I worked in admissions, and believe me,igt is atrocious for equitable access to education. I’ll give an example:
Applicant 1: Manhattan, Elite HS, Leader Of 2 clubs, traveled the world, received SAT training for 4 year, GPA 3.5. No hurdles in live whatsoever
Applicant 2: Rural Alabama, works 20h in McD since 12, 1 Club membership, takes care of 2 siblings because parents are addicts. SAT average, 3.5 GPA
Now thanks to affirmative action,you can contextualize what each student attained and overcame to achieve their test results and GPA. Applicant 2 has had to work much harder to get that GPA, with barely any freetime, and affirmative action will recognize that. In the end, admission should not be about the best HS grade, but about who will be performing best at university, so its about potential. And SAT and GPA doesn’t tell much about potential if not contextualized.
To repeat the point I just made above, it whatever adjustment made for equitable access should be down to how well-off one’s background is, not anchored on a persons’ genetics coinciding partly with other people who are mainly from poorer backgrounds.
It makes no sense to go by genetics which have a less than 1 correlation to being poor (hence treats as deserving of help many who are not deserving and as not-deserving many who are) when it’s not really harder to go with the actual being poor, were correlation is perfect.
The only reason I see for choosing the very imperfect metric rather than the perfect one which is almost as easilly measured is that those choosing are not in fact doing it to help people who have to face far higher barriers in present day society, but in fact are either serving different objectives or have hidden priorities which are more important and which for them make boosting the chances of those from poorer backgrounds undesireable.
