Better numbers don't always equal better students

The right has worked itself into a frenzy about the UW-System considering a new policy that will give the personal essay students write more weight when being considered for admission to UW colleges.

Kevin at Lakeshore Laments is really worried that there are going to be hoards of rich, white kids not getting into colleges all over Wisconsin. He seems to think that the new policy means if a minority box is checked on the application, it automatically gets a green light. In reality, the new policy means that the essay will be one of many criteria examined for admission. If the rich, white kids can't write a good essay, they shouldn't get into college.

Rep. Mark Green says he supports increasing diversity but wants to put more Wisconsin in the University of Wisconsin. I guess as a state that's about as white as it gets, we are all supposed to guess what that means.

All of the numbers we use to rank students don't give a full picture of whether or not they are a good student or better than the one sitting next to them. When I attended the orientation program at the UW-Madison, there was a girl sitting next to me that was in the top five percent of her class but her grade point average was a full half of a point lower than mine. I don't know if she did better than I did in college but I don't think our class rankings gave an accurate picture of us as students either.

Background and life experiences do count for something in the real world though. A study released in 2003 showed one aspect of racism that white people never even have to see in their lives. The study took identical made up resumes and sent them to job openings in major cities. The resumes with white sounding names were 50 percent more likely to get a call for an interview than the resumes with black sounding names. That means the black applicants are being discriminated against because their name implies a certain background and heritage in the mind of the employer.

Couldn't we allow the background and heritage to count as one positive aspect out of many things considered when these kids are applying to college in the hopes that the racism they will face later when searching for a job will be overcome somewhat by a good education?