Has anybody ever suggested admitting applicants to college solely on the basis of race?

I stand corrected, but I firmly believe that race/ethnicity should not be a deciding factor at all.

What I do not believe in is this:
Two students have the exact same GPA, went to the equally difficult high schools, both played two sports and were on National Honor Society and were class president. The minority student gets accepted simply for being a minority.

OR:
One student had a 4.0, was class president, played three varsity sports, was on NHS, etc.
One student had a 3.5 and played one sport.

However, the student with the 3.5 was a minority, so they let that student in over the student with a 4.0 who was clearly more qualified. It happens more often than people think. I just don't see how anyone can see that as fair.

Or because s/he wrote a better essay.
Or because his/her guidance counselor(s) gave better recommendations.
Or because s/he had a better in-person interview.
Or...

The problem here is the phrase "more qualified". Is an athlete "more qualified" than a non-athlete? Is an in-state student "more qualified" than an out-of-state student? If we give admissions professionals the right to decide who best makes up their campus community in these situations, we can't suddenly decide they don't know what they are doing when it comes to race, gender, physical limitations, etc.

There is no such thing as equally qualified when it comes to these sorts of things because people are first and foremost super special snowflakes. And as has been discussed here, a 4.0 is not a 4.0 is not a 4.0. It depends on the school, the curriculum, your class choices, your extracurriculars, etc. AND it depends on your social background. The kid who grows up in South Central with a crackhead for a Mom who manages to pull out a 3.5 with 1 sport has accomplished A LOT. The kid with the tutor and the high prestige high school and a car from before she's 16 and summer camp every year with a 3.5 hasn't done much.

But that being said, I'm really of 2 minds about these arguments, and really would like to err in favor of advantage instead of race. The poor kid described above could be any race, including white, and my opinion of her accomplishment wouldn't change. And as the economic upper echelons become more racially diverse, the racial minority rich kids don't require the same leg up their parents and grandparents did. But I'm also afraid that a lot of schools would quickly backtrack to the good old days when they only accepted white boys. But on the other hand (how many hands is that now) I do believe there is a significant portion of the population, including rich white boys, who would choose not to attend a school that lacked any diversity. Using Harvard as an example, they continue to be one of the toughest schools to get into, and they work very hard at having all 50 states, many countries, both genders, and every race covered in every new freshman class. And they seem to still accomplish this while letting in plenty of legacies. I can't imagine them changing that policy just because they don't have to accept minorities, women, etc. But would Big State U? I don't know.

Only 2? :D

"Affirmative action" can take so many forms and mean so many things, and the history, considerations and implications involved are anything but simple and straightforward. That's one reason I look askance when someone says something like "I will never believe that affirmative action is a good solution."

I am way more on the side of affirmative action than against. And I believe once you add any sort of restricted selection into a process it is part of the human condition to want to select people "Like you." And therefore the people not like you need a little bit of a leg up to get offered the same opportunities.

I am concerned for the demise of affirmative action where it concerns women. Our status on an even playing field is tenuous at best right now. Yes, we don't seem to have a problem getting into college, but would that change if they didn't HAVE to accept women?

But I guess I've always believed that if you have 2 people who are "equally qualified" the spot should go to the person who would benefit greater from the leg up. And the stories that many people can come up with where the black kid buffoon got into college when the stellar but sadly rich and white kid didn't make the cut I think are way more rare than the stories would make them seem. Reverse discrimination is (IMO) verging on urban myth.

I was, admittedly, thinking more of race/ethnicity than social background/upbringing.

I agree with adpimiz. I would like to think I was accepted into Texas A&M on my own merits. I'm Hispanic, but my parents instilled in me the notion that I am not special...I'm just like everybody else. You have to work hard for the things that you want. Again, that's how I was brought up.

That being said, I was in NHS, involved in drama, Student Council, and debate. When I applied to Texas A&M, I applied to the Agriculture department. I was also involved in 4H for 10 years (raised livestock, 4H State, 4H Congress, etc). My acceptance could have been based on my ethnicity, but again, I'd like to think that good grades, hard work, and achievements in the area in which decided to major in, was enough to get me in. Then again, that was 17 years ago!

After college, I earned two master's degrees in which I neither asked for, nor received, any scholarships or aid because my ethnicity (I didn't for undergrad either).

Totally unrelated to the specific issue of UT, but to the larger issue of fairness in admission vs. perceived "diversity," here's an issue rumbling about in NYC:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...-under-review/

Here's the TL;DR version: NYC has 9 specialized public high schools. One is an arts high school that requires a portfolio; the other 8 require an exam, taken in the 8th grade. The schools are extremely prestigious; one has the distinction of having more Nobel laureates than any other HS in the country. Unlike the rest of NYC's public high schools which, for the most part, are majority Black and Latino, the three most selective are majority Asian, with White, Black, and Latino students making up the rest. Socioecomically, the students come from more working class/middle class environments than the general public school population, which is more working class/poor.

Now, the NAACP has sued because they feel the test is obviously unfair to Black and Latino students, since they tend not to score so well. Apparently, there aren't cultural biases in this test like there are alleged to be in the SAT. The DOE offers a FREE summer-long prep course, which includes meals; many schools offer after-school prep for kids who can't do the summer program.

Most people have come forward saying that the test is perfectly fair, and the schools don't look at anything else but the test scores. So, what say you, GC population?

Even as a proponent of socioeconomic-based AA, I feel that the NAACP, like most of their lawsuits, doesn't have a leg to stand on with this one. Has anyone read about the firefighters' exams?

Can anyone give a specific example of how a test could be biased to someone of a particular race? I know there have been issues with standardized tests asking questions that may be biased towards economic status (ex. a math question involving an escalator would be confusing to someone from a poor and/or rural area where they have never seen an escalator) but how could a test possibly ask questions that favor an ethnicity?

It favors more a culture then an ethnicity. Since minorities tend to be in a lower social class then European Americans, there is a feeling that tests are biased against them since they are written form a certain social class.

I would really like a specific example here, as I'm having trouble understanding how there could be such a bias. I'm assuming this would have to be a problem (if it is truly a problem) on the reading/writing sections, because, for the most part, math is math. Though, I have noticed that names used in word problems are way more often traditionally ethnic names ("Ming, Raj and Lupita each have a bag of marbles...").

The standard example that I tend to see cited is an SAT question from about 20 years ago:

RUNNER: MARATHON :: A) envoy: embassy B) martyr: massacre C) oarsman: regatta D) referee: tournament E) horse: stable

The correct answer is C), but being able to answer that correctly arguably presumes knowledge of boating and regattas, which are typically associated with middle- and upper-class white culture and often are not within the cultural experience of, say, inner-city or poor rural students. Yes, the question could perhaps be answered by the process of elimination without specific knowledge of boating, but the point made is that the question and correct answer appear to assume a common base of knowledge that in reality may not be common to some cultural segments of the population.

I can't speak to what questions are like these days.

I did not know what a regatta was until I saw a Dawson's Creek episode in which one featured prominently. This has nothing to do with the topic at hand, except to say that it may also be a regional thing (or a WASP thing?), as I grew up both white and upper-middle class.