The SCOTUS Call on RACE in Admissions

Today we’re talking about the recent Supreme Court decision that effectively bans colleges from considering race as one factor in a holistic review of students’ college admissions applications.

For decades, colleges have endeavored to create diverse student bodies, including “people of many backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences,” according to the president of Harvard, which, along with UNC, was a defendant in this SCOTUS decision.

Colleges want students from all walks of life to come together, cross-pollinate, learn from each other, and become greater than the sum of their parts.

They’ve also considered college admissions applicants’ race to provide opportunities to students from historically marginalized communities.

The lawyer in this case is Edward Blum, who created an organization called “Students for Fair Admissions.” And this is actually his third time bringing a case like this to the Supreme Court. His first two times, he had a white plaintiff, arguing she’d been harmed when the University of Texas at Austin rejected her despite admitting some black students with lower grades and test scores.

UT Austin showed they’d also rejected black students with higher grades and scores, because those aren’t the only factors colleges weigh in an applicant’s holistic read, and the case failed both times.

But this third time, Blum was back with a new plaintiff and a new defendant. Representing a group of Asian parents, he sued Harvard and UNC in two separate cases, arguing those colleges had discriminated by requiring higher grades and scores of Asian applicants than of other candidates.

And with a very different Supreme Court this time, he’s won.

Depending on who you listen to, Ed Blum and his “Students for Fair Admissions” organization are either champions of Civil Rights, or white supremacists using Asian Americans as pawns.

I think we’re all in favor of “fair” college admissions practices. But what’s “fair“?

Is it only considering students’ test scores, irrespective of how many opportunities they had or challenges they overcame to achieve those scores?

Is it only considering students’ grades and class rank, irrespective of their level of academic rigor, available resources, and possible grade inflation?

Is it fair for colleges to prioritize legacy students, whose sibling or parents go there or went there, or the children of university employees?

Is it fair to recruit and admit athletes whose scores and grades are below the college’s average, ahead of candidates with scores and grades above it?

What about “need aware” policies, where some colleges prioritize students who can afford the rising cost of college over students of less affluent means?

This is part of why the college admissions process can be so frustratingly opaque for so many students and parents.

The question at hand in this case is who gets to decide what is or isn’t “fair.” Is it the colleges? Or the government? In this case, the Supreme Court has decided that it’s the government, protecting people from colleges violating the Civil Rights Act, no matter how “well intentioned,” said Chief Justice Roberts in his majority opinion.

So what does this mean for parents and students in the application cycles ahead?

Colleges still want to build diverse student bodies. And they still have levers at their disposal to do it.

They can still prioritize first-generation college students, who’ll be the first ones in their families to go to college.

They can also use “need aware“ admissions policies to prioritize admitting students with lower economic means.

They’ll keep considering students’ extracurricular activities, but maybe with an eye more toward diversity there.

They can offer or even require an admissions interview as part of the application process, where students and admissions reps or alumni can meet face-to-face.

And because this ruling still gives colleges the latitude to consider things students write about their experiences with race, colleges may choose to assign more college admissions application essays — including the increasingly popular “diversity essay” — to get to know the applicants better.

Colleges have known this was coming for a while now. Oral arguments were months ago, and this court has established itself as one willing to overturn decades of SCOTUS precedent, which race-based admissions policies have had. So colleges likely already had a plan A and Plan B. That way, no matter which way this decision came down, they’d be ready to move forward on time with the college application cycle that’s about to open.

The idea of “colorblind“ college admissions is ideal in a colorblind society with a colorblind history. But until America achieves that ideal, American colleges will still look for ways, within the law, to create socially, ethnically, and economically diverse student bodies that reflect the world around us.

The irony of this decision on race is that the college admissions process was initially created to weed OUT diversity; specifically, to exclude Jewish applicants with high test scores from getting into elite universities with antisemitic patrons and administrations. But today, colleges are working hard to use that system for exactly the opposite.

America is a nation of immigrants. And in every generation, the next wave of immigrants who make this country home tend to be highly focused on their children’s education, often because their own education was what gave them the opportunities that led them to immigrate here in the first place.

And in a number of Asian countries in particular, a big test taken later in high school — similar to America’s SAT or ACT — can have an outsized impact on where those students go to college. So in those instances where the parents of American high school students didn’t go through the American college admissions process themselves, it’s understandable they’d assume a higher test score would equate directly to a higher acceptance rate.

But the nuanced and, again, opaque nature of what American colleges refer to as a “holistic review“ of students’ applications can create a sliding scale, where students who are missing some of those other pieces — sports, clubs, leadership, arts, community service, awards, work experience, and more — can make up for that deficit with higher grades and test scores.

And because grades and scores can be measured clearly, it can easily seem like a group of students focused more on those criteria throughout their high school years may be experiencing racial discrimination when they look for a commonality. But as any scientist can tell you, correlation is not always causation.

I once spoke candidly with an international admissions rep for a highly competitive American university who told me in their most recent cycle they had enough applicants with perfect SAT scores and perfect GPAs — just from one country — to fill their entire freshman class, without reading a single essay, attending a single college fair, or giving a single tour. She said to me, “but it would’ve been boring.“

Colleges don’t want only one kind of student. Because in life, their graduates won’t encounter only one kind of person. Colleges want to prepare students for the diverse world ahead of them. And, for what it’s worth, colleges want to have an impact on that world by providing opportunities to more than just one community.

Top colleges will still look for ways to build the diverse student bodies they want. But we may be moving into an admission cycle where under-resourced students who possess raw talent get fewer opportunities to achieve their true potentials, and where American children of education-focused immigrant parents are favored over the American children of, say, sports-focused families who’ve been in America for generations.

Whether or not those things happen, we will still likely hear from rejected white applicants — like Edward Blum’s original plaintiff — who believe they were rejected because a college favored applicants of another race over them. Rejection letters don’t come with an explanation, so their recipients can easily find themselves convinced of their own hunches and conjecture.

This means that, although the third time may have been the charm for Edward Blum to achieve his goal at the Supreme Court, it may wind up a “be careful what you wish for“ situation.

Just please be conscious to remember that, although the plaintiff in this case was a small group of Asian parents, this is not a reason to start pointing fingers at all Asian parents or students for any particular admission outcome. Everyone in this fight is, at the end of the day, trying to do what they feel is best for their children, their students, and the country. We can all share the goal of moving our society forward while disagreeing on the best methods to accomplish that goal.

So put your best foot forward in your college application, let the chips fall where they may, and if you have any questions about race in college admissions applications, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at 732-556-8220. We are here to help.