Privileged Affirmative Action

I told myself I would wait to discuss college admissions until I was done and committed to a school.

Or, at least, that was what I was telling myself until this week.

In case you may have missed it, federal prosecutors from the Department of Justice have indicted and accused over 50 people in cheating their way to get their children into selective colleges, some of which I applied to and have yet to hear from, including Yale, Stanford, USC, and others. A man by the name of William Singer pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, mon-laundering conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. He was effectively the Olivia Pope (Scandal reference, ironically) of college admissions, arranging bribes and preferences for students of the wealthy to be able to get into the schools parents wanted them to go to. He arranged for standardized tests with extreme extended time or got other people to take exams for clients’ children. He could even arrange for falsified athletic records and went so far as to fake ethnicities of clients in order to get them to benefit for affirmative action. There’s a whole host of other ridiculous allegations with evidence to support them that I will not go into, but I’ve linked a few solid articles on the facts.

As someone growing up in Silicon Valley, the privilege both I, along with my peers have and are exposed to, is…