Ruth Chang and the UM College Admissions Process

In her Ted Talk, Ruth Chang talks about hard choices. In one example, she talks about comparing the weight of two suitcases and how there are only three options. She claims that the world of value is different than the world of science because a person cannot assign a number to values such as goals or personal fulfillment when comparing two jobs, which makes that decision a hard choice. The University of Michigan admissions committee tried to do just this (assign numerical value to immaterial attributes of the applicants) by implementing a points system for their undergraduate school. While points could be given for GPA and standardized test scores, there were also sections for “Personal Achievement” and “Leadership and Service” both of which lacked concrete definitions. This is an example of how sometimes people try to take the “hard” out of “hard choices” which doesn’t exactly work because the UM admissions process was sued in the Supreme Court which eventually ruled that the process was ruled Unconstitutional.

One thought on “Ruth Chang and the UM College Admissions Process

  1. I think that’s a really good example! They also tried to implement racial quotas into universities to make sure each race was well represented for diversity purposes. This showed that the admissions advisors wouldn’t have to make a difficult choice between races if races had to be represented more equally through numbers. This system was not as accurate as they wanted for raising standards and diversity, so affirmative action was put in place to keep away from meeting certain numbers of races but still allowed for diversity to be an important factor.

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