On October 31st, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for two cases. These were both filed by Students For Fair Admissions, against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill respectively. These cases have the potential to end the practice of affirmative action in college admissions and may impact how admissions are practiced on a grander scale.
In this article then, we’ll review what the case is about, and what the outcomes could be. We’ll also review how those outcomes will impact your college admissions and your chances of acceptance. This is a changing time for college admissions, but don’t worry, we’ll make sure to always give you the best advice for your situation. Let’s get started.
So What’s This About Anyway?
Students For Fair Admissions (SFFA) is an advocacy group which opposes affirmative action’s use in college admissions, due to what they claim are detriments to Asian American and white applicants. This is their full brief, but since it’s nearly a hundred pages wrong we’ll summarize the key points:
- SFFA claims that Harvard and UNC’s use of race when making admissions decisions discriminates against Asian American applicants by creating a quota system for how many can be admitted.
- They further claim that Harvard’s personal ranking exists to discriminate against Asian American students.
- They claim that the benefits gained via affirmative action can be gained using other admissions practices.
- They want the Supreme Court to overturn the previous precedent which established affirmative action in higher education, and which made it legal to consider race under certain limited circumstances.
Harvard has filed their own brief in defense, which you may read for yourself. We’ll summarize Harvard’s key points as well:
- They use race in admissions decisions only in a legal manner, as established by prior supreme court cases.
- Race is just one of the “tips” that they use (factors which influence admissions decisions). The others include socio-economic status, athletic ability, legacy status, development, and whether the child is the student of a faculty member (ALDC).
- That SFFA hand-picked most of the 480 student admissions files reviewed during the discovery process, and none of them showed any sign of anti-asian bias.
- That Harvard had explored other ways to maintain diversity on campus, but was unable to find workable alternatives.
- That racial diversity was a key part of the university experience, and that students directly benefited from a diverse campus.
- They argued that the supreme court should dismiss the case, and that the current legal standard should continue.
Finally, numerous Amicus briefs (short for Amicus Curiae, or friend of the court) have been submitted. We found the briefs by the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC) in association with the College Board and ACT inc. and one by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. They raise a number of key points as well, and Ivy Scholars supports NACAC’s position on the case:
- That race is intrinsic to a student’s experience, and that by excluding its consideration in admissions means that many aspects of a student may be disqualified from consideration.
- That a diverse student body benefits all students. The Lawyers Committee corroborated this with testimony from students and alumni, including four Asian American students.
- That the SAT and ACT should not be used to evaluate academic merit in the way that SFFA is advocating that they should.
If you want more academic information on whether Asian American students face discrimination in admissions, or are harmed by affirmative action policies, we wrote an article exploring the research on the topic. We concluded that admissions is not noticeably biased against Asian Americans, and that ending affirmative action does not increase their admissions chances.
What Happens Now?
The supreme court will not issue a decision immediately, one is not expected until some point in 2023. Once the decision is released, colleges will react, altering how they approach admissions next year. Your college admissions process will not be impacted for 2022.
What actually happens to admissions depends on what the supreme court decides. We’ll go through the most likely options, and how each will impact your college admissions process.
Option One: Harvard/UNC Win
This is the simplest, but probably least likely outcome. In this case, the supreme court agrees with Harvard and UNC, and affirmative action continues to be used in college admissions. In this scenario, there will be no change to admissions standards going forward. We believe this would be the best option for all students.
Option Two: Colleges are banned from using affirmative action
In this scenario, colleges are banned from using race as a factor when making admissions decisions. This will lead to institutions taking other approaches to increase diversity on campuses. As we saw when California banned the use of race in admissions, colleges will likely place a higher consideration on socio-economic status and background.
This may or may not impact your college applications. The onus in this scenario is primarily on colleges. This will likely heavily impact how colleges recruit and evaluate students, but each school will have to take their own approach. This is especially true if the supreme court is very vague in their ruling. Vagueness will cause universities to use caution, and may result in increased restrictions at some colleges.
Option Three: Colleges are no longer allowed to consider race in any way
This is the worst possible option for both students and colleges, and many fear that this is how the supreme court will decide. In this scenario, colleges are unable to consider race at all in admissions. This does not sound too far different from the above scenario, but there are several differences which will heavily impact your admissions process.
First, colleges will stop asking questions about identity generally, and other questions may have restrictions on what a student can write about. Students may be discouraged from writing about a community if it signals their heritage or racial identity. This could extend to essays about immigration, refugee status, and how those experiences impact a student’s identity as well.
We work with many students for whom their identity is a core part of who they are. For first and second generation immigrants, navigating these experiences is a key part of forming their sense of self, and many of them long to express this through their college essays, because it is such an integral part of their story. Under this guideline, students may be barred from sharing these experiences with colleges at all.
Overall
If the supreme court does decide to get rid of affirmative action, it will likely result in a major loss in diversity at top colleges and universities, which will negatively impact the campus culture and communities of those schools, and cause harm to the future of many bright young scholars.
While we do not know how far the supreme court will go in their ruling, many legal experts believe this could be the end of affirmative action as we know it, and the beginning of a new era in college admissions. The exact details of the ruling, and how colleges will react to it remain to be seen, but we do expect that this will change how students apply to colleges, and may impact overall college admissions strategy.
We will release another article when the decision comes out, explaining how the final actions of the court will impact your college admissions.
Final Thoughts
We know this is outside the norm for our articles, but when current events have such a large potential to impact college admissions, we would be remiss not to advise you on how this may impact you. We hope that this article outlines some of the possible ramifications of ending affirmative action, and shows why we support NACAC in opposing this eventuality. While college admissions may not be completely fair currently, this case will not remedy that.
While we do not know what the future holds, we do know that college admissions is an ever more competitive arena. We have helped hundreds of students through all phases of the application cycle, and know we can help you as well. To hear how our expertise can benefit you, sign up for a free consultation today.
