What do you think about this? Is it unfair? Do you think it promotes inequality?

I don't personally like it. I feel like it's saying, "You're a minority, so you some extra help getting in or getting a position." As a minority, I don't want someone telling me that I got into college because I'm Asian. I want to get in solely on my own merits. I think it puts a rift between minorities and white people because of the inequality. Some people feel like minorities are getting preferential treatment. (In some cases they are.) I don't think that institutions need to make up for discrimination and prejudice by giving minorities an edge.

Well, if they do, you can tell them with a good deal of confidence that you didn't. Affirmative action programs in universities generally treat Asians as if they were whites, because they believe "too many" Asians have been/are being accepted. In terms of affirmative action and higher education, Asians are generally not considered a minority. In fact, there are several examples of times where Asian admission rose, sometimes dramatically, after affirmative action programs were struck down.

The only way I personally don't have an issue with affirmative action is if race is used in one of two manners:

1) one consideration out of many. Colleges often look at the size of schools students attended, if they're from rural or urban areas, if they're male or female, etc.

2) if you have two equally qualified candidates and the employer or whatever chooses the minority candidate because of a desire for additional diversity, etc.

Spee, that's probably true of big universities or places like Harvard or Stanford but not necessarily small colleges, which is where I'll be applying. I realize that's taking a large problem to a personal scale, but that was my comment anyway. At the colleges I'm applying to, there aren't many minorities, less than 10%. And more specifically, usually in the neighborhood of 2-4% Asians, if we're still talking about Asian. So, in this case, my race could be a factor in admission, but this is small institutions that attract mainly in-state, small town, caucasians, so diversity isn't too prominent. I do know that Stanford is something like 30% Asian, so this situation doesn't exist there. It just kind of depends where we're talking about.

I see. Yes, I imagine with smaller colleges the situation is different.