APs, honors classes create admissions gap

By Ryan Hutchinson

Objectivity is essential in any college admissions system.
Without it, the personal bias of an admissions officer (whether
intentional or inadvertent) will always reward some and punish
others. Admission to a UC (or any other prestigious university) is
such a system, and so the decision to throw out any weighting of
GPAs in admissions is a well-based choice but a foolish one.

There is a definite and immediate need to equalize the
disparaging gap between the possibilities for academic achievement
in a predominately rich white school and a predominately poor
minority school. Obviously, a 4.0 from Compton means infinitely
more than a 4.0 from Irvine, but to assume that admissions officers
will be the ones to implement such norming is just allowing the fox
to guard the sheep. Those same officers chose the ethnic
distribution of college students we see today. I don’t place
blame on them, but I hope to point out the need for a more
objective basis on which to formulate GPA (the most important part
of most admissions applications). To solve this problem I propose
the following:

1. Honors courses are obviously a joke at many affluent public
and private schools. The fact that “honors P.E.” exists
screams grade inflation and serves no other purpose than to further
hype up students who are already the beneficiaries of everything
that affluence brings to the college admissions table (SAT prep
courses, college admissions counselors, private tutors etc.). My
high school offered a total of 2 honors and 7 AP courses; after
having taken every one of them and never getting lower than an A-
in any course, I had a 4.26 GPA. A friend of mine went to a private
school, got As and Bs, took no AP courses and had an adjusted GPA
of 4.78. While I’m sure he deserved that GPA, the fact that
the same GPA would be physically impossible to attain at a poorer
school is sad.

2. AP courses are a slightly different matter. While their
content may be just as laughable as honors courses, they do have
one saving grace: the test. The AP test itself is entirely
objective, accurately measures student knowledge, and is a great
way to prepare students for college (I know my AP U.S. History test
was harder than many of my finals here). Many students will forego
the AP test entirely and just take the course for the extra grade
point, defeating the purpose of the class in the first place and
again giving students at wealthier schools an unfair advantage.

Given the above facts, the answer is obvious: Award extra GPA
credits to those students who have passed AP tests (whether their
school has had the resources to provide an AP class for them or
not) and drop all the meaningless honors and AP advantage that has
provided us with autocracy instead of meritocracy for too long.