I wanted to wait until some solid numbers came my way before weighing in on the whole University of Michican affirmative action imbroglio. But now the numbers are in and they reflect my feeling about colleges in general: the system is suspect, yes, but race is just one of many factors that students don't know about heading into the scheme of things. College admissions, whether regular or graduate or law school, tend to be murky. Here's how the UMich system works, courtesy CalPundit.

This, of course, is exactly what the University of Michigan does: it considers race as one factor out of many. Here's the whole dreary list:

• 80 points - GPA
• 12 points - SAT scores
• 10 points - Academic strength of high school
• 8 points - Strength of high school curriculum
• 10 points - Michigan resident
• 6 points - Underrepresented Michigan county
• 2 points - Underrepresented state
• 4 points - Legacy admission
• 3 points - Essay
• 5 points - Personal achievement
• 5 points - Leadership and service
• 20 points - Socio-economic disadvantage
• 20 points - Underrepresented racial-ethnic minority
• 5 points - Men in nursing
• 20 points - Scholarship athlete
• 20 points - Provost's discretion

Okay, so let me get this straight. Race shouldn't be a factor but male nursing should? And how about scholarship athletes or the nebulour "provost's discretion" line? This is the sort of chicanery that exists all across colleges from coast to coast. To single out race as an example seems silly, especially given the history of affirmative action. (I for one, believe that affirmative action is a good thing, but I can explain this at another time.)

Even more absurdly, the 20 point number pales in comparison to GPA, or the multitude of other factors. Yet it is this number that is constantly harped on, even by the White House itself. Scandalous. Many other op-ed people have fixated on the twenty points, comparing it to the SAT score number. (A white kid going to a good school in the Upper Peninsula, meanwhile, would probably receive 24 points for his trouble.) While I find fault with the point system in general, it's not as if people didn't know this was how things worked. How else would legacy students (who were underqualified) get in save for the "provost's discretion"? Solid numbers don't lie.