Yea I don't understand why everybody makes such a big deal out of it. Even Rice actually, just plenty of ECs, 2100+ on the SAT and you're set. Why anybody not doing business or some other major geared towards prestige of the school would pay so much every semester is beyond me though.
That being said, I regret picking TAMU over UT because I had a good base here. Living in Austin sounds awesome.
Indians/Asians are discriminated the most IMO. Especially when it comes to medicine, they have to go above and beyond.
Whites are not discriminated right now. If they got rid of aa most top schools would be 60-70% asian.
Affirmative action like UT is great. Only qualified applicants will get in no matter what race they are. If they are qualified scholastically then it goes to a second set of criteria. Race is only one of many factors at play. Having a more diversified student body is good for everyone. It's better for white students to have more exposure to minorities. It's better for minorities to get more opportunities. The Clip from Bill Maher's show was great. Starting a race but not letting minorities run until the leaders of the race were three quarters of the way done, then allowing the minorities to start running the race isn't fair. Just because they can all run after the race has already started doesn't make it fair.
Not sure how true this is because I read it in an opinion piece, but supposedly, after the top 10% rule was instituted (with no accounting for race at all), minority enrollment was actually up somewhat from the previous policy, under which race was explicitly taken into account to achieve diversity. If that was the case, I don't see why they would have had to add race back into the list of factors they consider.
Good riddance. I never understood how giving certain groups of people special privilages amounts to equality for all. Perhaps it was needed in the past, but this is a new day and age.
So 400 years of slavery, oppression and discrimination was balanced out with 45 years of legislation? A black female today has equal opportunity as a white male?
Actually this left out a step. Race was taken into account. Then it was prevented from being taken into account. Then the 10% rule happened. Minority enrollment increased from when it was prevented from being taken into account, but it never matched minority enrollment from it was first allowed to be taken into account.
You act as though 400 years of affirmative action would make it alright. But I won't bother picking apart that terrible argument, as I'm of the opinion that the opportunities a person has in life are based upon the content of their character and not the color of their skin, to borrower a line from Dr. King.
That was Dr. King's hope for the future, not his belief. Do you believe that is the case now? That a black person has equal opportunities to a white person and is not judged differently at all? I don't think affirmative action is an effective remedy, but I don't remotely think there is no discrimination in society today.
The people in this nation who are most discriminated against come in all colors, but they're all working class or lower.
The argument is that privileged races in the past, like whites have long-standing connections or inheritances that automatically give them a head start in life. Especially compared to immigrants and blacks. There is also the other argument that this is reparation for centuries of racism, bigotry, discrimination, and slavery. I honestly think this argument is stupid. At the end of the day I do not support affirmative action and am glad that it might be abolished soon. Socioeconomic factors > race. Just because the two have some similarities here and there does not establish a legitimate correlation between the two. Affirmative action is just a terrible policy. Now... the problem is, how to solve the problem of diversity when affirmative action gets struck down? Whites and Asians will populate the school demographic of most major universities if this happens. Also the one thing affirmative action intended to do, slowly close the gap between income equality for all races, is going to get completely dismantled. Affirmative Action is not the answer to solve that problem, but it is still going to be a problem.
I don't think the problem is even based on connections / inheritances / etc. From that perspective, addressing it in a socioeconomic way is a solution. However, there's also pure, modern racial discrimination - and not necessarily overt or even intentional. There was a study done where resumes were submitted for various jobs. The resumes were identical in terms of experience/background/etc - but some had "black" names, while others had "white" names. The white name resumes got far more interviews. So here, you have identical people except for race, and the white person is given more opportunities in current society. It may not be intentional racism, but something in society exists that puts black people at a competitive disadvantage. As long as things like that continue to be reality, minorities (or at least African Americans - the study did not look at other races, as far as I know) cannot compete on equal footing.
