At the end of June, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in the cases Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, ruling that “colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis in admissions.”
The full implications of this decision, including how it will affect students applying in the upcoming 2023-24 admissions cycle and in future cycles, are still unclear. For now, here is what we know (and what we don’t know).
What We Know
1. Colleges are allowed to consider race as it relates to a student’s personal narrative and experiences.
The Supreme Court has outlawed consideration of race “as a specific basis” in admissions, meaning that colleges can no longer use the simple fact of a person’s race (i.e. checking a box) as a factor in the holistic review of their application.
However, colleges are still allowed to consider a student’s personal narrative, which can include mentions of racial, cultural, or ethnic backgrounds and experiences.
What this means for you: If you want your racial, ethnic, and/or cultural identity to “count” as a factor in your college applications, you must write about it somewhere in your application. This could be as central as writing your entire personal statement about your identity, or as small as incorporating it into your activities list.
Please keep in mind that writing about race/ethnicity/culture (or any form of identity) DOES NOT have to be about struggle or overcoming adversity. Writing about these topics should be a celebration of what makes you you, and whether the focus of the narrative is on adversity, or personal growth, or family, or love, or faith, or food, colleges just want to see you for the wonderful, interesting, complex human that you are.
Note: You do not have to write your personal statement about your identity for it to exist in your application. If you have a different compelling story you want to share as the cornerstone of your narrative, please share it. The last thing colleges need is for every applicant to start writing about the same topic.
One great way to still share your identity with all your colleges without discussing it in your personal statement is to write about it (briefly) in the Additional Information section of the Common App. This question literally asks “Do you wish to provide details of circumstances or qualifications not reflected in the application?” So if your racial/ethnic/cultural identity is not reflected elsewhere in your application and you want it to be, here is your opportunity to make it happen.
2. The Demographics section of the Common App will still include questions about race and ethnicity (along with gender, legal sex, pronouns, and U.S. Armed Forces status).
What has changed is that colleges now have the ability to hide students’ race and ethnicity information when they download applications from the Common App.
Universities are also able to hide information about applicants’ test scores, birth dates, gender, and social security numbers (which is why you may not see some of these categories when you “preview” your application to certain schools, even if you filled them out).
As far as we know, colleges are not required to hide your race and ethnicity responses, though we expect that the vast majority will do so in order to protect themselves from legal challenges (it would be very hard for a university to argue that their application readers had access to a student’s race/ethnicity information and then ignored it completely).
However, there are other areas of the Common App that will (intentionally or not) give clues about your racial/ethnic background to application readers:
Personal Information asks for your full name, which for some students can indicate a familial connection to a certain racial or cultural group.
Language asks which languages you are proficient in, which is/are your first language(s), and which are spoken at home.
Geography and Nationality asks about your birth country, city, and state, as well as your citizenship status and the number of years you’ve lived in the U.S. (if any).
Family asks for your parents’ names, occupations, and any colleges or universities they have attended. Many colleges also ask for parents’ birthplaces in their supplemental questions.
What this means for you: You should still fill out the entire Common Application, including the questions about race and ethnicity (if you feel comfortable doing so), because all this information helps colleges better understand their applicant pools and admitted classes. No one knows exactly how this ruling will affect minority students’ acceptance and enrollment at selective colleges, and colleges will need accurate data to better understand whether their efforts to enroll diverse classes of students are working.
3. For international students, country of origin has long been a more important holistic review factor than race/ethnicity.
When colleges and universities report statistics on race and ethnicity, international students are often counted as their own category separate from domestic students (so that enrolling a lot of Latinos from Latin America doesn’t help a college “boost” its Latino enrollment, when the goal is to recruit Latino students within the U.S.).
Selective colleges often brag about their incoming classes of admitted students in press releases, and for international students the primary data points discussed are total percentage and number of countries of origin, for example:
Harvard: “Students admitted to the Class of 2027 come from all 50 states and 102 countries. Roughly 22 percent of admits hail from the Mid-Atlantic, 17.4 percent from the South, 15.9 percent from New England, 17 percent from the Western/Mountain region, 10.1 percent from the Midwest, and 15.8 percent from U.S. territories and abroad.” [Emphasis added]
What this means for you: If you’re an international applicant, you will likely experience a much quieter shift in your admission landscape than domestic students will. You will still be affected by this ruling, however colleges will continue to utilize information such as your citizenship status, country of origin, languages, and family background to better understand your identit(ies) and experiences within their holistic review processes.
What We Don’t Know
1. How exactly will colleges be allowed to (or choose to) factor personal narratives about race/ethnicity into their admissions decisions?
Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the organization that filed these lawsuits against Harvard and UNC in the first place, recently sent an email to the top 150 colleges and universities in the country, demanding for them to:
“Cease making available to admissions officers ‘check box’ data about the race of applicants.”
“During the admissions cycle, prohibit your admissions office from preparing or reviewing any aggregated data… regarding race or ethnicity.”
“Eliminate any definition or guidance regarding ‘underrepresented’ racial groups… includ[ing] clear instructions that essay answers, personal statements, or other parts of an application cannot be used to ascertain or provide a benefit based on the applicant’s race.”
SFFA has a clear motive for wanting colleges to interpret the court’s ruling this strictly, but colleges and their legal teams will make the ultimate decision about what they feel comfortable doing in order to encourage diversity while also protecting themselves against future lawsuits. The U.S. Education Department also plans to issue federal guidance for colleges later this summer.
What this means for you: If you’re applying this year, you will probably need to complete the majority of your application materials before you get the full picture about how application evaluation may change. Pay attention to the news and be prepared to make some last minute tweaks before ED and EA deadlines arrive!
2. Will new legal challenges also outlaw consideration of legacy and/or development status?
Less than a week after the Supreme Court banned race-conscious affirmative action, three minority advocacy groups filed a new lawsuit against Harvard “accusing the school of discrimination by giving preferential treatment to children of wealthy donors and alumni.” Legacy and development students are “‘overwhelmingly White,’ and make up as much as 15% of admitted students.”
If this lawsuit does eventually result in changes to legacy admission policies, it will likely take years to work its way through the court system (The SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC cases were first filed in November of 2014).
What this means for you: If you have a legacy or donor connection to a particular university, DON’T COUNT ON IT to “boost” your application. You may still get a “boost,” but if the university decides to preemptively eliminate their legacy/development admission policies, you may lose this advantage.
In recent years, several colleges and universities have eliminated legacy and donor admissions, including Amherst College, the University of California, Johns Hopkins University, and all higher education institutions in Colorado. Just days ago, Wesleyan University announced they would “no longer engage in legacy admissions.”
3. How might this decision affect application and admission patterns at different universities?
This is the question we have the least clarity on right now. It will be impossible to know until the end of the 2023-24 admissions cycle how admission patterns will begin to shift as a result of the court’s ruling.
And even then we will only have data for one cycle. The impact of this change will continue to evolve in the coming years, in much the way that COVID test-optional policies have continued to affect admission patterns and policies since 2020.
The one thing we are certain of through all this is that your Advisors and Tutors and Essay Coaches—and the entire LogicPrep team—will be here to support you every step of the way.