Colleges in

Many high school students feel stressed about forming post-graduation plans. Michigan alone is home to over 70 colleges and universities, all unique in terms of location, tuition, popular majors, and much more.

University of Michigan (U of M)

Ann Arbor, MI

Michigan State University (MSU)

East Lansing, MI

Central Michigan University (CMU)

Mt. Pleasant, MI

Eastern Michigan University (EMU)

Ypsilanti, MI

Acceptance rate: 23%

Average GPA: 3.88

Average SAT score: 1435

Popular Majors: Engineering, Computer Science, Business

Grand Valley State University (GVSU)

Grand Rapids, MI

Acceptance rate: 83%

Average GPA: 3.75

Average SAT score: 1210

Popular Majors: Business, Biological Science, Communication

WesternMichigan University (WMU)

Kalamazoo, MI

Acceptance rate: 92%

Average GPA: 3.6

Average SAT score: 1150

Popular Majors: Business, Biological Science, Communication

Acceptance rate: 83%

Average GPA: 3.37

Average SAT score: 1180

Popular Majors: Engineering, Business, Psychology

Acceptance rate: 77%

Average GPA: 3.52

Average SAT score: 1110

Popular Majors: Business, Education, Psychology

Washtenaw Community College (WCC)

Ann Arbor, MI

Acceptance rate: 100%

Popular Majors: General Studies, Nursing, Business

Average In-State Tuition ($ per year)

Acceptance rate: 85%

Average GPA: 3.28

The idea in the Asian community that Affirmative Action gives an unfair advantage to “less qualified applicants” has developed into a dangerous prejudice against other minorities. The same racist ideals that Affirmative Action was put into place to stop — are now being argued to tear it down entirely.

As hearts pound relentlessly and stomachs drop at the click on the “status update” application portals, tears of both joy and despair fall as students around the nation are notified of an update to their college application; to open what will hopefully be the best — or what could be the worst — news of their high school careers.

During the college admission process, any given high school student’s college application will be evaluated based on criteria such as GPA, standardized test scores, extracurricular activities, letters of recommendation, and the student’s college essay. However, most college admissions teams employ the “Holistic Review”, meaning that applicants are not judged based on one sole component of their application, such as GPA, test scores, or extracurricular activities. But a more controversial factor that is taken into account during the holistic review, is race and ethnicity. Affirmative Action is the inclusion of an applicant’s race or other identities in their consideration for admission to combat the past barriers that marginalized identities may have experienced. There are some who disagree with the premise of Affirmative Action and believe that it may actually warp the standard for qualifications for college admissions.

This misconstrued belief has evolved into a dismissive prejudice against other groups of people of color — especially Black and Latinx students — and subsequently has brought up the notion that other minority groups are under qualified and therefore “stealing” spots in incoming college classes from primarily Asian applicants.

This divisive issue also feeds into White supremacist ideals that were previously used to deter Black and Latinx people from involving themselves in higher education.

According to the 2020 Asian-American voter survey, out of over 1,500 AsianAmericans surveyed, over approximately 250 of them were against affirmative action.

“Being a school in Ann Arbor, we have a super like progressive liberal reputation and in a lot of ways, we are really diverse, but that doesn’t mean that discrimination doesn’t take place at our school,” said senior Niloy Jamil, a gay student at Huron attending the University of Michigan in the fall.

This prejudice has stretched beyond disgruntled racist remarks behind closed doors.

In 2014, a group called the SFFA (Students for Fair Admission) sued Harvard University on the grounds that Harvard was admitting comparatively “under qualified” Black and Latinx applicants but rejecting and discriminating against “more qualified” Asian applicants.

In response, Harvard said, “Harvard College does not discriminate against applicants from any group in its admissions processes,”

Harvard then hired UC Berkeley economics professor David Card to research six years worth of Harvard admissions data. Card came to the conclusion that Harvard did not — in fact — discriminate against Asian applicants.

“The average marginal effect of being Asian American on an applicant’s likelihood of admission was statistically indistinguishable from zero, and in fact was slightly positive in three of six years at issue in this case,” Card said.

The notion that non-Asian or White applicants are given an unfair advantage and are generally less qualified than Asian applicants has a lot of holes in it.

