Michael makes some very good points. And, of course, socioeconomic affirmative action hews closer to the goal of social mobility than does the present conceit of affirmative action, that all members of a given racial/ethnic minority are somehow ‘disadvantaged.’

I suppose, ultimately, a tolerance for any kind of affirmative action will depend on whether one sees college admissions more as a measure of past achievement or of future potential, as Roger Clegg draws attention to. And this goes to the very core of the philosophical disagreement over affirmative action — whether students generally have had a ‘fair’ chance at becoming educated and qualified before filing their college application at 17 or 18, or whether college is an extension of the ‘equality of opportunity’ gambit. I’m tempted to think that a public K-12 education holds little bearing on the ‘education’ one receives (or should receive) at the college level.

At least as it applies to competitive schools who reject many applicants who are very well qualified, I’ve always thought it fair for the gates of affirmative action to be slightly ajar. There’s really no reliable way of measuring whether a person with a 1400 vs. 1600 SAT score, or a 3.8 vs. 4.0 GPA, holds more intellectual promise.

At that level of consideration, elite colleges already defer to rather nebulous aspects of a person’s ‘character,’ ‘background,’ and ‘extracurricular achievement’ to determine who among the very qualified will receive the somewhat random blessing of admission. This is the reality of the modern elite college: There are always more qualified applicants than there are places for them in a matriculating class. So it’s really not a surprise, nor an offense, that these schools have plucked from their well-qualified applicants those who together make a better microcosm of wider society. I do think I gained a worldliness (both in the good and bad senses of the term!) from a college experience that had a large international population, as well as an American population that didn’t just come from Stuyvesant or Andover.

All of that said, however, I suppose I didn’t fully understand the stakes we were talking about until I read the NYT article, which noted that the relevant Amherst admit had a 1200 SAT score, which the NYT called “respectable”! A gifted, tutor-less kid of any socioeconomic class can take an SAT study guide from the local library, and really should be able to achieve a higher score. If the bar is that low at a top college like Amherst, it seems a bit more wariness on socioeconomic affirmative action might be appropriate.