Straight from the source: students’ personal views on affirmative action

I feel like affirmative action will benefit me in the future. It’s very bittersweet, as I think it’s something that shouldn’t exist, but without it, the competition to get into certain colleges is tougher. I personally think that people should be accepted into colleges solely based on their achievements, academically and outside of school. Even though as a black person I’m likely to be helped by affirmative action, I want to make sure that I’m putting my best work forward because there are more talented students than me out there. Affirmative action tends to disadvantage talented Asian students. An example of this is Michael Wang, who the New Yorker wrote an article on. Michael had a 4.67 GPA, got a 36 on the ACT, and 99th percentile on the SAT. Outside of that, he was a top member of his school’s speech and debate team, co-founder of his school’s math club, and a singer in a choir that sang at Barack Obama’s first inauguration. He wasn’t accepted into any of the Ivy League schools he applied to except for UPenn. His less accomplished but still talented black and Latino peers got into the same schools he was denied from, due to the fact that there were also many talented Asian students applying. I want to make sure that my work is the best possible because the path of other people isn’t as easy as mine.