Sunday, March 1, 2009

Essay #2

What would you do if you and your friend applied to the same college and only he got accepted, even though you have higher grades? And it just happens to be that your friend’s father or mother went to that college. Come to find out that he eventually ends up dropping out. You would be mad wouldn’t you? Well this is called legacy admissions. This topic has been very controversial over the past few years.
In “The dirty little secrets of college admissions” Roberto Rodriguez states that legacies are taking money from the people who actually need it. Rodriguez says that these people are Blacks and Latinos. The way that he justifies this is because the legacies are getting scholarships that could be more useful to the poor. It says that the poor are being “squeezed” out of college because they have no way to pay for it.
Also in the Rodriguez’s article it states that “special admits” have always been a staple of private universities and colleges. And in “When Legacies are a college’s lifeblood” Elizabeth F. Farrell mentions some schools that use legacy admissions, and most of them are private universities. Farrell also has some data that says at Calvin College of the four thousand one hundred and ninety students admitted; forty percent of them were legacies. And of the ninety-four percent that were excepted ninety-six percent of those were legacies.
Some people think that legacies are a good thing, but there are also people who believe that they are very harmful to kids too. It is can be a big part of college admissions too. I believe that it will end up being that students will have to know someone that went to the college that they want to go to in order to get in. I also believe that this will just make kids feel like they will always be handed things in life.