The elite colleges of the country have deviously contrived to keep their admission policies beyond scrutiny by lumping standardized tests with affirmative action. They are, in fact, separate and you can have both in place. Affirmative action must continue and be given a growing proportion of admission spots until there is meaningful race equality. For all the spots, standardized tests must be one of the inputs. The final admitted class must mirror the racial distribution of scores on standardized tests.
Let's work through some examples of the proposal, in parts
Growing proportion of affirmative action spots
- Say the percentage of affirmative action spots is 5% today. In the next 5 years, it must change to 50%. 5 years because corrective action requires immediacy, otherwise it becomes like the Brown vs the Education board - the students who petitioned did not benefit from desegregation. 50% because meaningful change requires substantial numbers.
- From personal experience with GRE, and my son's experience with SAT, I can say that you can prepare very well just with free material. I studied from an old book that was used by my friend and my son studied off the ETS website. ETS is the administrator for the tests. Public libraries have test prep books.
- Within the affirmative action spots, students with the highest scores should be preferred.
- Say the race distribution of the highest quartile is: 30% A, 30% B, 40% C, then even after all factors such as extracurricular activities have been considered, the final admitted class should have the same distribution of races.
Government jobs
Finally, the government can do more in ensuring that diversity of thought is engrained in every institution of the country. There is no reason that the Secretary of the Treasury comes from Goldman Sachs, the head of the Federal Reserve comes from Harvard and the Supreme Court Judges come from Yale.
I think socially aware companies such as Apple should withdraw its Amicus Brief here:
Documents Archive - Harvard Admissions Lawsuit
