After the Supreme Court struck down the use of affirmative action in college admissions this summer, counselors and students at Jackson-Reed are discussing the best ways to approach applications when it comes to race and ethnicity.
The 6-3 vote specifically ruled against Harvard and University of North Carolina’s affirmative action policies, claiming they allowed for racial bias, but the ruling extends to admissions at schools all around the country.
Students no longer can indicate their race or ethnicity by checking a box on college applications. In addition, universities such as Harvard are now telling alumni interviewers not to evaluate Class of 2028 applicants on the basis of race or ethnicity.
However, this doesn’t mean college admissions officers will have no way of achieving diversity in schools.
According to an article on the website, Inside Higher Ed, colleges are looking closer at neighborhood demographics, ZIP Codes and “contextual reviews”—considering a student in the context of their school and taking into account the resources that the school offers. A College Board program called Landscape also does this, providing useful and relevant information about a student’s school and neighborhood for college admission counselors.
Jackson-Reed 11th-grade counselor Bobby Collins said that colleges also can determine a student’s background through elements of their identity such as their name. “The removal of the boxes in my opinion does nothing,” Collins said.
Patrice Maites, the second 11th-grade counselor, said that “colleges are still promoting diversity in their systems—they want diversity. The unfortunate piece is you have a governing space that has now decided that using a box to delineate background is not legal anymore.”
Despite the changes, students can still identify their race and ethnicity through their personal statement, supplemental essays or activities list, a policy substantiated by the Supreme Court ruling.
Jackson-Reed College and Career Center Coordinator Elizabeth Levenson said the decision to put information about race or ethnicity into an essay is a personal one.
“If [applicants] feel that there have been struggles or if there are particular growth opportunities related to their race or ethnicity, then they [should] absolutely find a way to include that in their application,” Levenson said.
Maites also highlighted the importance of including part of a student’s identity that has impacted their life. “That sets you apart from everyone else because it’s unique to you,” she said.
Senior Sofía Ames-Rodríguez has been adding her ethnicity within her application “as [she] sees fit.” She said that the Supreme Court decision has not prevented her from presenting her race. Rodríguez said she has included her Hispanic background in some of her essays and has mentioned her involvement in the Latin Student Union.
Many of the essays Rodríguez has been writing answer new essay questions added to schools’ applications this year to give students a platform to display diverse parts of their identity no longer evident from a checked box.
Harvard now asks applicants, “How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard?” Emory University has added a new question that says, “Tell us about a community that you have been part of where your participation helped to change or shape the community for the better.”
Sarah Lawrence College specifically mentions the Supreme Court ruling in a prompt. It reads, “Drawing upon examples from your life, a quality of your character, and/or a unique ability you possess, describe how you believe your goals for a college education might be impacted, influenced, or affected by the Court’s decision.”
The Supreme Court case centered on how Asian applicants had experienced discrimination in college admissions. But a senior said she is still hesitant to indicate that she is Asian in her application materials.
She explained that she doesn’t want her application to be “waved to the side” because of her race. “It’s nice to have a blank slate on applications, but it’s a little weird because it almost feels like I’m blocking out or ignoring something that’s really important to me,” she said.
Senior Micah Weimer explained that he is going to mention his Ethiopian ethnicity in “ways that it matters, so maybe in the essays.” Additionally, he said he is finding places to input parts of his identity when responding to those supplemental prompts about certain “challenges and how they’ve affected you.”
