Look beyond standards to judge college admissions

Celinda Sandoval

Should race or ethnicity be considered a factor in determining

college admissions policies?

I am a senior seeking admission to colleges. So how should a

school decide whether to admit me? How do I decide which college to

attend?

If college was just about books and lectures, there would be no

reason for college campuses. We could order a textbook on line and

watch the lecture on videotape. It is not.

The most important learning is from classmates. The debutante

needs to hear the realities of poverty from the crop picker’s

daughter. What better way to compare religions than when the Jew,

Muslim, Christian and Buddhist break bread in the commons? To test

our own prejudices, we must be faced with those unlike ourselves. A

campus diverse in all ways will lead to the broadest education. I

know, because my high school, Costa Mesa High, is like that.

At my school, I have learned so much about different cultures just

from talking with my friends.

In my seventh-grade PE class, we started comparing feet. A

classmate who immigrated to America three years earlier said

someone’s toes looked Chinese. When we asked how she knew, she

provided a history lesson on the Chinese and French control of

Vietnam, her native land.

During water polo season, I knew exactly what time the sun set

because one of my teammates was Muslim and could not eat until

sundown during Ramadan. We agreed that being in a pool was not the

same as drinking water and so did not break religious stricture.

I have seen authentic Polynesian fire dancing from a guy in my

choir. My golf teammate taught me how to say hello in Korean, her

native tongue. Another friend speaks Afrikaans. My mock trial team is

made up of immigrants from almost every continent. Explaining

American constitutional rights took on more meaning when I realized

my friends did not have these rights in their native countries.

Taxpayers fund public universities, so the criteria for entrance

must be fair. Fairness is determined in the eye of the beholder.

Right now, ways to gain admission to college are called fair by some

and unfair by others. For instance, is it fair for one student to

have an advantage over another just because a parent went to that

college? A student can’t influence that factor any more than he can

influence his race and how it affected his life.

Most colleges use a student’s grade point average as an important

factor for admittance. But not all schools have advanced placement

classes that boost grades. Every teacher in every school uses

different criteria to arrive at each grade. What if a student worked

much harder and learned more for a C grade at one school, and would

have received an A grade at another? Grades are not fair and

impartial.

To solve that problem, a standardized test was devised, so

personalities and differing standards wouldn’t enter into the end

result. However, some kids go to school with 12 years of wonderful

teachers and take expensive test preparation classes before taking

the test a number of times. Another test taker might be stuck in a

school where no one wants to be, including the teachers, and not be

fluent in English. Students may not have had the necessary books and

supplies to learn and prepare. Some work long hours to support their

families, so don’t have adequate study time. Is that fair?

In a fair world, each college would get to know all about each

applicant, so it could tell what “struggles” had affected the factors

for admission that we now call “fair.” With thousands of applicants

for each public university spot, that may never happen. Since

students of some races have traditionally faced more “struggles” to

succeed in the factors used by colleges to decide entrance, race has

been used as a compensating factor.

The Supreme Court will soon decide if race can be used as a factor

at all when deciding admission into a public school. Until there is a

lawsuit challenging the admission of a $1-million donor’s daughter

with a lower grade point average and test scores than a fellow

applicant not admitted, let’s accept the fact that each student is

different and admit each student for what life and academic

experiences he or she will bring to the college campus, including his

or her race.

* EDITOR’S NOTE: Celinda Sandoval is a senior at Cost Mesa High

School.