Editorial: University of Texas should rethink admissions process

On October 10, the Supreme Court heard the case of Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Fisher is a 22-year-old recent graduate of Louisiana State University — Baton Rouge who is suing the University of Texas on the claim that she was denied admission because she is white.

An important factor in the case was Texas’s Top Ten Percent Plan. The program, which guarantees admission to any public university in Texas for the top 10 percent of all high schools’ graduating classes, was designed to increase ethnic diversity at universities. Those who do not get into the University of Texas under the Top Ten Percent Plan are evaluated based on a “holistic” admissions profile, which includes grades, standardized testing scores, volunteering and extracurricular activities — and under these criteria extra consideration is given to Black and Hispanic students.

Fisher was not admitted to the University of Texas under the Top Ten Percent Plan, so her application to the university was evaluated holistically.

She claims that the university improperly considers ethnicity when determining admission when there are “race-neutral” and more effective ways of achieving diversity. She claims that the Top Ten Percent Plan has added a substantial amount of diversity to the University of Texas, so the rest of the students who are applying should not be evaluated based on ethnicity.

While critiquing affirmative action as a whole is beyond the scope of this editorial, we think that there are problems with both this lawsuit and with the university admissions process in general.

Firstly, the Fisher v. Texas lawsuit is problematic because Fisher cannot prove that her ethnicity was the deciding factor in the university’s decision to deny her admission. The University of Texas — like many other universities, including Pitt — decides admission based on a large number of factors like personal statements, interviews, and letters of recommendation. Somewhat separate from the issue of affirmative action, we believe that Fisher cannot reasonably argue that someone who was equal to her but of a different ethnicity might have been accepted in the same year. An admissions process that ranks students based on many factors — personal statements, extra-curriculars and the difficulty of their high school coursework included — is fairly subjective.

With this in mind, we think that the Top Ten Percent Plan is somewhat misguided. We think that all students should be judged by the same criteria when applying for undergraduate admissions. We don’t think it’s fair to offer a small subset of the population admission without having each individual go through the same application process, especially considering that the academic rigor of every high school is different. Although no application process can be without flaws, and although the diversifying effects the Top Ten Percent Plan has had on Texas public universities is admirable, a more standardized admissions process might be more suitable.

We think that the university admissions process is more obscure than it should be. Universities should make their admissions processes more available to the public so that students know the criteria for which they’ll be judged. For example, while Pitt provides statistics on the average GPA, rank and SAT/ACT scores it chooses to accept, it does not give specific information regarding the criteria used to analyze other factors like extra-curriculars, personal statements, letters of recommendation and diversity. While there is a possibility that students would use this information to “game the system,” we think the benefit of students having more access to the information would outweigh the risks.

While Fisher’s allegations are problematic for a variety of reasons, it’s true that every student can contribute to upholding diversity in some way. The University of Texas would do well to consider emphasizing various types of diversity — including diversity of religion, sexual orientation, and age, for example — and it should make its admissions process more transparent.