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Indulgences and Influence in College Admissions The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates by Daniel Golden (New York: Crown Publishers, 323 pages, $25.95)
reviewed by Gary Younge
IN 1995, 17-year-old Jennifer Gratz received a thin envelope from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor informing her that her undergraduate application had been rejected. Gratz, who finished in the top 5 percent of her class, assumed she had been denied the place to which she felt entitled because of something she could not help - her race. The university used a points system when selecting applicants and those from underrepresented minorities automatically received extra points.
Concluding that affirmative action had handed her slot to a less qualified black student she turned, crying, to her father and asked: "Dad, can we sue?"
Gratz, whose parents never completed college, subsequently applied to the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Notre Dame gives huge preference to children of alumni and as a result has a greater proportion of them than any other major university. Legacies amount to between 21 percent and 24 percent of the freshman class or around twice the number of African Americans and Hispanics combined. Ms. Gratz was also rejected from Notre Dame. But she saw no injustice in that.
Two years later Patrick Hamacher's undergraduate application to study medicine at Ann Arbor was also rejected. Harnacher, one of whose parents went to the University of Michigan, was devastated and came to the same conclusion as Gratz. He later said he agreed with the aim of diversity but that the university's methods amount to "artificially engineering and discriminating against others - and that is just not right." Under the same system the university also awarded extra points for legacies: an advantage that Harnacher enjoyed but did not see fit to relinquish.
In April 2003 Gratz and Harnacher took their cases to the Supreme Court, in a failed bid to challenge the principle of affirmative action. Their effort was supported by, among others, the president of the United States, George W. Bush - a C student who gained entry to Yale courtesy of a legacy.
A few months earlier The Wall Street Journal's...