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As many as 15 percent of freshmen at America’s top schools are white students who failed to meet their university’s minimum standards for admission, according to Peter Schmidt, deputy editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education. These kids are “people with a long-standing relationship with the university,” or in other words, the children of faculty, wealthy alumni and politicians.

According to Schmidt, these unqualified but privileged kids are nearly twice as common on top campuses as Black and Latino students who had benefited from affirmative action.

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“I would encourage young writers to read. Please read aloud. Go into a room, close the door, so you can hear how the language sounds. Read your own work and someone you admire. I’m a great admirer of Langston Hughes’ poetry and that of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Virginia Woolf. When I was trying to form my own voice, my own melody, I would read aloud, and I found it did me so much good.”