A Call for Transparency in College Admissions“It's Hard for an Asian to Get into Stanford.” If I had a penny for every time a phrase like that was thrown at me, perhaps college tuition could become truly affordable. Unfortunately, my chances of getting into any college are shrouded in mystery due to unknown factors in the college admissions process. Affirmative action is the idea of ​​considering race, gender, and economic factors during college admissions in an effort to combat institutional oppression and effectively clouds the admissions process with mystery (“Affirmative Action”). Recently, Abigail Fisher, a white woman, took her case of rejection by the University of Texas and affirmative action generally to the Supreme Court (Fuchs). This sparked great controversy. Affirmative action should exist, but greater transparency in college admissions is needed to ensure proper enforcement and to prevent tensions from escalating. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayAffirmative action is recognized as a way to create racial diversity, but empirical evidence from TIME magazine shows that white women are the ones who have really gotten the benefits (Kohn). Therefore, both supporters and opponents of affirmative action operate according to an uninformed paradigm. Studies show that 63% of Americans support affirmative action on college campuses, but 83% of them believe it is about race, especially African Americans or Hispanics (Drake). All of this makes the debate over affirmative action convoluted. The ideals surrounding affirmative action make sense, because it is the only way that intrinsically disadvantaged groups can overcome that disadvantage. However, mass confusion causes a lot of angry talk. Having more transparency within the college admissions system is the way to solve this problem because it will allow people to see how much weight is actually placed on non-academic factors. It will also ensure that the ideal of affirmative action is implemented properly, as it is unfair for admissions officers to only operate behind closed doors. Additionally, confusion over affirmative action can lead to frivolous lawsuits that increase racial tensions. Currently, Abigail Fisher is suing the University of Texas Austin for racism because she believes she was rejected in 2008 because of her race. His argument is that African-American and Hispanic students with scores lower than his were accepted. She was portrayed as a model student who was the victim of racial prejudice in this widely publicized case. The publicity it has attracted has led to a negative belief that many minorities do not deserve their positions. It only served to increase the racial tensions that affirmative action sought to erase. Fisher's lawsuit ignores the fact that her GPA of 3.59 and SAT score of 1180 out of 1600 were only mediocre within UT's competitive applicant pool, and that several white students with higher scores than her were also rejected (Planas). With a more transparent college admissions system, it would be clear that Fisher was rejected not because of her race, but simply because of a lack of outstanding achievement. However, due to the mystery of college admissions, his case managed to reach the Supreme Court and sparked aggressive and damaging discourse about race and privilege along the way. There are many people who, like Fisher, believe.