Is the College Admission Process Fair - Research Paper Example

Is the college admission process fair? Introduction: Today’s technological world is progressingat an alarming rate. In order to cope up with the speed of this progress and to survive in this highly competitive environment it is very important for any individual to pursue for higher education. No one wants to be left behind in this race and struggle to access an appropriate institution to equip him/herself with all the tools required to survive. Admission for higher education is becoming one of the major problems for many students due to the technicalities in various aspects of its processing. The standardized testing bias, minority quotas and legacy system are among important concerns of the students when they go and apply for admission in their desired colleges. So these different privileges given to some and taken from the others may raise an important question. Is the college admission process fair? It is a subject that needs an argument to analyze the pros and cons of such aspects in the admission process before any conclusion can be made. I believe that some of these components in college admissions might be unfair to students while the others can be in a way beneficial. So I will argue that they balance out each other making the overall college admission a fair process. Legacy System: Now legacy as per definition means that any of your relatives, parents or grandparents, have graduated at the same university where you take admission as a legate (Allen 2001). Some of the colleges and universities even considered uncles, aunts and other relatives to be part of legacy. So the basic criteria are variable depending on the different colleges and universities. The basic aim of such criteria was to introduce a college community system where, as a tradition, families will join the same institution for many generations. This helps build up that special traditional bond and further increases the repute of the college. The second intention was to obtain more capital for the development of the institution. It was observed that the alumni families show a trend of giving more donations than the other families (Allen 2001). Admission on this basis is what many considered as unfair. Firstly, all the members of the same family tree cannot have the same IQ and it cannot be assumed that they are equal in competing with those who have to go through many hurdles before taking an admission in the same university. Therefore, it is injustice to those applicants more capable than the legates but are not accepted only because they are not a relative of a university graduate. However, if we look at the same issue in another perspective, the picture might not look that bad. A student can only contribute about 45 to 50% of what college spends on them. So where will the remaining money come from? It is estimated that most of this money comes from the donations made by the alumni families. If this deficit is not filled by them the whole structure might collapse. This is the reason that most of the top-notch universities like Harvard and Princeton also have high legacy admission rates (Allen 2001). The second misconception is that arrogant and dumb students of rich parents ready to pay huge donations are accepted under the heading of legacy. This is not really the case as a research indicates that most of the legates have higher GPA than the non-legates (Allen 2001). So this concludes that there is some amount of injustice in this particular aspect of admission process but not so much as it has been highlighted. And also this system is required to sustain the whole infrastructure which provides education to many other deserving students also. Minority Quota: Minority quota is viewed as discrimination where some percentages of college seats are given based on racial segregation. For example in India there are many different minority groups that are given admissions based on their casts. This is a sensitive issue and more detail analysis is required to understand this quota system. Most of the minority groups do not enjoy the same liberties and status in the society as the majority groups. Therefore,they cannot have the same luxury of availing the high standards of primary education. So reserving a quota for them at higher levels of education gives them a fair chance to earn back that respect in the society that every human being rightly deserves. Standardized testing bias: As we know that most of the colleges take a standardized test that will evaluate the abilities of a student and the result of this test has a great influence on the decision of accepting or rejecting the application for admission. However, there is an issue associated to such testing systems. There is a high probability that it may be biased. A biased test can be defined as one that favors some members of the group more than the others (Sternberg et al 2011). As some of the applicants may belong to different cultural backgrounds this bias is inevitable. This standardized system of testing had to face much criticism such as the language issues (Phelps 2005). Most of the advanced vocabulary used for these exams favors those who enjoy English as their first language. If we take an example of USA, there are many foreign immigrants struggling to find their way through the language barrier. But for them also there is a standard testing system and they have to pass through the same screening as any US native student to pass the qualifying exam. There are other cultural barriers that are in the way of this standardized testing system and challenge its existence (Eggen et al 2001). But in my view again it is in a way a balanced approach. For those who are learning ways of a new culture, they must adapt quickly to the native society and try to overcome these hurdles. If liberties are given to them such as modified entrance exam that suits their language and culture then they might never even try to camouflage in their environment. Moreover, it’s not practically possible to modify and design huge number of differentexams suitable for each student’s caliber and cultural background.Evaluating everyone on the standard exams has benefits that outweigh this minor criticism. Conclusion: From our discussion, we can conclude that although Legacy, minority quotas and standardized testing bias may have certain elements that seem to be unfair, the deeper analysis of these elements exposes the need of their existence. Therefore, these aspects negate each other and balance most of the unfair associations making the overall college admission process fair. Works Cited Allen, Andrew. College Admissions Trade Secrets: A Top Private College Counselor Reveals the Secrets, Lies, and Tricks of the College Admissions Process. New York: Writers Club Press, 2001. Print. Eggen, Paul D, Donald P. Kauchak, and Stuart Garry. Educational Psychology: Windows on Classrooms. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Merrill Prentice Hall, 2001. Print. Phelps, Richard P. Defending Standardized Testing. Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005. Web. Sternberg, Robert J, Linda Jarvin, and Elena L. Grigorenko. Explorations in Giftedness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print Read More