When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions last year, Chief Justice John Roberts left a narrow window for students to talk about race in personal essays in applications.
The ruling has left college admissions officers in a tailspin as they adjust their applications and decision-making processes.
Students applying to Sarah Lawrence College can respond to a new supplemental essay prompt that quotes the ruling: “Drawing upon examples from your life, a quality of your character, and/or a unique ability you possess, describe how you believe your goals for a college education might be impacted, influenced, or affected by the court’s decision.”
“Sarah Lawrence challenges our students to face real world, difficult topics head-on, and to think critically and analytically about hard topics in society,” says Kevin McKenna, the vice president for enrollment and dean of admission and financial aid at Sarah Lawrence. The essay prompt signals “the importance of diversity to the university,” McKenna says, and “that we don’t shy away from exploring hard questions that don’t have easy answers.”
That was a creative, and somewhat mocking, response to the Court’s decision, says Akil Bello, the senior director of advocacy and advancement at the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, or FairTest. “Institutions are following the law in providing candidates with the opportunity to discuss their experiences on the way to higher education, as it involves discrimination and race, and how those things may have shaped their educational experiences,” Bello says. “And that’s the most direct way in which I’ve seen institutions address [the decision].”
Since the late 1960s, affirmative action programs have been the primary tool that selective universities used to help build a diverse student body. But that all changed when the Supreme Court, powered by the conservative majority, ended race-conscious admissions practices nationwide.
So where do universities go from here? Without the tools they relied on for decades to ensure equitable access to higher education for people of color, schools are grappling with how to maintain and continue creating a diverse student body.
Why this year’s application forms look different
The challenge for admissions offices seeking to build a diverse student body differs from school to school. In particular, “elite” universities — the relatively small number of highly selective schools whose graduates occupy positions of power in government and business and have historically struggled to represent a diverse nation — are looking for new ways to reach that goal without running afoul of the courts. Less selective schools that have traditionally better reflected their communities are grappling with what to do, if anything.
Many colleges, like Sarah Lawrence, are looking for solutions both practical and creative: from removing legacy admissions where children of alumni get preferential treatment — the majority of legacy students at top universities are White — to new recruiting tactics. But there is no silver bullet that will fundamentally alter the current admissions reality, and universities remain concerned about the prospect of more lawsuits if these solutions are interpreted as race-conscious admissions practices.
All the schools I’m applying to want different things. It’s making me a little crazy.
So many hoops to jump through
Admissions requirements vary widely between colleges
Requirements
University of Hawai 'i at Mānoa
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Sarah Lawrence College
SAT/ACT (optional)
High school grades
Essay(s)
Art portfolio (optional)
Recommendation letter(s)
Interview
Application portals
Application fee
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is slightly more selective than Sarah Lawrence, with admit rates a little above 40%. Doug Burgett, the interim director of undergraduate admissions, describes UIUC’s process as “holistic” in that they look at several different aspects of an application, from test scores to letters of recommendation. At UIUC, students can apply directly to their intended major. The application includes required supplemental essays that demonstrate why a student wants to pursue a certain course of study.
Burgett says there can be anywhere from two to a dozen admissions staff assigned to a single application, and the conversations about admittance or rejection are lengthy and based on every element of the application. The first, and maybe most pertinent, factor is whether or not the admissions team thinks that student would be a good fit on campus.
Prior to the affirmative action overturn, race and ethnicity were never the sole reason a student was accepted at UIUC. But if an application bordered between rejection and acceptance, contextual information like race could benefit students of color.
My uncle attended UIUC! He’s been encouraging me to apply, too. Its acceptance rate is over 40%, so I’m a little worried I won’t get in.
“We used race [and] ethnicity as a plus factor,” Burgett explains. “So if someone was on the fence but they were an underrepresented student, it would probably push them toward a more positive decision. But we never admitted based on race alone.”
Hi, my name is Phil. I’m an admissions officer at UIUC. We’ll take a lot of factors in Kayla’s application into consideration. After the court’s decision, race can’t be one of them. Our goal is to make sure every admitted student fits well and is likely to succeed academically.
Basic Assessment
Schools weight factors differently depending on what is most important to them. At a less selective school, more emphasis may be placed on a student's high school academic performance and how they performed on the SAT or ACT. More selective schools may prioritize a student's personal statement, extracurriculars or letters of recommendation. UIUC for example doesn't accept letters of recommendation, but encourages students to demonstrate through essays their passions and career goals.
