One of the most hotly contested programs in the realm of college admissions is affirmative action. Affirmative action seeks to “compensate for this country’s brutal history of racial discrimination by giving some minority applicants a leg up” in college admissions and employment (Slater). However, this program was never supposed to be a permanent solution as it does not fix the systematic inequalities and instead serves as a band-aid fix. There is also evidence that affirmative action is not helping the students who need it and has become an “upper middle class benefit” (Green). Affirmative action has become so focused on helping racial minorities that it has left behind students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. After controlling for race, low income students “receive either no preference or a modest one” in the admissions process (Leonhardt). Currently, black and latino students receive strong preferences, or the equivalent of 150-300 SAT points during the admissions process (Leonhardt). But, low income students receive no preferences despite all the challenges they have to overcome which has resulted in vast inequalities:  “at the country’s 200 most selective colleges, a mere 5 percent of students come from the bottom 25 percent of the income spectrum” (Leonhardt). While affirmative action has a justifiable aim, it needs to help all students who need it regardless of race. Enacting a program that considers both race and socioeconomic background would be complicated, but it would be a fair and just solution.