students attending college if they wish to.

10. Yes and no. Some universities (not all) consider the overall diversity of the student body as a factor in admissions, which has the effect of making it “easier” for applicants of certain backgrounds to be admitted. But this idea is that systematic historical inequality has put people of those backgrounds on average in a less favorable position in terms of academic resources, money, etc., so the intent is to create a level playing field, not an advantaged one. Whether that’s the *practical* outcome is a matter of significant debate, but that’s the intent.

    Also worth noting that there’s pretty decent odds that the judiciary will find this system to be unconstitutional within the next few months.

11. Think of it this way, historically, if a black (or Asian or any other minority) and a white person have identical qualifications, the white person would always get the job. So black applicants had to have far better qualifications to “overcome” their skin color.

    Affirmative action is there to ensure the default is not just the white person gets the job/slot/whatever, that sometimes, the minority gets the benefits of the rigged coin flip.

12. Harvard’s accepted about 28% Asian last year. Basically Asians are competing with other Asians, not the population as a whole because they try to keep the student body diverse.

    Because a student is way more than just how high they can score on a test – an SAT score is not all they consider.

13. Yes. it is much easier to get into college if you’re non Asian/White, regardless of test scores. Many people consider judging people off race before anything else racist though.

14. You’re talking about Affirmative Action which is a set of guidelines a school (college) or business can use to promote hiring standards among minority groups. Minority groups can include PoC but technically it can include White students too such as at HBCUs. It also can include women, men, disabled, sexuality, etc. but it’s mainly talked about for Black Americans.

    > I heard that (all) Asians & Whites don’t have the same chances as Blacks & Hispanics (& Natives?) to be accepted in colleges/universities.

    It’s important to note that this topic is mainly only talked about for ivy league colleges, and there are only a handful of them. Also important to note that the highest admissions at those schools are White and Asian students.

15. They don’t do this in California.

    And it’s coming up under the Supreme Court this summer so we’ll see what happens.

16. Yes, it is true.

    It’s a racial thing, and it’s wrong. Affirmative action is harmful for everyone and is racist.

17. Yes

18. Yes

19. No. In fact the opposite is happening. Black people are fleeing to HBCUs in droves because of the racism at white colleges, which is extreme.

    The modern “affirmative action” debate started in the 80s really when women started going to college in droves. Its why now across all races its more women in college than men.

    Theres a large contingent of whte males who believe college should only be available to them.

20. From what I’ve noticed, as a parent of a college- bound teen:

    the top universities have extremely high standards and pretty much everyone there is hyper-qualified, with high grades, high test scores, extracurriculars. They receive many more applications than they have available seats and therefore many extremely well-qualified applicants are rejected. Many of the rejected have perfect grades and extremely high test scores. There’s just not enough room for all of the smarties in these institutions.

    So, if a college has a qualified white/Asian applicant and a qualified Black/Hispanic applicant, but only one spot available, how do they choose?

    Many will go for the Black/Hispanic kid, as they want a community that is diverse, and historically there are smaller % of Black/ Hispanic kids going to college.

    I have a girl in a STEM field and see the same. She’d have a better chance at admissions with an engineering major than her similarly- able brother.

21. Not every I’d hope