Discussion
The admission office starts having conversations about students. This conversation might be relatively quick since their acceptance rate is high. Regardless, admissions officers will always discuss how students might fit on campus. However, in more selective schools like UIUC or Sarah Lawrence, the conversation often involves more nuance and details..
A decision is maybe, or...
After several rounds of discussion, the admission office would make a final decision. Part of this discussion includes whether or not a student qualifies for any sort of scholarships. In more selective schools, more steps may be needed, such as interviews with admissions staff or school alumni.
‘Everyone deserves access to higher education’
Michael Bastedo, a professor and associate dean in the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan, believes it’s especially important that elite universities broadly reflect society. Prior to the overturn, race-conscious admissions practices were intended to address this issue of underrepresentation of racial minorities in higher education. According to Bastedo, this group of higher education institutions with highly selective admissions have “disproportionate power in our society.”
“It’s important from the institutional perspective to have an institution that represents society more broadly. If we have an institution that really reproduces inequality to a significant extent, that’s always going to be a delegitimating situation for that institution, right? They want to have a mission to serve all of society, not just a proportion of society.”
Michael Bastedo
A professor and associate dean in the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan
Affirmative action had aimed to provide racial minority groups more employment opportunities since 1961, when President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, instructing government contractors to take “affirmative action” to make sure applicants or employees are treated “without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” But affirmative action in higher education didn’t come into focus until the 1978 landmark Bakke decision when the Supreme Court decided that universities could use race, among other factors, when considering an applicant as long as they didn’t implement strict racial quotas.
Even before the Supreme Court’s decision in June, universities and admissions were never truly equitable. Racial minorities had been largely excluded from academia since Harvard University, the United States’ first and oldest college, was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1636. For centuries, “equality was never really a factor in the admissions process,” says CJ Powell, the director of advocacy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
Using race in admissions was an important tool for encouraging diversity on campus since affirmative action programs first came into existence, says Shereem Herndon-Brown, the founder and chief education officer of Strategic Admissions Advice and co-author of “The Black Families Guide to College Admissions: A Conversation about Education, Parenting, and Race.”
“But I understand that many schools are legally going to do what they’ve been told to do, which is not factor [race] in during their evaluation period,” he explains. “I think that’s damaging to the overall percentage of students who will be on campus next year who are Black and brown. I think universities are going to lose that authentic diversity.”
I think I am a good student (at least that’s what my teachers say). I have mostly As and Bs and scored a 1310 on the SAT. I’d love to study psychology. I think I stand a chance of getting into the more selective schools.
Since 2000, Black enrollment at the top 101 most selective public universities across the country has decreased by nearly 60%, according to the Education Trust. Part of this can be explained by the banning of race-conscious admissions practices for public universities in several states such as California, Washington, and Florida, all in the late 1990s.
In 1996, California prohibited affirmative action in admissions for public universities starting with the incoming class of 1998, and pledged to maintain diversity through other methods. Before that, the student bodies of elite schools such as UC Berkeley and UCLA were roughly representative of the California high school graduates who were eligible for university enrollment. Fifteen years after the ban statewide, school officials reported they hadn’t yet met any of their diversity, equity and inclusion goals, despite collectively spending more than half a billion on outreach and admissions alternatives.
The state’s public universities have made up some ground on equitable admissions without considering race in recent years. Regardless, the California school systems still enroll fewer Black and Latino students than represented in the state’s population and high school graduates.
Powell suggests that part of the pushback against, and eventual collapse, of affirmative action roots itself in a collective sense of “entitlement” from the elite. Part of the false characterization of race-conscious admissions is the notion that under-qualified candidates, mostly Black and Latino students, are chosen because of their race alone, effectively “taking” spots away from better suited White applicants. But, according to Powell, “that was never the case when race-conscious admissions [were] in effect.”
“I think you see this in the current culture wars, because there’s always this questioning of who is qualified,” he says, “and the notion that anyone who is not a White man can’t possibly be qualified in and of their own merit to do certain things.”
My parents didn’t go to college. They’re super supportive, but this process is all new to them. I do have a counselor, but I’m still kind of confused about all the details of applying.
Bello says the Supreme Court cases have an underlying assumption that race was the sole reason applicants of color received admittance to Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and that the court believed “that is a racist proposition.”
“If you have 8% Black students, and we've decided all of those Black students were admitted because of their race, the only way to prove that you stopped [using race-conscious admissions] is to lower that number,” Bello says. “So now they’ve created a problem for the institution in which there is a legal threat hanging over their heads if they don't reduce the number of Black students.”
