Unveiling The Bias: How College Admissions Show Racial Injustices

by Maddy Lloyd

The idea of your socioeconomic class affecting your life is especially prevalent in college and university admissions. Not only will the fact of how much you are able to afford affect your own personal college decisions, but the way colleges pick who to admit into their school is directly affected by socioeconomic status. Even if it is not said straight out, which it is not entirely skewed towards those coming from higher classes, it is shown that both standardized testing and the recent abolishment of affirmative action are somewhat prejudiced. They both target and affect those from the lower socioeconomic class, which tends to mainly consist of those from racial minorities.

With colleges going back and forth between whether scores from standardized tests like the ACT and SAT should be required, they really should just be gotten rid of altogether. While the testing does help to hone in on specific abilities of students, there are a number of issues arising with some people wanting to or not to share their scores and also the fact that the tests are not even standardized anymore, after switching to online adaptive tests.

But were the exams ever fair to begin with? No. ACT and SAT textbooks, tutors, and other helpful resources are available to help prepare a student for the exams, but not everyone has access to these. You have to take into consideration that every student may not have time to spare between school and whatever home life they face, whether it is helping around the house or with their siblings or possibly even a job to help their family financially. Even if they did have the time to prepare, the accessibility of something like a tutor can be quite pricey. So, this really only benefits those with the time and money.

So if the SATs and ACTs are problematic, is there a way to make applying to college more fair for the minorities who come from disadvantages? Well there was and it was called affirmative action.

When the U.S. Supreme Court banned affirmative action in mid-2023, they were making an attempt at equality, not equity which is what affirmative action calls for and what is needed. Affirmative action took into account that people from minority groups were at somewhat of a disadvantage and would favor accepting those students over the people with similar applications. This also helped increase diversity, which is much needed given the historical lack of racial diversity at many of these institutions.

According to an article from The New York Times about different students’ opinions on affirmative action, many thought that it should just be fair for everyone and not based on race and should purely come from the hard work that a student puts in. They are failing to acknowledge the fact that affirmative action is not taking a less qualified student from a minority and accepting them over a more qualified white student. What it really does is look at similarly qualified students and take the one from the minority as they could be coming from more significant hardships. Although not every situation involves a lower class minority student and a higher class white student, affirmative action focuses on the larger historical pattern of underrepresentation and discrimination faced by minorities.

Eliminating these factors in college applications is a crucial step to achieve equity. Whether you get a perfect 1600 or the lowest possible score of 400 on the SAT, it is likely a reflection of the resources and support you have had. And for those who might be lacking the support that encourages and helps to do better academically, affirmative action was the way to help blur the lines.