An editorial in The Hoya from Oct. 20 urges Georgetown to cease “the practice of race-based affirmative action” and “evaluate applicants on their merit alone.” The editorial board claims that Georgetown admissions “discriminates against particular demographics” and “specifically against fully qualified Asian students,” while also perpetuating “racist attitudes towards Asians.”
Having served many years as a faculty member on undergraduate admissions, I know those charges are disturbing and false. Admission to Georgetown already depends on merit. What I experienced as a member of admissions committees is passionate commitment to reaching out to all demographics and finding superb and meritorious candidates, including those who might otherwise have been overlooked because of geographic and socio-economic status or ethnic, sexual and religious identities.
Judging by the content of the editorial, I gather its authors conflate “merit,” or at least “academic merit,” with high SAT or ACT scores. Yet surely they know the research: According to The Washington Post, students with family incomes over $200,000 are likely to have SAT scores more than 300 points higher than those of students from families earning $20,000 to $40,000 — and more than 200 points higher than those of students with family incomes of $40,000 to $100,000. Moreover, according to College Board, female SAT scores better predict subsequent academic excellence in college work than male SAT scores.
Are we sure, then, SAT scores reflect academic merit?
The admissions committees I have served on bring a comprehensive understanding of merit to each applicant’s dossier.
Consider a candidate whose school in an underserved community cut Advanced Placement classes from the curriculum for budget reasons. She recruited classmates to form a study group and teach themselves the AP curricula. When this same candidate earns 4’s and 5’s on her AP exams, I definitely credit her with academic merit — and with meritorious initiative that contributes to the common good.
When I evaluate two school newspaper editors with comparable and strong GPAs, I look further into their files. One may have worked on the newspaper, outside school hours, for four years, rising through the ranks, while maintaining a superb academic record. The other may have enrolled in journalism classes all four years, earning credits and grades included in the GPA, preparing the newspaper during class time as an assignment. In evaluating the two, I consider the possibilities that the first editor may have carried a greater burden overall in working on the newspaper and that journalism grades may have inflated the second editor’s GPA.
And, yes, when I learn an applicant worked twenty hours a week during the school year, and more than forty hours during the summers, to help meet family costs like rent, while still maintaining high grades, I find great merit in that applicant.
The editorial says that “lifting up some minority groups by disadvantaging others does not achieve the idea of racial justice” affirmative action set out to accomplish. This claim is fallacious. It also undefended, since the editorial never stipulates the goal affirmative action programs aim to achieve.
Hamilton Holmes, who later became a neurosurgeon, was valedictorian of his Atlanta high school; Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who became an internationally renowned journalist and Doctor Honoris Causa at Georgetown, was third in that same class and editor of their high school newspaper that served as the main news source for the entire black community in Atlanta.
These two were not permitted to even apply to the University of Georgia or, at least, have their applications considered. When the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia ordered the university to admit them on the merits, they were not permitted to register for classes. When the court then ordered the university to let them register, their professors ignored them in class. They were not permitted to live in the residence halls or eat in the dining hall. Although all Georgia freshmen were required to take and pass a swimming test in the university pool, they were not permitted to swim in that pool. This is the kind of systemic and long-term racial injustice against black people have faced for decades that affirmative action policies were meant to redress.
But that does not mean that affirmative action policies were designed to disadvantage applicants from non-oppressed groups. Exaggerating for effect, I can assure the editorial board that, after affirmative action, the University of Georgia did not forbid white students to apply, or, if admitted, to live in the residence halls. But if Georgia began to receive more applications from valedictorians and newspaper editors because affirmative action required them to consider applications from black students, perhaps fewer white applicants would be admitted overall.
The applicant pool was larger, and there might have been more meritorious candidates, so some applicants who hoped or expected to be admitted might well be disappointed.
Hypothetically, suppose two valedictorian applicants, one white and one black, apply to the same college.
If the white student is not accepted, when the black student is, would this necessarily mean the white one is a victim of discrimination? Perhaps the white student’s application essay showed sloppy thinking — or the transcript records a pattern of early withdrawal from classes not likely to yield an A. Perhaps the black student had to travel across town each day to take a calculus class at the nearby community college?
Suppose further that the SAT score of the black valedictorian is considerably lower than that of the white valedictorian. In that case, is the white applicant necessarily discriminated against if not accepted, when or because, the black valedictorian is accepted?
Should the factors of “sloppy essay” or “daily cross-town commute to Calculus class” play no role in an admissions decision? What does it mean, in this hypothetical, for an admissions team to decide on the merits?
Fully qualified Asian-American applicants may not be admitted to Georgetown, but this does not mean admissions discriminates against them. Many wonderful and fully qualified applicants are not admitted. Class size is limited. Among all applicants, Georgetown seeks to create an entering class with all kinds of excellences and merit across the spectrum, a class that together enables and comprises the rich diversity that a national and global university — not to mention a Jesuit university — demands in 2017. Otherwise the quality of education offered at Georgetown suffers, and the university does not fulfill its obligation to contribute to the common good.
When I was a graduate student at Princeton University, the department secretary shared with me that she had been admitted, in her senior year of high school, to the prestigious Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School. At that time, women were not considered for, or permitted to pursue many, careers. A diploma from Katharine Gibbs was the path to a well-paying job as an administrative assistant or executive secretary. Just before this woman was to enroll in Katherine Gibbs in September, she received another letter revoking her admission. The letter explained that the school had not realized she was Jewish, and the class already had its quota of Jews. That is discrimination.
If the editorial board has evidence admissions committees anywhere are pursuing policies designed to exclude, or set quotas, for Asian-American applicants, as happened historically to blacks, Jews and women, I hope The Hoya calls out such practices as discriminatory and unjust.
But if admissions committees, including Georgetown admissions, employ a comprehensive understanding of merit as they go out into the highways and byways to seek out candidates whose merit has previously been unidentified, unencouraged and unrecognized by admission to college, then more power to them. Our society benefits.
Marilyn McMorrow
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Government Department