Why does what happens at elite universities matter?
At first glance, the court’s ruling would seem to impact admissions of all universities equally. But elite universities — highly ranked schools with a generally lower acceptance rate — could have the toughest time maintaining a diverse student body without the tool of race-conscious admissions compared to their less-competitive counterparts. Graduates of these coveted elite academic institutions occupy some of the most powerful positions in the workforce, from professors to politicians to journalists. A 2018 study in the Journal of Expertise found that the majority of The New York Times staff attended one of the 29 most elite universities. And eight of the current Supreme Court justices graduated from either Harvard or Yale Law School. (The ninth, Amy Coney Barrett, attended Notre Dame, which is consistently ranked as one of the top law schools in the country.)
All nine Supreme Court Justices came from just three elite law schools: Harvard, Yale and Notre Dame.
![Elena Kagan](https://theemancipator.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Elena_Kagan_Official_SCOTUS_Portrait_2013.png")
Studies show that students who attend highly selective colleges are 44% more likely to reach the top 1% of the income distribution. OiYan Poon, co-director of the College Admissions Futures Co-Laborative at the University of Maryland, explains that there are only a fraction of four-year universities in the country that are considered rejective, meaning they reject more than 50% of their applicant pool. Diversity, then, has a disproportionate impact inside the walls of this small percentage of “elite” institutions.
And diversity looks different at less competitive universities. Nikki Chun, vice provost for enrollment management at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa is still reckoning with the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision. Applications for UH Mānoa no longer require personal essays and letters of recommendation, which were optional for the class of 2028.\
Essays and letters of recommendation are “not materially valuable for our decision process and for our institution,” Chun says, adding that such requirements can be “barriers for students from under-resourced communities.” UH Mānoa, Hawaii's largest public university, has an in-state acceptance rate of 83%.
“For where we are and who we serve,” Chun explains, the school is “a natural hotbed for diversity.” The racial diversity on campus reflects the makeup of Honolulu, the city where UH Mānoa is located — something Chun says should not be taken for granted. In fact, Chun says that none of this should be taken for granted and that “diversity is an inherent part of the learning process that you cannot substitute” for anything.
Diversity also looks different at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It is the state’s largest public university, with close to 30,000 students, and has an acceptance rate of around 65%, compared to less than 3.5% at Harvard. Massachusetts is roughly 62% White, with around 67% of students at UMass Amherst identifying as White in 2021.
While equity and inclusion remains important in UMass Amherst’s admissions process, ending race-conscious admissions practices is less likely to impact diversity since most of its students come from in-state.
Bastedo explains that admissions for competitive schools are, and always have been, a zero-sum game. These universities receive more applications that academically fit their standards than places they have to fill an incoming class. Admissions teams have to allocate the limited spots in a way that is “equitable and defensible,” Bastedo says. This selection process, he says, reproduces the “stratification of race in particular.”
“If you’re at a less selective school or a broad access school, it isn’t much of a question about whether or not race is influencing your decision,” he says. “One, you’re either open access and everyone with a high school degree can enroll, or two, you are denying some students, but you’re denying them only because you think that they don't have the academic ability at this time to succeed in your college.”
Will universities ‘walk their talk’ about diversity?
Following the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling, competitive universities were quick to make statements stressing the importance of diversity in education.
In a letter written after the ruling, Harvard faculty, including former-President Lawrence S. Bacow say they “reaffirm the fundamental principle that deep and transformative teaching, learning, and research depend upon a community comprising people of many backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences.”
President James E. Ryan and Provost Ian Baucom of the University of Virginia, an elite public institution, express similar sentiments: “We will follow the law. We also will do everything within our legal authority to recruit and admit a class of students who are diverse across every possible dimension and to make every student feel welcome and included here at UVA.”
Having a campus that broadly reflects the community it serves is important for more than reputation. Diversity has proven benefits for all students. Studies show students work better in diverse environments because they must engage critically with differing viewpoints and backgrounds.
Despite what my uncle says, my family wants me to go to UMass Amherst. Since it’s a state school, it’s the cheapest option, but I’d like to go to Sarah Lawrence because their psych program sounds awesome.
Outside the classroom, a study in the Review of Educational Research indicates that college diversity experiences are related to increased civic engagement. Learning in an environment that challenges a student’s preconceived notions is crucial for developing critical thinking skills and for democracy, says Powell, the NACAC advocacy director.
