Anuj Patel
Week 8 Blog
ASA 002, Section A03 (Mondays 7:10-8:00)
ID: 998882783

          In Mark Tseng Putterman's article "What Asian Americans Are Bringing To Campus Movements For Racial Justice", Putterman mentions that there are certain goals Asian Americans try to achieve in society, and one of these goals includes fitting into their university (Putterman, 3-4). Putterman compares the population of Asian American students at college to other minority groups and finds that Asian Americans feel like they need to be their own group (Putterman 7). Later on in this article Putterman also mentions the importance of diversity within colleges, and I would agree with him here (Putterman 10). Drawing from my experiences, I would say that having diversity within colleges has both drawbacks as well as perks. For example, colleges within the UC (University of California) system have a supplemental questionnaire which allows applicants to explain their academic and extracurricular talents and obstacles (Sun, 2017). I do like the supplemental application, but I also feel like it is not given in the proper manner. I feel like in order to be fair for the whole applicant pool, this questionnaire should be attached to the regular University of California application and then reviewed at the same time instead of giving certain applicants extra consideration just because of their uniqueness. For example, if colleges admit too many people with high GPA but low test scores based on their excellent non-academic talents, then their statistics and ranks within US News decrease (Morse, Brooks and Mason 2016). Also, students who are admitted to their reach school often have a hard time meeting the academic challenges of those universities, which decreases the 4 year graduation rate and would also as a result lower the colleges ranking on US News (Morse, Brooks and Mason 2016). So yes, diversity is important, but may not be as important as academics!

Question: Should mentioning race be optional on college applications?

Picture:
http://dailybruin.com/2012/10/23/findings-by-law-professor-suggest-that-ucla-admissions-may-be-violating-prop-209/
(Boyarsky 2012)

References:

Boyarsky, Alexia. "Findings by law professor suggest that UCLA Admissions may be violating Prop 209." Daily Bruin. N.p., 23 Oct. 2012. Web. 19 May 2017. <http://dailybruin.com/2012/10/23/findings-by-law-professor-suggest-that-ucla-admissions-may-be-violating-prop-209/>.

Morse, Robert, Eric Brooks, and Matt Mason. "How U.S. News Calculated the 2017 Best Colleges Rankings." N.p., 12 Sept. 2016. Web. 19 May 2017. <https://www.bing.com/cr?IG=3CE19359F09A43D28806645C027F6A5F&CID=1005556E90A564C52AD75FE6910D65BB&rd=1&h=r8hYn1WIlKPmBC-Cv-LwfGDxFxQT407Bs28TejGWEqk&v=1&r=https%3a%2f%2fwww.usnews.com%2feducation%2fbest-colleges%2farticles%2fhow-us-news-calculated-the-rankings&p=DevEx,5063.1>.

Putterman, M. T. (2016, February 1). What Asian Americans Are Bringing to Campus Movements for Racial Justice. Race files. Retrieved May 19, 2017.

Sun, Wei Li. "UCLA Supplemental Questionnaire." Ask Ms. Sun. N.p., 01 Feb. 2017. Web. 19 May 2017. <https://askmssun.com/home/ucla-supplemental-questionnaire/>.