Yes. I could easily see a split in the rulings: okay if done by a private entity (Harvard), not okay if done by a public university (UNC-CH), i.e., a “state actor”.
On the other hand, nothing surprises me much these days.
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Yes, if not OK for UNC, would not be ok for the entire UC system…which would require a big change for them.
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It’s seems like it comes up every decade or so. I’m glad the SCOTUS is going to hear it. There are many who benefit and many who are harmed so it’s worth being adjudicated.
California publics are already prohibited from using race/ethnicity in admission by state law. So no change.
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Oops, I had UNC’s current policy backwards!
I personally believe private colleges ought to be able to do whatever they want to. They’re private. If someone doesn’t like the fact that they only accept applicants who like cats, they can choose to apply elsewhere. If enough choose elsewhere, places will change. (Obviously trying for a weird example just to make a point that hopefully isn’t offensive.)
Public colleges? That would be up to the SC to decide. I can see the arguments both ways and know students who would benefit each way.
They will hear it in the session that begins next October, with a decision likely by June 2023.
Considering the current makeup of the court, and if what happened at the UC’s immediately after the UC system dropped race as a consideration in admissions is any indication, this could have a significant impact on URM admissions to highly selective colleges. This could be seen possibly as early as the admissions cycle for the high school graduating class of '24, since the decision will be released before the application process begins in the summer and fall of '23 for entry in September '24.
Assuming that the Supreme Court bans consideration of race, which I believe is likely to be the outcome, highly selective public colleges might move to the model of automatically accepting the top 5% of GPA for every high school in the state to fill some large percentage of the seats, in order to maintain some balance of URM representation in the class without specifically considering race, and then have another portion of the spots for open competition for all, including in-state <top 5% of class, OOS, and international students.
I don’t know what the highly selective private colleges might do. Even if they give preference according to economic status (which can be very difficult to accurately determine, given the large off-the-books economy in the US), there are so many very high achieving first generation immigrant kids whose families are not well off, along with non-first gen kids who come from poor families who are not URM yet have very high application stats. Even going test-blind for the SAT/ACT will not be enough to cloak the difference between a student with a very high GPA plus National Merit, plus a string of 5’s on AP exams, plus very high level academic awards and ECs, and a student with a very high GPA from a high school with low academic standards, who lacks those indicators of high achievement.
We could be seeing a very different field for college applications 18 months from now. If I were a high-achieving URM applicant or the parent of one, who is eyeing admission to highly selective private colleges, and is a member of the high school class of '2024, I would be seriously considering the possibility of accelerating high school in order to apply for admission in the fall of 2023, instead of fall of 2024. Usually all it takes is planning to double up on English in junior year, since most high achievers will have met all the other requirements in math, history, science, and foreign language by the end of junior year.
This is not about who deserves or doesn’t deserve admission to the top colleges in the country. This is about planning for the very likely reality that the field for college admissions is very likely about to change significantly, probably 18 months from now.
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Most high schools don’t rank anymore, and I don’t see that changing. Nor do I see some large move away from holistic admissions.
This isn’t so tricky for the colleges that are working with orgs like Questbridge, Posse, Chicago Scholars and the many CBOs out there. So, perhaps these organizations will expand and increase their reach…current college partners will take more students thru these orgs (where the students are vetted and EFC known) and the orgs will partner with more schools.
Colleges are also facile in using race and/or income proxies as well.
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The high schools may not rank, but they do give an indication of where a GPA puts a student in relation to the rest of the class. For example, my kids’ high school sent a letter with every application stating the grading system and its weighting, and what percentage of students were within a certain band on a graph of a weighted 4.0 scale with the highest possible GPA being a 4.4 (and that only for students who had manipulated the system by taking only honors/AP classes and the minimum number of electives that didn’t have honors or AP). So it was pretty obvious to colleges in what percentile of the class a person’s GPA placed them. Every high school does this differently, but I strongly doubt that any high school just sends out a transcript, with no explanation of the grading system and the way the students fall within the class.
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I agree many schools share some measure of GPA on their school profile. Many share only a weighted median, while some share a mid-50% range weighted. Some schools show only unweighted median or ranges. Suffice it to say, it’s often not detailed enough to figure out top 10%, let alone top 5%…and that is by design. HSs do not want to be transparent on sharing relative rank because they believe it harms their students in admissions…and that has led to the declining importance of rank in holistic admissions IME.
ETA: an example…students with relative low GPAs/rank at strong HSs can be stronger students and much better prepared for college than top students at weak HSs. College AOs are facile at figuring this out.
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Most private colleges still accept federal funds….so maybe they’re closer to “private-public” or “quasi-private”?
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Back in the day…one of the schools I applied to many years ago was Grove City College. Small college north of Pittsburgh. They had a case go to the Supreme Court. They didn’t want to accept federal student aid so they could remain independent.
He who pays the piper names the tune.
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I guess this is the option many of the Top colleges could go to if they wanted. It’s not like they need Pell Grant money.
Out of curiosity, could they still accept NIH money (and similar) for research?
There are many other schools that do not participate in Title IV, they are mostly religious schools such as Grove City.
What this means to the potential applicants is that if they qualify for a Pell Grant, they can’t access those funds at non-Title IV schools, nor can they access the Federal Direct Student Loans…so the non-Title IV schools aren’t a good choice for the many students that qualify for Pell and/or who would like to take out Federal Student Loans. I don’t think any of the non-Title IV schools meet full need.
Ugh.I’m not qualified to comment on the law, but in general;
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It is a clear fact that Asians are being discriminated against in college admissions. Hard to make a case that they(or we) should be fine with this. They have suffered from racism in the past, and continue to do so now.
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If admissions becomes race blind, we will have significantly less Black and Latino students.
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Next I could see a lawsuit claiming that Admissions has to be completely gender and income blind, resulting in fewer male, and poor students.
I don’t have any answers, but would comment that it might be asking too much for schools to solve the inequities of the country alone. In Canada, they are race, income and gender blind. However, their tuitions are a fraction of what they are in the US, so it can be argued that college educations are more accessible to all income classes. The government funds schools far more than they do down here, I believe. There are large pockets of Asian students at certain institutions, less at others…is that really so bad?
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In Canada, economic and pre-university educational inequality is also lower than in the US. In addition, the most desired universities are gigantic public universities (especially compared to provincial and national populations*), so the competitiveness of admission is not at the level where they are overflowing with applicants hitting the high school stats ceiling who then need to be sorted into admit/reject through more subjective means.
*University of Toronto has 14 times as many undergraduates as Harvard, while drawing mostly from a national population that is about 1/8 the size.
Is it true that male students get admitted with lesser academics and other achievements than female students? What evidence is there for this being widespread beyond a few extreme cases (eg ballet)? I see attempts by some schools to achieve more of a gender balance but that usually means admitting more female students in STEM, not fewer in english or languages.
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I’m not sure that’s what 57special was alluding to, but I have heard AOs state this, and Jeff Selingo also has said this (can’t remember if it’s in his book or podcasts or other media appearances, but I am certain he said it here on his CC AMA).
We also know that males have lower HS GPAs, so it seems this would logically follow that on average, admitted/enrolled male students would have lower average GPAs than females.
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With a LAC like Carleton who strives to maintain a 50/50 gender balance, females are at a disadvantage in admissions. Same in Nursing, Bio, and the Arts in general. The opposite is true at ENG schools. Since this thread is about race specifically, I guess I’ll stop there…