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Acknowledgments and Final Postings
Acknowledgments and Final Postings
Previously Shown Abstract of My Work:
In June of 2023 affirmative action was abolished on university admissions across the United States. This resulted from the court case known as Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard University which enforced that universities cannot uphold affirmative action for the sole reason of increasing diversity. Despite the decision made by the Supreme Court, there are still alternative avenues for promoting diversity in universities (NAICU 2023). In the past, affirmative action has received numerous complaints, but also has benefited some groups of minorities. For example, some individuals argue that qualifications come before any measure of diversity, and that student qualification should determine if they are admitted to a university rather than their skin color (Sacks and Thiel 1996). However other studies found that affirmative action has benefitted the enrollment rates of American Indian/Alaska Native individuals as it increased by 7% (Garcia 2023). Despite the numerous opinions on affirmative action and the ongoing debate regarding the Supreme Court's decision, I wanted to see the direct impact that the abolishment has on college applications this year. As a result this led me to create my research question: How has the factor of race in 2023-2024 college application essays differ in private, public, and ivy universities as a result of affirmative action being abolished? To answer this I will be collecting 2023 college application forms from different regions across the United States and analyzing the presence of race in each university's essay questions.
Looking Back on My Journey:
This project has taught me numerous facts regarding the college application process and the content of college applications for various schools across the nation. Specifically I learned that colleges differ in the spaces that they give students to express themselves in the best way. This can strongly alter the way a student is presented to admissions officers, and I believe that the results of my project can help college applicants in the future choose/apply to universities that best suite their background and experiences in their life. In the future I think it would be highly interesting and helpful to see if the results of my project align with admissions results and diversity indexes for the ivy league universities that asked statistically more questions regarding a student's race and diversity. If the results from admissions matched with the results of my project this would provide a lot of credibility for my research and would allow for me to further solidify my results.
I learned the importance of backing your research with arguments and current conversation. Relevancy is a key goal for research in order for it to be the most helpful for people now and the future. It is also important when presenting to not drift away from what your project is about. Sometimes I would drift into the implications of my project directly before stating the results directly, and this caused a blur towards the end of my project because it is important to answer your first question before moving forward. In the future I believe that this will help me maintain a focus in projects and research that I conduct and present it in a clean and understanding manner to audience members. This also applies when answering oral defense questions. It is important to have shorter and more clear/direct responses than responses that drag on the answer which makes it difficult for the audience to understand or keep up with.
I learned that I am a good researcher when it comes to planning ahead and keeping up with deadlines. I was never overpacked with my project and the journey was overall pretty smooth with no major roadblocks. I learned that there are a lot of skills that come with creating AND presenting a project. Presenting is only a small portion of the journey, the most important pieces are knowing what to present and knowing what topics you should spend the longest explaining. This part was a difficult piece because of the fact that your own project can seem easy and self explanatory to you, but you have to explain every piece as if you have never learnt it before for your audience. However, with the experience of going through this process I can say that I have learned how to present a topic more clearly, and have learned what kind of content should be emphasized and focused on more throughout the presentation.
Acknowledgments:
I am really grateful for my mentor, Mrs. Uchyn, to help me in deciding which stats test was best for my project. She was super helpful in many ways regarding the math component of my project and walked me through all of the steps in regards to using online tools and explaining why the test I chose was the best fit for my research. Mrs. Uchyn also was amazing as she showed up to my final presentation and took the time to grade my work. I would also like to thank my teachers Mrs. Dobos and Mr. McBride as they always helped me when I encountered a roadblock and also provide very helpful advice when I show them my work or present my research to them. Mrs. Dobos helped me when it came to narrowing my topic of research and this was so helpful to me at the beginning of the year as if it wasn't for her I would've came across endless roadblocks and issues along the way.
Next Adventure:
I am so excited to move onto my next chapter of life through college! I am a Finance major and will likely be attending the Kelley School of Business at the University of Indiana this coming Fall!
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