Lacking diverse classrooms “means various communities are being left out of a democratic process, of being trained to be good democratic citizens,” he says. That reality is more dangerous, he says, because it “leads to the ever-increasing polarization that we're seeing.”
Diversity in higher education also helps ensure diversity in institutions that have historically reproduced racial inequities. According to a study in Medical Care, health disparities have only grown over the past two decades in the U.S. — in 2021, the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 2.1 times the rate for White women — and health professions struggle to maintain a diverse workforce. Studies show that greater health equity relies on diversity, which ultimately starts with education.
“Having a bachelor’s degree is one of the few levers in our culture for socioeconomic stability and growth,” says Marie Bigham, founder and executive director of the Admissions Community Cultivating Equity & Peace Today Group, a nonprofit advocating equity in higher education admissions.
“It's really, really clear, especially in the most resourced colleges, the ones that can fund students the best [have] never really been reflective of the demographics of this country.”
Marie Bigham
Founder and director of ACCEPT
Will universities “walk their talk?” Powell says. “I think you’re seeing more institutions start to really evaluate whether or not that policy is reflective of their language that they’ve been sending out to students.”
What other solutions might replace race-conscious admissions?
Shortly after Ryan and Baucom, the president and provost of UVA, addressed the issue of diversity and the school removing indications of a prospect’s race, ethnicity, and legacy status from applications, the university added optional personal essay prompts that will allow students to address factors related to race.
Relying on personal essays to convey race and ethnicity produces different issues for students. Making students feel they need to use essays to talk about their race, and how race or other aspects of their identity have caused hardships, is an unfair “pressure” for students, says Joan Casey, a Boston-based college admissions counselor.
Carolina Figueroa, vice president of enrollment management at Waltham, Massachusetts-based Bentley University, says being intentional about diversifying their student body, without race-conscious admissions, will remain at the forefront of the private business school’s admissions process. Figueroa points to BentleyFirst, a scholarship program for first-generation college students in Massachusetts, as one solution to ensure equity. Bentley offers eligible applicants the same tuition price as the public University of Massachusetts Amherst. “As a result of the actions we’ve taken in this area, the percentage of first-generation students in our incoming class of first-year students increased from less than 18% to 25% in a single year,” Figueroa says.
Eliminating systemic application facets that perpetuate racial inequity is an easy fix, Powell says. Early decision deadlines are one example. Early decision candidates tend to have the “most access to resources,” he says, “and that tends to skew [toward] White students and well-resourced students, which definitely is counterproductive to building diverse classes because those are the kinds of students who have historically been able to attend higher education, particularly at selective institutions.”
The perpetuation of racial stratification by early decisions will increase without affirmative action, Bastedo says. Because some early decision applications are binding, underprivileged students are less likely to apply without knowing how much financial aid they will receive. Instead of applying to a single school via early decision, these students often need to apply to multiple universities to compare aid packages.
I wasn’t able to apply early to any of my colleges. My college counselor and parents wanted me to wait and see what kind of financial aid and scholarships I get.
Powell and Bastedo agree that eliminating legacy admissions is one way to uphold equity. A 2019 study in the National Bureau of Economic Research indicated that 70% of legacy and athletic admits at Harvard were White. As a group, they make up less than 5% of all applicants but represent 30% of those admitted each year. Some colleges, such as Wesleyan University, retired legacy as a determining factor of an applicant.
Powell and Bastedo are skeptical about whether other highly competitive universities, specifically Ivy League schools, will abandon the practice because alumni donations are a large part of their revenue.
Removing barriers to entry such as early and legacy decisions could help universities promote diversity. But there are other more creative solutions as well. Powell says universities should invest time and energy into communities that have been historically underrepresented in higher education. This means thinking of recruiting outside the realm of high school college fairs. Powell suggests universities visit churches in areas where religion is a cornerstone to Black and Latino communities. He says they could also attend fairs and festivals, which helps students see colleges in a less intimidating way. Making meaningful connections with these communities will empower high school students to apply and feel they belong on an elite campus.
“It’s just about being much more genuine with these communities because they can spot when you’re being fake,” Powell says.
College admissions need to better understand the gaps in the public high school education system, Bastedo says.“It’s still really important for admissions officers to understand the inequalities in our high school system and just our educational system more broadly, that students come from really widely varying contexts in terms of what access they have to the things that admissions officers are valuing,” he says. This could be as simple as being acquainted with the unequal distribution of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses around the country.
