Is Race a Deciding Factor for College Admissions?

As Seniors in high school all around the country are receiving letters of admission or rejection to colleges, I can't help but think about how someones "race" plays a role in the decision.

We would like to think that race has absolutely no factor when applicants are being looked at by admission offices, but unfortunately that's not the case.

According to the New York Times, some highly selective schools, like Rice University, take race into account when looking at their applicants. Chris Muñoz, vice president for enrollment at Rice since 2006, says, “From an academic standpoint, the qualifying records, the test scores, how many AP courses, they may all look alike,  that’s when we might go and say, ‘This kid has a Spanish surname. Let’s see what he wrote about.’ Right or wrong, it can make a difference.” 

How much a "difference" does it actually make? Unfortunately, it's very unclear at Rice University and many other institutions. The one thing we can look at however is the numbers--they can't lie. Although its a small margin, multiracial applicants being admitted is 23%, while whites are being admitted at 19%. Four percent can really make a difference when looking at thousands of applicants. 

Do you think college admissions should take race into a factor when looking at applicants? 

The Facts of Racial Profiling.

 Although we like to think that there
 is equality between blacks and whites in our country, the truth is, we are far from it. There has bee a constant struggle ever since the 1800's to treat blacks as equal as whites. We start with slavery, then to black codes, then to Jim Crow laws: The list code go on forever. Although we are no where near where we used to be, we still are racial profiling, especially when it comes to looking for suspects breaking the law to become incarcerated.


Unfortunately, people of color have been arrested at much higher rates than whites even when committing extremely similar times. The Huffington Post, "Black males had an imprisonment rate that was nearly seven times higher than the incarceration rate of white men". Seven times is such a staggering number to begin with, but we should also take population into consideration, which will makes theses numbers even more unfathomable. White people make up the supermajority at 72% of the U.S. population, while Blacks only make up a mere 13%. So, if we take population into consideration, Blacks are actually being imprisoned at a rate of 35% compared to whites.

Is it because of history that has made it harder for us to wrap our brains around that it is just color defining the people? Or is it the fact that some people are still for segregation as we have seen the many attempts to halt desegregation throughout our nations history.

Why do you think we are still "judging" people by the color of their skin? Do you think blacks are treated as equally as whites?

All comments are welcome!