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Monday's Most Active Threads
The topics with the most engagement yesterday included an Asian American student opposing affirmative action, the COVID shutdown, a husband's affair, and Kristin Mink.
Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "Asian American student with 1590 SAT score blames affirmative action for rejections from 6 colleges" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original post consists entirely of a quote from an article about an Asian American college applicant who was turned down by six top colleges despite outstanding test scores and grade point average. The student blames affirmative action for these results and has joined in two lawsuits that are trying to end affirmative action. The original poster did not include any of his own thoughts, but they were apparently not needed to provoke discussion on this topic. The topics of affirmative action, discrimination against Asian Americans in college admissions, and the court cases have all been well-covered in our college forum. The court cases, which are currently before the Supreme Court, could literally be decided any day now. A significant number of posters believe the decisions will be favorable to Asian Americans and are looking forward to such an outcome with high expectations. Other posters appear to be getting frustrated with the entire subject and this student's plight was not met with as much sympathy as it might once have been. As posters were quick to point out, two of the schools are "test blind" and, therefore, his test scores wouldn't have been a factor. In addition, while the University of California, Berkeley was one of the colleges that rejected him, California has banned affirmative action in college admissions. The student alleges that he would have had a significantly higher chance of being accepted if he were Black rather than Asian. But, the lawsuit against Harvard alleges discrimination against Asian Americans in favor of White applicants. As such, many of those responding view the student's joining the legal action as performative without a lot of legal justification. Those responding are able to point to multiple factors that they believe make college admissions inherently unfair and don't seem to accept that the process is any more unfair for this student or Asian Americans in general. Despite this student's outstanding stats, many posters are not impressed and claim that such test scores and GPAs are not uncommon. For the most part, this thread simply rehashes the same old arguments about affirmative action and other factors that impact college admissions. There is debate about the value of test scores and GPA versus less objective factors that might indicate an ability to succeed. Everyone seems to agree that the admissions process is unfair, but they all also think it is biased against them. So, they disagree on the nature of the unfairness.