The Race-Blind College-Admissions Era Is Off to a Weird Start

https://www.yahoo.com/news/race-blind-college-admissions-era-120000569.html


"When colleges began announcing the makeup of their incoming freshman classes last year—the first admissions cycle since the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action—there seemed to have been some kind of mistake. The Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard had been almost universally expected to produce big changes. Elite universities warned of a return to diversity levels not seen since the early 1960s, when their college classes had only a handful of Black students.

And yet, when the numbers came in, several of the most selective colleges in the country reported the opposite results. Yale, Dartmouth, Northwestern, the University of Virginia, Wesleyan, Williams, and Bowdoin all ended up enrolling more Black or Latino students, or both. Princeton and Duke appear to have kept their demographics basically stable."

 

Essentially, the universities get around the Supreme Court ruling by looking at "other" factors than grades and test scores to achieve the same biased results against White and Asian applicants.

 

Brother, you cant claim double racism after you got your banning of race-based admissions.

 

Or, maybe, admissions officers didn't have (and, so, couldn't exercise) unconscious negative bias about how black and Latino students would do academically based on their race... resulting in more black and Latino students being rightfully qualified for admission. Some white people just can't stand the thought of black and Latino people having something they, themselves, covet.

 

Things change. People change. Culture changes. Society's power dynamics change. There is a school of thought out there that clings to the idea that unless there is a law, regulation, or other outside force compelling someone (or some institution) to behave a certain way, they won't do it on their own volition. Especially if it involves wealth, power, influence, or identity (especially if someone or something is perceived as being "white" or an embodiment of "whiteness") - but that mistrust is grounded in a lot of evidence ;-) However, at one time, Affirmative Action may have been a very useful tool for diversifying the college experience. Maybe that time has passed and it isn't NEEDED like it once was, yet the perception that there is some kind of law providing protections allowed people to cling to an illusion of ensured impartiality, or cling to old prejudices about their own persecution. Colleges continuing to embrace diversity after a law forcing them to do so is removed doesn't fit a lot of people's persecution narratives.

 

Is there a competitive college in the U.S. that looks exclusively at grades and test scores to the exclusion of other factors, or to the exclusion of all but a published and limited list of other factors (e.g., grades re-weighted or test scores removed for a student who can document illness, etc. at that time)?

If there is, why hasn't that college's prestige eclipsed the Ivies and many other colleges that do factor "others?"

If there isn't, why not? You'd think if the "others" were a severe font of reverse discrimination it would be tried by an independent-minded conservative college like Hillsdale, or a new college founded by a techbro, or a state college in a red state where a governor wants national attention.

"Other" factors long benefited White applicants. Many mechanisms still occur by which "other" factors benefit high-status applicants – legacy, other factors of parents, prep school, invested in expensive sports or extra-curriculars, etc., who also skew White.

Check out the compelling essay with which this kid got into Harvard: