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Jonathan Aguilar Mr. Hoague AP Lit and Composition, Period 1 15 Dec. 2013 Future Career With so many different job options available to pursue in the land of opportunity called America, I never really knew what I wanted to be. At a young age, I knew that school was the key to college and being successful, but it never helped me discover what I really wanted to with my life. It wasn’t until my dad took in a long time friend of his to stay with us for a while that I knew what I wanted to pursue in the future. My dad’s friend, Marcelo, was an architect who worked for Westfield, which I instantly recognized as the designers of the mall I would always go to on the weekends. He gave me a tour of his office, and I was intrigued by the complex programs he used and the 3­Dimensional models he had created of malls Westfield planned to build. I fell in love with the innovation and creativity that was involved with architecture and knew I wanted to be an engineer or architect in the future. However, there is a distinct difference between the two that I saw. Engineering is solving a problem by modifying an existing product or creating a new product never seen before, while Architecture is creating different versions of the same basic design. I wanted to create something never seen before so I leaned towards engineering. Therefore, I decided to take an introduction to engineering course my Freshman year of high school. The class taught me the basics about programs such as 2D­Cad, Solidworks, and Archicad giving me a stellar background in some programs engineers use or are familiar with, and gave me a taste of what I could possibly be doing in the future. I loved the class, and

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As higher education has become the most popular decision for high school graduates, universities have faced a tougher time in trying to distinguish individuals. With many individuals having amazing grades and stellar SAT scores, sometimes little things like leadership, facing hardships, or income can help boost ones chances of making the top tier of universities. One aspect, which highly selective universities believe is essential to a thriving campus is a diverse population of students. Therefore, created through the Civil Act of 1964, affirmative action’s sole purpose is to give minorities such as Hispanics and African Americans an advantage in admission processes in order to promote a healthy learning environment. However, being a certain ethnicity is a quality that not all competitive scholars can attain no matter how hard they try. For instance, William Bowen and his colleagues reported “Being Black or Latino increased one’s chances of admissions by 28 percentage points but that being low­income increased one’s chances not at all” (Kahlenberg, “Why not an income­based affirmative action?”). This is just flat out unfair, how being a certain race provides such a huge advantage in college admissions, especially to selective colleges. Affirmative Action is not only unfair because it provides an unjust advantage to minorities, but also because students that get accepted because of their race suffer in the long run. The big objective of affirmative action is to compensate for certain individuals that don’t have the same resources as other students in the admission process, and ultimately to provide a diverse student population in order to provide a positive impact for students to learn and the school overall. Even though it is with good intentions, affirmative action is prejudice and discriminates certain groups and races. What colleges should be searching for is not racial diversity, but as explained by Justice Lewis F. Powell in University of California v. Bakke “is intellectual diversity, diversity of judgment and viewpoint” (Cohen). Diversity is instrumental when it comes to helping people learn, but by allowing a

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certain applicant an admission to a highly selective college because of he/she is a certain color is discriminate against the other races, and unconstitutional. Moreover, affirmative action doesn’t even help out all the minorities out like it claims it does. Affirmative action is suppose to give an advantage to minorities, but Asian­Americans have actually faced harder times during the admissions process as more years go by. As more Asian­Americans earn good grades and score in the higher percentile on required college tests like the SAT, the lower the chances Asian Americans will get admitted to the most selective colleges will become. Not surprisingly, Larry Elder, an author and the host of a nationally syndicated radio studied the University of Michigan’s applicants and discovered that “Of Asian students with 1240 on the SAT and a high school GPA of 3.2 in 2005, only 10 percent got into Michigan. But 14 percent of whites with those stats were admitted, as were 88 percent of Hispanics and 92 percent of blacks” (Elder). This shows us how even though Asian Americans have the higher scores and GPA it does not mean they will necessarily get admitted as a Hispanic or African American has priority over them. There are plenty of examples, like Asian American Jian Li who graduated at the top of his class, scored a perfect 2400 on his SAT, and near perfect on his three subject tests, but was rejected by the top tier colleges (Elder). Only because Li complained with the Department of Education was he awarded a spot at Yale; otherwise he would have not been accepted to a college of his choice. Affirmative action discourages students sometimes from earning demanding grades and great SAT scores as they know someone with the ethnicity of Hispanic or African American will always have the advantage over them. Besides, discriminating against certain races, affirmative action also hurts scholars who get admitted to colleges due to his/her race. The whole purpose to emphasize diversity, especially for selective institutions is to create an

