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Comment by cantastoria | Hacker News Reader

All the schools have geographical quotas

Sure but not different admissions criteria based on geography. You still have to meet the criteria regardless. Not so for race based preference systems which are well known for relaxing standards to achieve the desired racial balance.

If a particular school is 40% Jewish and those students are all there because they met the admissions criteria then so be it. It's absurd to create an elite admissions policy and then create preference programs for designated races. I'd much rather the standards were lowered until the desired racial balance occurred organically. However, universities seem to want it both ways.

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How about we just cut out the crap and make admission based on scores only. This will of course mean that your chance of getting in will become really, really low, unless you were jewish or asian.

All these people who cry out for affirmative action to be removed, I will see them write two pages about why it should not be there, but they will never advocate the really fair solution, because it will make them extremlely unlikely to ever get into the schools.

What you are saying is pretty silly, by the way. An elite school like that is admitting perhaps 50 black people. Are you saying of all the applications from black people they received, they did not find 50 that met the cut-off mark? That's a bit unlikely, is it not?

The score of the blacks may have been below the average of the other admitees, but they were not BAD. It's an elite school, they will not put dunces in there, and there are certainly enough black applicants with the appropriate scores.

If you want a score based system, then say so and accept that whites will be a tiny minority in those schools. But don't try to have this hybrid thing that keeps the whites in and the blacks out.

Either scores and nothing else, or let the schools decide. Choose one, and lobby for that, and not AGAINST affirmative action.

But this is essentially how admissions works for whites and asians. They look at your scores if you make the cutoff your in (barring sports scholarships or legacies which I'm also against).

Are you saying of all the applications from black people they received, they did not find 50 that met the cut-off mark? That's a bit unlikely, is it not?

Then why do they have different admissions standards for minority applicants? If it were possible for minority applicants to meet the normal admissions standards affirmative action programs would be unnecessary.

If you want a score based system, then say so and accept that whites will be a tiny minority in those schools

I want a score based system. I'm against affirmative action precisely because it is a hybrid system. Whites and Asians are held to one standard, minorities to another. As I've said before, if you want to admit lower scoring minority applicants adjust the general admissions standards accordingly so they can get in.

You have still not made it clear. Do you REALLY want a score-only based systems that is going to clearly favour people from one small area of the U.S, or do you just not want minorities to get in easier?

What do you think of the fact that score based systems will lead to a very one-track kind of thinking process coming out of those schools?

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