This journal article explores affirmative action in law school admissions. Linda F. Wrightman, while service as vice president of the Law School Admissions Council, did a study of 90,000 applicants for 1990-1991 law school admissions. She used this data to reflect that affirmative action is positive. However, taking a second glance at the same data, it actually reflects some negative aspects of affirmative action. It was discovered that African American applicants were far more likely to be unprepared academically and they also flunked the bar exam at higher rates. Stephan Thernstrom, a professor at Harvard University, explores Wrightman's data furthers and includes his own interpretation.

Linda Wrightman collected from 1990-91 black law school applicants showed that 80 percent had grades and test scores that, if they had been white, would have led to their being rejected by the schools that admitted them. Actually, the grades and scores of black students admitted through affirmative action were very low. Their undergraduate grade point averages put them in the bottom 16 percent of all law students, and their LSAT scores were in the bottom tenth. Also, visible in her data there are two other patterns. First black applicants received a heavier preference than people of other racial backgrounds who also came under the affirmative action umbrella. Second, the "better" the law school, the bigger boost it gave to black applicants. At the most selective and prestigious schools, 17.5 times as m

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 547
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)