Reply to NYTs: if affirmative action goes, say buy-bye to legacy, EA/ED, and most athletic preferences

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Reply to "NYTs: if affirmative action goes, say buy-bye to legacy, EA/ED, and most athletic preferences"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It will be interesting to see whether the ruling prohibits consideration of gender.

I don’t see why colleges would eliminate preference for athletes if affirmative action is banned. What’s the rationale?

I understand why ED and legacy could be eliminated but it may not be in the colleges’ interests to do so. [/quote]

Right - I think the OP’s topic headline doesn’t reflect the article. It did refer to ED and legacy admissions being at risk, but not athletic preferences at all. Colleges definitely do NOT look at them the same way.

[b]If anything, colleges are going to rely upon athletic preferences even more because that’s a clear race-blind way that can have the effect of increasing underrepresented minority students.[/b][/quote]

PP here - except that the VAST majority of college athletes are white. There are a few, disproportionately popular sports where Black athletes are overrepresented, but they represent a small portion of college athletes. Sports like soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, tennis, cross country, squash, fencing, sailing, crew, golf, swimming and diving—they’re all overwhelmingly white. That’s part of why athletic preferences are part of the debate: many privileged, white kids get admissions preferences because of athletics. [/quote]

At the end of the day, though, athletic achievement IS merit-based (or at least should be outside of Varsity Blues scandal-type situations), which is vastly different than legacy programs that are based on being lucky enough to be born with alumni parents or born into a financial situation where they don’t need to  worry about financial aid and apply ED.

My point is that athletic preferences are actually *not* a debate at these colleges. They might be part of the debate on forums like this one for the reasons that you’ve given (e.g. the “country club sports”), but they are NOT being looped into the same category as legacy preferences and ED. Once again, the OP misrepresented the article, which mentioned legacy and ED admissions being under scrutiny but not a single word about athletic preferences being under scrutiny.[/quote]

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