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In one paragraph, Columbia professor Samuel G. Freedman congratulates Gates for bringing

“intellectual honesty” to the admissions debate. In another paragraph, Freedman says that although

Gates asks the right questions, he gives the wrong answers. See the paragraphs below. Is Gates

honestly confused? [Quote:] Gates of Texas A&M asked the right questions, even if he gave the wrong

answers. He recognized that the college admissions system is profoundly flawed. He erred in continuing

to trust standardized tests and thinking that, without racial or legacy considerations, the playing

field would be level.

It never can be perfectly level, and we should operate on that

assumption. If we give up the notion that merit can be measured by a test, and if we acknowledge that

many variables contribute to an applicant’s prospects and to his or her ultimate value to a college,

we can bring integrity and sanity back to the admissions process.

Diversity should be a

plus; so should legacy, high grades and many other factors. Once we unshackle ourselves from this

belief in statistical objectivity – once we plainly say that admissions decisions are an art, not a

science – we can lay to rest the merit-vs.-race argument and save millions of high school kids and

their parents from the collective nervous breakdown that applying to college has

become.

I know this new way can work, because I have experienced it. As a faculty member

at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, I have operated in just such an

unapologetically subjective system for a dozen years. Our program consciously has refused to require

standardized tests because of our conviction that they largely tell us who had enough money to pay for

Princeton Review or Kaplan courses.[end quote, USA Tdoay, Jan.

22]

[Quote about Princeton Study] What the survey suffers from is the same problem that the top

10 percent law does: It treats all high schools the same. The automatic admissions program means that a

student with a 4.0 grade point average who does not place in the top 20 percent of his class at a

competitive school must fight for admissions while the valedictorian at a mediocre high school with a

3.5 grade point average is automatically admitted to the school of his choice. [endquote from Texas A&M

Battalion, “Unruly Behavior,” Matt Maddox Jan. 29,

2004.]

A Poor Legacy:

A&M admissions policy

smacks of

unfairness
EDITORIAL-Dallas Morning News
12:04 AM CST on Wednesday, January 7, 2004

Texas A&M last year admitted 312 white freshmen from families of A&M graduates –

freshmen who wouldn’t have gotten in otherwise. It’s a nod to a long-standing program that gives

additional consideration to the children, grandchildren or siblings of former A&M students.
But

this is the same public university that announced last month it wouldn’t consider the race of

applicants in its admission process, even though many schools, public and private, take race into

account among other academic and non-academic factors.

As state Rep. Garnet Coleman of

Houston put it, “If you want to go to A&M, it pays to be a legacy applicant rather than

black.”

While that isn’t the message A&M officials intend, it certainly is the message

they have delivered.

In abolishing race as an admissions consideration, A&M vowed to

increase minority outreach and to focus on attracting low-income and first-generation college students.

But to our mind, it is wildly inconsistent for the university to reject race as an admissions factor

and then to consider family DNA to be perfectly acceptable.

A&M officials say minority

applicants with ties to the A&M family are admitted at about the same rate as white applicants with

family ties to the school. But while that seems fair on paper, there is a disparate impact. Last year,

six blacks and 27 Hispanics – students who wouldn’t have been admitted if family members hadn’t

preceded them at A&M – got in under the legacy program. In contrast, family ties provided enough points

on the school’s admissions scale for nine times as many white candidates to be admitted who otherwise

wouldn’t have been accepted.

Universities that regard an applicant’s race as one of

many factors for admission would be justified to include family ties as well in their basket of

considerations. But now that A&M has removed race from its selection process, the school also should

jettison its legacy program, as other Texas public universities have done. If, as A&M officials

contend, most applicants don’t need legacy consideration to be admitted, then that’s yet another

reason to ditch the program.

Perception matters, and the legacy program at A&M leaves

the impression that the university isn’t serious about increasing its minority enrollment. It’s time

for the antiquated system to become history.

Duke

University has affirmative action and legacy admissions. What prevents Texas A&M from the same?

Perhaps the public nature of the university is a consideration, but if Aggie alumni wanted to follow

the Duke plan by restoring legacy and affirmative action, who can doubt their political abilities in

Texas? State Senator Jeff Wentworth suggests that the Ten Percent Plan is raising enough complaints to

attract the legislature’s attention. But here’s the question, is Aggie hostility to affirmative

action greater than their political desire to continue a legacy program. And if hostility to

affirmative action exceeds alumni loyalty at Texas A&M, what does that say about the temperament of

Aggie Culture when it comes to race?

[Published at TheBatt, Jan. 27,

2004]

AUSTIN — Minority lawmakers demanded Monday that Texas A&M University set concrete

goals for increasing minority enrollment in the wake of its controversial policy not to consider race

in

admissions.

Source:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2281130