Admissions policies are changing for the better in Michigan - or are they?
An affirmative action policy unveiled Thursday for admissions at the University of Michigan eliminates automatic advantages for minorities but still allows the school to consider race. The plan also demands more work of the university and its applicants, who must write more personal essays and provide information about their lives and family backgrounds, including parents' education and income.
"More" personal essays? Why isn't one personal essay enough? And why should they have to provide information about their family backgrounds? What if a student considers that to be none of Michigan's business? I mean, I wrote a personal essay for college, but it didn't have anything to do with my family, or "overcoming hardships."
Two short essays will be added to the current requirement for a long essay. Prospective students will be able to choose from a range of topics, including a few that ask how a student's presence on campus would add to its diversity. It also asks applicants to ''describe an experience that you've had where cultural diversity has made a difference to you.''
Gah! So they've gone from engineering diversity to forcing each student to justify his or her contribution to campus diversity. What a crock. By this line of thinking, I would never have been admitted to the U of South Carolina, because, as a white middle-class female from a rural SC town, I added nothing to the diversity of the campus as far as "group membership" went. On paper, the only way in which I stood out was my academic achievements, and it's sad to think that students will now be forced to downplay their academics and create some contorted essay about how they will contribute to the "diversity" of the campus.
As far as that goes, how is a student supposed to know if they're "diverse" enough, unless it's a given that only minority group membership will count for this? Is Michigan really going to admit any NAAWP members, or hard-core Republican students, on the grounds that Michigan doesn't have enough of those already? Can those students sue on the grounds of diversity if they're rejected?
Applicants have to write how "cultural diversity" has affected their lives. Does this mean that anyone raised in a segregated environment, be it Asian, black, or white, doesn't have a shot at admissions? Or are minorities automatically considered to be "culturally diverse," even if (as is the case in Philly), their neighborhoods and schools were almost completely racially homogenous?
''We're changing things, and they will change more,'' [University Provost Paul] Courant said. But he predicted that the diversity of next fall's freshman class will differ little from this fall's.
If I were an optimist, I'd assume this means that Michigan trusts the students to provide adequate diversity without being assigned points for race. Instead, I believe it means that the new AA is the same as the old AA.
Posted by kswygert at August 29, 2003 11:11 AM