What does the Supreme Court’s ruling on Affirmative Action mean for your application?

On June 29, 2023, The US Supreme Court ruled that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s (UNC) utilization and weighting of race in the college application process was unconstitutional. The ruling officially stated the application weighting of race violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal treatment of protected classes. Thus, effectively eliminating the use of affirmative action in college admissions. This decision sent a shockwave across the country as the 2023 college admissions timeline was rapidly approaching following the decision at the end of June. Today, I am going to tell you what this means for your college application and how to navigate this new ruling.

College Responses:

Many universities issued official statements immediately following the ruling to assure families to hold their ground on maintaining school diversity. They covered details from the ruling to ensure and inform families on how they can display race in their applications. Some important areas to note are that…

• Chief Justice John Roberts explicitly stated the decision does not prohibit applications from sharing racial experiences in their application and essays. Universities can, “consider an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”
• The Common App made a preventive move to allow universities to hide race and ethnicity on applications. Without an explicit racial background, admissions officers will likely have to shift more focus to other aspects of the application. This includes race-neutral factors, such as socioeconomic status, geographic diversity, class rank, whether the applicant is a first-generation college student, etc.
• Private and public universities are still able to take racial/ethnic information under consideration in the form of essay responses. How much weighting and consideration this will allow is still not conclusively defined.

Additionally, some states are considering mirroring strategies such as the “top 10% (and 6%) model” employed in the state of Texas. This is a factor-neutral approach that admits students into public universities in the state that are within a certain percentile of their class. Texas A&M, a college with several top 10 program disciplines in engineering, physics, and veterinary medicine, amongst others, allows any in-state student automatic admission to any student within the top 10% of their school. The Univerisity of Texas ranked the 10th best public school in the nation with the #1 accounting program in the world and top 10 disciplines across business, engineering, and computer science, amongst others, also allows for automatic enrollment if a student is within the top 6% of their class. While both colleges will not guarantee your major outside of their liberal arts schools, this is a system that allows students access to competitive and renowned programs. This also helps control for racial, socioeconomic, and geographic factors and ensures a more even playing field for in-state students.

While only time will tell on application specifics moving forward, there is a wealth of information available to best prepare yourself for the admission process this upcoming semester. At College Connected, we offer comprehensive resources and consultations to help you feel best prepared to approach this ever-changing landscape. To get started with us, sign up for an initial consultation here. In the meantime, below are some additional fantastic articles and resources.

Read more about the decision from various perspectives at the articles below:

– CNBC: The Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action in college admissions—what students should know
– Havard’s official statement on the ruling: Harvard Reaffirms Commitment to Diversity, Will Abide by Supreme Court Ruling
– Black Voices wttw: Navigating College Applications After Affirmative Action
– NYT: Five Ways College Admissions Could Change