It’s also critical that universities find ways to ensure underrepresented students have a support system once they arrive on campus.
If I go to UIUC, I want to participate in its Reaching Across Classes student mentor program! It’s for racial minority freshmen and I think that it would help make the transition from home easier
“You can’t just recruit, you have to have systems in place to make sure those students get to college, and that there are retention programs,” says Casey, the college admissions counselor. Having a diverse campus matters little if students of color feel they do not belong.
Savion Thompson, a student at Northeastern University, remembers feeling taken aback when the affirmative action ruling was announced. Thompson is from Reidsville, North Carolina, where the median household income is less than $35,000 and the high school system’s resources are limited.
“Seeing that affirmative action was being taken away would kind of seem like a slap in the face to people of lower income communities, which do impact minorities a lot,” he says.
Thompson, a combined health science and business administration major, is a member of the track and field team at Northeastern. His involvement in athletics eventually led him to become the president of the Northeastern University Black Athlete Caucus. Ending race-conscious admissions indicates “there’s no person of color with a seat at the table,” Thompson says.
Ultimately, Poon likens equity in higher education to a Möbius strip. “[Y]ou could change one little thing in the system, but unless you look at everything in totality, [by] changing one thing, the system will evolve and continue perpetuating inequalities,” she says. While some universities are attempting to address these issues and develop solutions, others have responded in ways that make it harder for students of color to be admitted or feel encouraged to apply. Poon points to Western Illinois University which, immediately following the affirmative action overturn, revoked scholarships for incoming students of color in fear of more potential lawsuits even though the Department of Education and Department of Justice made clear that the ruling has nothing to do with scholarships. Following backlash, the university reinstated these scholarships, but according to Poon, the initial reaction still signals to some students that they do not belong.
“Many of my Black students are now applying to more HBCUs than they have in the past. Not as a default because they can't get into PWIs, per se, but because they understand the cultural significance of it. And, you know, if these places want me and the other places don't, then I should go where I'm wanted.”
Shereem Herndon-Brown
Founder and chief education officer of Strategic Admissions Advice
A predominately White institution (PWI) is defined by the U.S. Department of Education as a university that has 50% or more enrollment from White students. It is also used to refer to any university whose enrollment has been “historically White.”
We don’t know the impact of banning affirmative action (for now)
Counselors and higher education professionals worried that the overturn of affirmative action would have a chilling effect on high school applicants of color, but that wasn’t the case, Powell says. But even so, there’s no guarantee that universities will follow through with implementing strategic recruitment and application strategies to maintain diversity.
“We’re going to see what the difference between acceptance and yield is going to be as these classes continue to get shaped,” Powell says. “Our hope is that it is reflective of the increase [in] students of color who've applied.”
Kayla's story is not unique. Around 13% of all graduating high school seniors in the U.S. this year are Black. They may all wonder what the college process looks like since the ending of race-conscious admissions. As of 2021, the majority of American high schoolers identified as non-White. While not all of them intend to go to college, the application experiences for those who do have been drastically altered. Kayla is just one of millions wondering what comes next in their education journey.
Even if universities are able to establish diversity on campus without race-conscious admissions, there is still a major barrier to entry this year: Will students from underrepresented communities be able to afford tuition?
To access federal grants and loans, students and their families must complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, also known as FAFSA. This form opens each year in October for graduating seniors, but last fall, the U.S. Department of Education announced FAFSA wouldn't open until December. When the form went live Dec. 30, technical glitches locked out many users, and students born in the year 2000 weren’t able to submit. Parents without social security numbers were unable to file too. Colleges were supposed to receive these forms by late January, but the Education Department announced that issues with the form would delay delivery until mid-March.
This FAFSA fiasco left millions of students in financial limbo, with many experts worried about a drop-off in applications.
FAFSA delays might have made a difference in college diversity and representation, Bello says. And “the financial implications of the changes… are probably as significant, if not more significant, than the ruling from the court.”
In the end, I chose UMass Amherst. It’s closer to home and more affordable. I just FaceTimed with my new roommate who’s Latina. She’s from New Jersey and is interested in psych, too. She also felt pretty alone in the process, but there are millions of us trying to figure out our education journey after affirmative action.
This project was reported and designed by the Media Innovation Studio at Northeastern University's School of Journalism, part of its graduate program in Media Innovation + Data Communication. The student reporting teams interviewed dozens of graduating high school seniors, admissions officers and researchers across the US to produce the stories and data visualizations.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