“Sometimes people who have like racist mindsets will try to say, ‘this person only got into this super prestigious school because they’re a minority,’ When that’s not always the case,” “Our school has a pretty high Asian population and with that, a lot of times, even some of the people I consider to be my friends [think] it’s really easy [to succeed academically as a non-Asian minority],” said Jamil. According to the U.S. Office of Minority Health, Asians make up only 5.7 percent of the United States population, but according to the Harvard Crimson, Asians make up 21.9 percent of Harvard’s class of 2026. While, the combined percentages of Black and Hispanic students in Harvard’s class of 2026 barely break 17 percent of the class population. Nearly every prestigious university reflects the same drastic difference in Asian student populations to non-Asian minorities. The 2022-2023 common data sets of Stanford, MIT and Princeton show that the percentages of Black, Hispanic and Native American/Pacific Islander students combined are typically less than the percentage of Asian students alone — oftentimes, with shocking differences between the populations. For instance at MIT, all non-Asian minorities in their most recent common data set makeup 23.9 percent of the incoming class, but Asian students make up 35.3 percent of the incoming class. The statistics clearly reflect that Affirmative Action isn’t discriminating against Asian applicants. Looking at the individual number of nonAsian or White students at any top-ranked college is astonishing. In common data sets for the 22-23 admissions cycles of Cornell, Dartmouth and Yale, there is no school with a percentage of Black students in their incoming class that is higher than 10 percent, and no school with a percentage of Hispanic students in their incoming class that is higher than 16 percent. Moreover, at every school listed and more, Native American/Pacific Islander students do not amount to a percentage higher than three percent of the incoming class, and oftentimes, the percentage of Native American students rounded up to a whole number, is zero. While Asian students rarely make up less than 20 percent of the incoming students. At public universities however, the enrollment statistics appear much more inclusive to many races, and a balanced percentage of different minorities make up the student body. But, there are still some outliers. At the University of exemplify myself and show myself in a way that allowed people to see me for who I was,” said Diarra. QuestBridge is an extremely selective program that grants full-ride scholarships to top schools in the U.S. for selected hard work in the classroom was meaningless because of their race.

Michigan, Asian students make up 20 percent of the incoming class of 22-23, while other non-Asian minorities make up just 17 percent. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, for the 22-23 class, Asian students make up 34 percent of the class, yet the populations of Black and Hispanic students combined only make up 34 percent of the class, as well the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, University of Texas at Austin and UC San Diego have significantly less populations of Black and Hispanic students in comparison to Asian students.

This misconception that devolved into prejudice has a negative effect on non-Asian students, and is marginalizing and undermining to many high academically achieving non-Asian students — even at Huron.

“One of my really good friends got into an Ivy League and she was met with, ‘What were your stats?’ ‘How’d you get in?’ ‘What’d you do?’ instead of congratulating her, they kind of [questioned] her abilities,” Jamil said.

Aaliyah Diarra is headed to Columbia University in September — an Ivy League university — and she is also a Black woman. Moreover, Diarra is a QuestBridge Finalist.

“I had to really applicants. “I didn’t think that I was going to get it just because I had heard how competitive [the QuestBridge scholarship] was, and I was competing against some of the smartest kids in the nation.”

“I spent a lot of time outside of the classroom dedicating myself to my schoolwork and other extracurriculars, so I have to do all my homework when I get home… I [also] play soccer and I have practice two hours a day every single day. I also have to help with tasks at home like my siblings, my family [too],” Diarra wasn’t met with only congratulations when she received news of her QuestBridge nomination and her admission to Columbia.

“When I got my acceptance into Columbia, a lot of my peers around me, especially those who were like white and of Asian descent, were quick to question how I got in and what were my stats and extracurriculars… a lot of [what] seemed like a backhanded compliments; like ‘congratulations, but like, ‘how did this happen?’ ” said Diarra.

“In the first month of realizing that I had gotten accepted I questioned whether or not I deserved [my admission], or [whether] I was deserving of such a high scholarship,” No student should have to question if their

“For these conservatives to try and say: ‘this X minority got in just because of their status as a minority’ neglects all the hard work they put into [their education] and it dismisses [the fact that] they deserve to be at the school just like anyone else,” Jamil said.

“I think a lot of the times when we look at Black Americans who have achieved higher success in the education system, oftentimes their pathway to that is looked at as ‘how did you get there?’ ‘what components led you to achieve what you’ve achieved?’ and sometimes I feel like their achievements are undermined,” said Diarra.

The dismissal of nonAsian academic achievement is demeaning and is based in racism, rather than an argument for equal rights between minorities.

“Columbia didn’t accept me just because I’m black,” said Diarra. “They accepted me because they saw me as a student that would contribute to their campus culture and to the system that they’re trying to build, and I would be a good fit there as well.”

ANITA GAENKO OPINION EDITOR

They’re all around us, in our air, water and blood: tiny pieces of plastic from the breakdown of larger products, small enough to fit on the head of a pin. They’re called microplastics, and there are so many of them in the environment that they’ve become embedded in plant and animal tissues all the way up the food chain -- accumulating in human fat and blood, too. But should we be worried?

