Does College Universities Catorized Race?

College Universities Categorizing Race

Although many colleges and universities require you to put your ethnicity on a college application it makes future students uncomfortable and wonder if they are being chosen by their race. Universities all over have accepted applicants based off their race because the admissions think just because a white person's test scores are higher, they will do better than an average black person or vice versa. Universities are starting to be sued and are going to court because of this situation. Many applicants for example, the U.S supreme court case with Jennifer Gratz. She was a high school student at the time and wanted to attend the University of Michigan. Despite her being well quantified to attend the university she still didn't get accepted into the institution. She then believed that admissions were giving preferences to minorities "If you give extra points for being of a particular race, then you're not giving applicants an equal opportunity" (Gratz 739). She took the case to court and was the lead plaintiff. Although the ruling came too late to help her, she ended up winning the case. The judge then realized how much racial preferences were affected by different universities and found out in other cases that their admission system was illegal.

The racial admission policies have increased gradually since the civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. Affirmative action became the common usage to describe efforts to increase the number of African-American in U.S. workplaces and on college campuses" (740). Michigan tried to make an effort to promote minority-outreach programs to the admissions system. It takes applicants race into account to decide whether to accept or reject the applicant. Colleges shouldn't use raced based admissions policies to promote discrimination against minorities. (title 742) It still wouldn't be fair to applicants. For example, a Hispanic student wants to get admitted with high test scores and GPA but still gets turned down because there aren't any more spots open for Hispanics. It's almost like there're using your test scores and GPA to determine how your college years would be. Whoever meets all the requirements should automatically get accepted into the university. Studies have shown the 15 percent of Hispanics and blacks would get accepted and when graduation occurs 5 percent of those students will graduate. Therefore, it wouldn't make any sense to set a certain amount for each race because more than half of those students wouldn't finish. It will also make admissions look like they are stereotyping and discriminating against students. (742) "Students are individuals and they should be treated as individuals, not as fungible members of racial and ethnic groups" (Clegg 742) It also depends on how well an ethnicity does in universities. Admissions admit