Letter to the editor Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Letter to the editor - Assignment Example And here is how professor’s lottery suggestion is both unrealistic and unsystematic. Professor’s Karabel’s suggestion is, indeed, self-undermining. How, given a lottery program applied randomly to students who have shown academic merit, should such a program guarantee all underprivileged students are represented? Put differently, professor’s Karabel’s suggestion is meant to erase underlying biases in admission process at selective colleges. Thanks to good intentions. Yet, how could all – at least in theory – underprivileged applicants be represented based on a randomized selection? I do believe admission into colleges, selective or not, should by no means be left to chance and lottery. Why should a student be admitted into her college of choice because she has been, well, lucky enough in a lottery withdrawal, whereas another student who has achieved a similar academic merit be denied admission? This is not even constitutional! In his very own words, professor Karabel himself seems unsure of what such a lottery program might lead to: â€Å"Such a lottery would permit the college to determine whether its traditional selection criteria did any better than chance in predicting success in school and in later life; my own guess is that lottery admits would be amply — perhaps equally — represented among the institution’s most distinguished graduates.† True, our current system of admission at colleges and universities is one, as qualified by professor Karabel, that is skewed. However, undermining a faulty system that tends to enhance – rather than erase – existing hierarchies of privilege in our educational system cannot be achieved by a replace which is subject to guessing and uncertain outcomes. After all, how could a collegiate lottery program based on a randomized selection guarantee all underprivileged applicants are adequately represented? That is, how could, say, students of