In college admissions, the question of race and affirmative action remains perpetually in focus, echoing our national discourse on systemic racism. Decades ago, the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision charted a path toward racial equity in education. However, recent rulings seem to reverse this progress, virtually eliminating race as a consideration in college admissions.
In separate cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the Court overturned decades of precedent, declaring that considering race as a specific factor in college admissions violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. In other words, colleges can no longer consider which demographic box students selected as it pertains to ethnic heritage.
It’s worth noting a couple of things: first, the Court left some wiggle room for colleges to consider how race may have affected an applicant’s life experiences. Second, each individual college and university will interpret and apply this decision according to its own priorities and legal understanding — and each school guards its “secret sauce” of admissions protocol and guidelines, which makes it even more difficult to predict exactly what will happen. Still, after speaking with heads of admissions and looking at historical precedent from colleges — like the University of California system — that banned affirmative action, our experts at Colledge can confidently predict some of the likely outcomes.
A Drop in Diversity
When California’s prohibition on affirmative action at its public universities entered into force in 1998, incoming UC Berkeley and UCLA classes that year witnessed a drop of 40% in Black and Latino students. A recent study of the effects of California’s ban by a Princeton economist revealed that Black and Latino students who might have otherwise attended those two campuses enrolled at other colleges. Additionally, the report found that this created a negative feedback loop: the drop in enrollment of minority students discouraged subsequent high-achieving minority students from applying. Students simply did not want to attend an institution without a critical mass of their peers, according to UCLA’s Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
An Increase in Admissions Opacity
As noted above, highly selective colleges have never been known for transparency about how they make admissions decisions. But, in light of the Court’s decision, many of these institutions have already announced their continued commitment to diversity and inclusion. So in order to admit the students they want without exposing themselves to more litigation, highly selective institutions may pull back from releasing exact data on their admitted students, or could become even more tight-lipped about their admissions processes.
Corollary: A Jump in College Applications
With all this uncertainty about exactly how admissions departments will respond and how lived racial experiences will be considered, it’s also likely that students will apply even more broadly — i.e. to even more colleges. Like the 2021 shift in standardized testing requirements, this new SCOTUS ruling may very well send high school seniors into an application tizzy.
Effects on the Personal Statement
Colleges will still be able to consider how race has impacted an applicant. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts noted that “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise.” If students feel that their race is an important part of their life and what they bring to a campus, they are still able to write about this in their personal statement — and admissions officers can still use this information to inform their decisions.
The downside for students, however, is that if they choose to build an essay about race in the valuable real estate of the personal statement, they can no longer use that space to talk about other significant and important parts of their experiences, for example, their love of music, the research project they did last summer, or how they’ve transformed their communities.
Curtailing Legacy Admissions
The Court’s ruling prohibits programs that consider race in admissions without a compelling interest and clear, measurable goals around those programs. So, with the view that legacy admissions is a proxy for affirmative action favoring White students, a group in Boston filed suit against Harvard University. (Seventy percent of Harvard’s legacy and donor-related applicants are white.)
Legacy — the practice of giving preference to scion of alumni — has attracted increasing scrutiny in recent years, and this scrutiny has only increased after the SCOTUS decision. Opponents of legacy admissions argue that if the Court is asking universities to admit students based on merit and not inborn traits like race, consideration of legacy status must be terminated. The executive director of the group who brought the new suit against Harvard declared, “Your family’s last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit, and should have no bearing on the college admissions process.”
Whether or not this new case makes it to the Supreme Court, admissions departments face mounting pressure to end the consideration of legacy status. Members of Congress, higher education professionals, and others are already asking the Department of Education to declare the practice illegal. Admissions departments around the country may abandon or curtail legacy status before that happens.
Fit Will Matter More Than Ever
As the admissions terrain shifts unpredictably in the aftermath of this SCOTUS earthquake, it’s more important than ever for families to have reliable information about each university on their college list. Without the ability to directly consider race, admissions officers will need to see that applicants really understand the values and priorities of their respective colleges—and want evidence that the students are a good match.
Fit is at the heart of what we do here at Colledge. For help navigating this changing admissions landscape and helping your student express their full self to colleges, please reach out.
