I'm curious what exactly your friend said.

Saying my child would have been admitted if they were black is very different than saying my child would have been admitted if admissions were race blind. For the latter, you're essentially saying that your child was one of the top 2-3% of non-admitted students, which is statistically unlikely, not to mention impossible to prove.

I was not admitted to Columbia Law School (life went on . . . and with much less debt I'll add). I'm highly confident I would have been admitted if I were black. I'm almost as equally confident that giving a preference to a couple dozen minorities/legacies/donor kids/etc. probably wasn't the difference between me being admitted versus not admitted.

For the record, I'm actually not opposed to affirmative action. I just get frustrated because I feel like in so many cases people aren't having an honest conversation about it.