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Students across the world invest countless hours into their high school education, aspiring towards a common goal: college acceptance. Over 74% of all high school graduates in America plan on attending college. However, with the top twenty universities gradually increasing in selectivity, only 66% of students can fulfill this objective. This competition places incredible pressure on high school students to excel in impressive extracurricular activities and maintain an outstanding grade point average. Nevertheless, even the most qualified students face rejection. This continuing trend has come to pose a worrying question: Is the college admissions process fair, or is it tailored towards a certain demographic of individuals?
Legacy refers to the preferential treatment of applicants with a close family connection to the university’s alumni. From 2010 to 2015, the legacy admit rate at Harvard University was 33.6%, in comparison to the 5.9% acceptance rate for regular applicants. In other words, a student was over five times as likely to be admitted to such a prestigious university based on legacy alone. As a result of this significant advantage, many argue that legacy provides an unfair edge to select demographics of students. After all, success in a student is typically determined by factors such as self-efficacy and perseverance. Studies have shown that such noncognitive skills develop separately from a student’s upbringing. Therefore, family is not necessarily a determining factor of success. Favoring legacy students often results in the rejection of excellent students in favor of mediocre ones due to the large gap in acceptance rates. This policy targets first-generation students, immigrants and any other individuals without alumni parents, creating a bias against such individuals during the college admissions process.
Furthermore, private universities are known to aim for a large variety of geographical locations among their student body. The Dartmouth Class of 2028, for instance, admitted just 606 early decision applicants, drawn from 47 different US states and countries. In an attempt to meet such quotas, colleges admit a similar number of students from rural areas as they do from California, despite the less competitive pool of applications. Students from highly competitive school districts can therefore be placed at a disadvantage, as they are fighting against students from their own region for a limited number of spots. This geographical factor emphasizes residency and location in the college application process, potentially compromising the quality of admissions among highly prestigious universities.
Many disclaim such factors in the college admissions process, arguing that a student’s grade point average is ultimately the most important component in their application. Over 90% of students accepted to Princeton have a GPA above 3.75 unweighted. Evidently, satisfactory grades are a requirement for consideration at an Ivy League university. GPA is widely regarded as a fair predictor of college success among students, making it a reasonable factor for colleges to emphasize in applications. However, it is vital to note that GPA is not necessarily based entirely on merit. A study from the College Board depicted an 8% increase in the average GPA of private independent schools over the past few decades, but only a 0.6% increase in urban public schools. Despite these inflated grades, there has been little to no variation in AP testing results, with an average score difference of 0.3. This depicts how private and public school children share similar understandings of the class content, as reflected in their exam scores. Regardless, affluent school districts have continued to provide this unwarranted GPA inflation to their students, elevating their college applications with no regard to merit.
The college admissions process is renownedly dreaded among thousands of high school students in America. Some simply fear that they have not accomplished enough to remain in the top few percent of applicants. Others blame the constantly rising standards universities hold for their admissions. Regardless, the process is sufficiently stressful without the plethora of inequitable factors working against certain demographics. Irrelevant admission factors, such as where an individual resides or what level of education their parents received, have no place in the college admissions process.
