Originally Posted by Val
In fact, I'd say the same for all the other preferences too: if you have nearly-equally qualified candidates and you want to pick the donor's kid/Hispanic kid/famous actress, fine. But ONLY if they're truly nearly-equally qualified in some fair and pre-defined way.
Nearly-equally qualified is too vague a standard to be written into law. Either a school should be allowed to look at factor X or it should not. In the real world, schools might still give small preferences, but they would have to maintain plausible deniability.