Research on the effects of microplastics on humans is still ongoing. What we do know is that they’re there -- and they’re everywhere. One of the biggest issues for researchers is that they have no perfect control. Simply put, there are quite few samples of human tissue that don’t have any microplastics in them, although concentrations can vary based on where a person is and what they eat. As a result, we can’t always make conclusions about their effects, because we barely know what human tissue looks like without any microplastics at all.

However, there are a few preliminary conclusions we have. Scientists have already estimated that humans inhale and ingest up to 121,000 small plastic particles per year as adults. Those particles can enter the bloodstream, and when they do, they can latch on to red blood cells. Not only do they seem to limit the amount of oxygen those cells can transport, they also get carried to all the organs in the body. The microplastics can embed themselves into the organs and remain there, accumulating for the rest of a person’s life. As of now, we have no idea how this affects larger organ function -- but we risk is using skincare and makeup products that contain microbeads or nonbiodegradable glitter -- a lot of exfoliating skincare products have microbeads, which are just small round pieces of plastic. While they’re too big to be inhaled or ingested directly, they can break apart as you use them and be absorbed into your skin and the underlying tissues and blood vessels.

While research continues on this mysterious new threat, it’s worth paying attention to any new information that gets published. Plastic production isn’t just a faroff environmental issue

RACHEL OVERGAARD STAFF WRITER

On March 10th, 2023, the latest installment disappointing, but I don’t really think it negatively affected the performance of “Scream 6.” Another favorite who returns in the fifth Scream is Dewey, but he sadly have evidence that cells grown in a lab are damaged by microplastics.

Scientists are pretty sure about the mechanisms of how microplastics get into our system. Huge quantities of plastic waste get dumped into our oceans, where they are slowly broken down by the salty waves into miniscule pieces. Those pieces get ingested by small fish and embed into their tissues. Bigger fish eat large amounts of smaller fish, so they accumulate in even larger amounts. This pattern of magnification -- called bioaccumulation -- builds up through the food chain until it gets to a person. This process is also known to happen with lead, mercury and other heavy metals. People who eat a lot of fish are therefore at a higher risk for having microplastics in their system. Another thing that puts us at

It’s graduation season Staff Editorial: Let’s be proud of each other

As our Huron seniors start to announce their commitments to colleges or their other post-graduation plans, it’s important for all of us to be respectful of the work everyone has done to get to this point. No matter what path you choose, whether it’s a two- or fouryear university, a gap year, military service or straight into the workforce, you got there over years and years of work. The entire culture around college admissions is deeply flawed, and your words can hurt – even the compliments.

When it comes to admissions, regardless of our own personal opinions on whether affirmative action should exist or not, we should never assume that a person got into any college solely because of their race, gender or any other facet of their identity.

All of us are just trying to figure out our place in the world, taking – or preparing to take – the huge next step into adulthood. It’s terrifying and exciting at the same time, for everyone family members to the OG Scream character, Randy Meeks. Although the fifth and sixth movies introduce a lot of new characters, we do get to see the return of some fan favorite characters. The main character of the first four movies, Sidney Prescott, was in the fifth but unfortunately not the sixth. This was a bit expecting it to be the best movie ever, but I was hopeful. In Scream 6, we get to experience the story in a new setting. Instead of the usual California setting, the characters are now living in here. So before you let your disbelief set in (“I can’t believe they got in!”), take a moment to think. Don’t let jealousy cloud your judgement – you don’t know every single factor of that person’s last four years, let alone every word of their application. No one deserves to feel like they haven’t earned what they’ve achieved. Instead, take the time to celebrate the wins of the people around you –it’s been a hard few years, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic causing massive disruptions to education and motivation – and we could all use a little more celebration for making it through.

“I chose number twenty-three because it’s Christen Press’s number. She is my favorite soccer player, and it’s so funny and interesting to watch on her YouTube interviews.”

Min Coulomb, Sophomore

“On my first club team, I want ed to be number eleven be cause my favorite soccer player Dembele is number eleven. He is a five-star winger and black like me. One of my friends took eleven, so I took seventeen be cause it looked like eleven.”-

Nana Nkansah-Andoh, Senior

“The only single digit number left was seven, and it was history from there. I starting preform ing well and people started to call me “7money” and “7island.” The number seven is also God’s Number.”-

Torrence Greene, Senior

“I had to choose a number and there’s a lot of important dates in my family with the number 21 like a lot of birthdays and anniversaries. Most impor tantly it was my mom’s birth day so I choose that number.”

- Abby Cullen, Senior

“It wasn’t really a choice. At first, my brother chose the number 73 and I chose 68. But then, our jerseys got mixed up and I ended with 73, which is obviously the better number. So I just kept it.”

- Sandra Fu, Senior