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environment that well students cooperate together and directly help one another in order to improve overall academic excellence and learning. However, getting accepted based on affirmative action creates a stigma, which actually ends up hurting minorities in the long run. Carl Cohen, a philosophy professor at the University of Michigan, points this out when he states, “Preference thus creates a link between minority and preferred and inferior performance” (Cohen). This actually hurts learning and inhibits progress as races such as Caucasians judge minorities like African Americans and Hispanics. It causes a split as minority groups are more inclined to interact with students that are also Hispanic and African American, which defeats the purpose of diversity and interaction between all kinds of students regardless of his/her background. Even students who are qualified and did not need affirmative action to be admitted to selective colleges are tainted with a bad stigma, which affects his/her performance and overall college experience. This stigma causes many devastating effects to individuals, as in the long run affirmative action causes more harm than benefits to minorities, and for Caucasians provides little help as the diversity is hindered due to this stigma. Affirmative action causes minority students to attend colleges in which they were mismatched leading to horrible consequences. One effect, is that students that are minorities drop out or do not continue their pursuit of a specific career due to affirmative action, and how it misplaced them in the wrong college. Minorities will benefit from attending colleges where they belong and did not rely on affirmative action, which is an idea expressed by Richard Sandler, a UCLA law professor and economist, and Stuart Taylor Jr., a Washington Post journalist when they claimed a “Student who would flourish at, say, Wake Forest, instead finds himself at Duke, where the professors are not teaching at a pace designed for him” (Sander and Taylor Jr). It will become eminent when a student should not have been admitted to a certain college, as he/she struggles to keep up in the classroom,

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needs more individual attention and help, and ranks in the lower portion of her class. As a minority student may be under prepared, the stress of trying to keep up with students that are well­prepared causes the student to begin to panic and doubt himself/herself, which ultimately leads to an even harder time to learn and catch up with the class. Therefore, African American students who want to attain a doctorate or pursue a specific career are twice as likely not to do so if they enroll in a school where they have been misplaced (Sander and Taylor Jr). Also, African Americans rank in the bottom 20 percent of their class and are four times more probable to fail the bar exam than a Caucasian student (Sander and Taylor Jr). This proves, that sometimes attending a more selective college can prove to be too academically demanding and too competitive for students who are admitted through affirmative action. In my own case as a Hispanic student that attends a competitive high school I witness the split between students striving for academic excellence and students who can’t keep up or don’t emphasize academics as much. I personally would not like to be mismatched and suffer from being labeled by stigmas due to affirmative action. Furthermore, I have grown up and attended the Temple City School District my entire academic career, so I do not see a reason I should be given an advantage from my Asian­American peers as I have had the same resources and opportunities as them. To conclude, affirmative action is not necessary and actually hurts minority groups for a variety of reasons including stigmas, higher dropout rates, and misplacing individuals. Along with these reasons, affirmative action is unconstitutional providing an advantage to individuals based on something that cannot be changed like one’s race. There are alternatives to affirmative action. For example, UCs no longer require SAT subject tests, they have expanded the admissions process to include adversities and other factors and not solely on GPA and test scores, and they have provided more financial aid, but do not consider ethnicity a preference. They just try to find students that come from different backgrounds,

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but are still qualified and at an overall similar academic level compared to other UC students. Some schools like UCLA have actually gone a step further and helped 58 high schools and 24 middle schools in the Los Angeles County with the SAT and requirements for admittance (Gordon). Also, when UCLA banned affirmative action due to Proposition 209, the amount of degrees earned by minorities remained the same as it had been before affirmative action (Sander and Taylor Jr). This occurred as the stigma was uplifted, and students from minorities were more inclined to attend as they would not face judgment from their peers. It caused the graduation rate for minorities to increase, and it proved to be a more efficient system. UCs have been some of the few schools that have taken a few steps towards eliminating affirmative action. If all schools collaborate and eliminate affirmative action, the benefits will outweigh the negatives as not only minority students will flourish as students, but also the Caucasians and Asian Americans that were rejected due to racial preference will attend colleges they should have made. Works Cited Miller. K. Levine J. Dr. Burgess J. (2007). Prentice Hall Biology. Boston, Massachusetts Pearson Education Inc.

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Campbell N. Reece J. Urry L. Cain M. Wasserman S. (2008). Biology Eighth edition. Boston, Massachusetts Pearson Education Inc.