Although he understands the value of diversity, Engineering senior Rich Nam said he believes the University's admissions policies create an unfair advantage for students belonging to an underrepresented minority group.

"It's going to cut out people more qualified," Nam said.

Race is one criterion in the points systems the undergraduate admissions office uses to evaluate applicants to the University.

The points system used by the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts is a selection index of 150 points. The most controversial part of the system is the 20 points applicants receive if they belong to an underrepresented minority group.

LSA's use of race will be challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court on April 1 during oral arguments in Gratz v. Bollinger.

The University maintains that the point systems used for determining undergraduate admissions take seriously the belief that diversity is a compelling interest in higher education and that it accepts only qualified students through a balanced system that considers many factors.

"Taken as a whole, it works very well in accomplishing what we need to accomplish in order to fulfill our educational mission," University spokeswoman Julie Peterson said. "No matter what happens, there are going to be a lot of qualified students who won't get in."

Background

The University has been using race as a factor in admissions since the first Black Action Movement protests in 1970, although current officials say there are no records of what admissions policies the University implemented. After an eight-day class strike, University President Robben Fleming agreed with BAM leaders to have a 10 percent minority enrollment by the 1973-1974 academic year.

Despite promises and more protests, the University would not rise above these numbers until the late 1980s and early 1990s when University President James Duderstadt initiated the Michigan Mandate, a multi-point program providing a more defined strategy for improving the racial climate on campus.

It was around this time that the policies of race-conscious admissions become more clearly defined.

From 1995 through 1998, the University used a complex grid system, that compared grade point averages, geographical location, standardized test scores and other factors. All of the factors had separate grids for minority applicants and non-minority applicants, both in state and out-of-state. Although the grids were similar to the current point system, the University desired to have a neater and more straightforward system.

"At the end of the day, it's trying to be more quantifiable," Peterson said.

As it was, in the December 2000 decision by U.S. District Court Judge Patrick Duggan, the grid system was ruled unconstitutional because of it's setup. Duggan determined it reserved a number of seats for minority applicants, creating a quota.

"It is undisputed that from 1995 through 1997, the LSA used facially different grids and action codes based solely upon an applicant's race. Under these differing grids, a certain group of non-preferred applicants were automatically excluded from competing for a seat in the class without any type of individualized counselor review solely on account of their race," Duggan wrote.

Breaking it down

The current LSA system, established in 1997 and first used in the fall of that year to determine the Class of 2002, has a requirement of 100 points out of 150 for admittance. One hundred and ten of those points are based solely on academic factors. An applicant's GPA is recomputed by the University using college preparatory classes from the 10th and 11th grades. An applicant receives anywhere from 40 to 80 points for his or her GPA.

But since school curriculums vary in their level of rigor, an applicant gets up to 10 points based on their school's academic strength. This number is determined by admissions counselors who are assigned to certain parts of the country and know the schools they work with very well. The counselors base the school factor on the number of Advanced Placement or International Bacculerate classes offered, the percentage of students going to college and school's average SAT I/ACT scores.

"An A in one school might not mean an A in another school," Peterson said.

A student also receives a range of negative four to eight points based on the curriculum factor, which judges the extent to which a student challenged themselves during their high school career. For example, if a student did not take any AP classes in a school that offers 15, points could be deducted from his or her score.

"It is an individual measure of how much a student has challenged himself," Peterson said.