How college admissions are changing after the end of affirmative action?

After the end of affirmative action, college admissions are seeing initial drops in Black and Hispanic enrollment at selective schools, leading universities to intensify holistic review, expand recruitment in diverse areas, focus more on socioeconomic factors, and use essays for applicants to discuss lived experiences with race, though diversity levels are still trending lower in early data. Schools are adapting by widening recruitment funnels, exploring race-neutral strategies, and emphasizing personal narratives, but overall campus diversity, particularly for underrepresented minorities, is expected to decrease at many selective institutions.

How has the end of affirmative action affected college admissions?

Data from California, which banned affirmative action through Proposition 209 in 1996, offers a cautionary tale to policymakers and higher education leaders. Studies of the state's institutions reveal long-term declines in Black and Hispanic enrollment in higher education, particularly in STEM and graduate programs.

How will the Supreme Court ruling change admissions?

Admission Review Changes

Institutions will place more emphasis than before on factors that help them to get to know applicants' backgrounds and experiences, including 55% considering student context and/or essays as more important this cycle.

What are the positive effects of affirmative action in college admissions?

Affirmative action facilitates the matriculation of talented, underrepresented students of color at quality educational institutions, particularly highly selective universities with competitive admissions.

How are colleges getting around affirmative action?

To ensure diversity on campus without affirmative action, some colleges chose to automatically admit a certain percentage – often the top 10% – of a high school's graduating class.

Students of color prepare for impact of end to affirmative action

What is one problem with getting rid of affirmative action practices for colleges?

In states where affirmative action has been banned, Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students have become increasingly underrepresented among students admitted and enrolling in public flagship universities.

Who benefits most from affirmative action?

Contrary to popular belief, Blacks are not the only, or even the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action. According to the United States Labor Department, the primary beneficiar- ies of affirmative action are white women.

What is one negative effect of affirmative action?

Perhaps the most tragic side effect of affirmative action is that very significant achievements of minority students can become compromised. It is often not possible to tell whether a given student genuinely deserved admission to Stanford, or whether he is there by virtue of fitting into some sort of diversity matrix.

Is Harvard still using affirmative action?

Since a 2023 Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action—affecting the class of 2028 and beyond—Harvard does not consider race or ethnicity in its admissions decisions, but students can choose to self-report this information.

Is affirmative action still a thing in 2025?

Yes, affirmative action is still a thing in 2025, but its implementation has significantly changed, especially for federal contractors, due to a January 2025 Executive Order ending race/gender-based Affirmative Action Plans (AAPs) and banning most DEI programs, though it still applies to veterans and individuals with disabilities, and colleges are adapting through essays to consider life experiences. 

Who got rid of affirmative action?

v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the affirmative action policies at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina.

Can private colleges still use affirmative action?

The recent Supreme Court decision on the SFFA v. Harvard/UNC case now means that private colleges within California will be required to eliminate affirmative action policies if they are in place, which will bring them into alignment with the practices of public colleges within the state.

Did the Supreme Court turn down admissions gender?

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday turned away cases on admissions policies, gender identity and gun control, eliciting objections from conservative justices that suggested rifts on the court about whether and when to address major questions left open by recent decisions.

Do colleges still look at race?

Impact of the 2023 Supreme Court Decision

The Supreme Court's ruling in 2023 fundamentally altered how colleges approach diversity in admissions. Institutions can no longer explicitly consider race when evaluating applications, forcing them to explore alternative strategies for maintaining diverse student bodies.

What is one common argument against affirmative action programs?

The stigma argument holds, in brief, that affirmative action will hurt all blacks, Mexicans, Asians, and so forth, even those who got to the top by their own merits.

What does the end of affirmative action mean?

Ending affirmative action decreases the need for race-conscious admissions policies nationwide. Institutes of higher education would have no legal obligation to consider information about student identities such as race, ethnicity, or gender.

What did Barack Obama get on the LSAT?

Barack Obama's specific LSAT score has never been officially released, but it's widely believed he scored very highly (likely above 170, potentially near perfect) to gain admission to Harvard Law School despite a lower undergraduate GPA, suggesting he was in the top few percentile of test-takers for his application year. While no official number exists, analyses point to a score in the top tier (e.g., 94th-98th percentile) to overcome his GPA for admission to a top-ranked program like Harvard.
 

What race has the highest acceptance rate?

There is a 14.7 percentage point gap between the highest (White: 50.6%) and lowest (Black/AA: 35.9%) acceptance rates among the four major groups. Asian matriculants have the highest academic profile (513.9 MCAT, 3.84 GPA), followed by Multiple Race/Ethnicity (513.3 MCAT, 3.76 GPA)

What happens if affirmative action is banned?

State-level bans on affirmative action in higher education reduced educational attainment for Blacks and Hispanics and had varied, but mostly negative, labor market consequences for these groups.

What states have banned affirmative action?

Nine states in the United States have banned race-based affirmative action: California (1996), Washington (1998, rescinded 2022), Florida (1999), Michigan (2006), Nebraska (2008), Arizona (2010), New Hampshire (2012), Oklahoma (2012), and Idaho (2020).

Should affirmative action be used in college admissions?

In theory, federal law permits the limited use of affirmative action in admissions for purposes of promoting diversity in higher education. In practice, the federal courts have, over the years, significantly narrowed the circumstances under which colleges and universities may adopt race-conscious admissions programs.

What is the current status of affirmative action in our society?

In a landmark judgment in June 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled against the use of race-conscious admissions in colleges and universities. This decision marked a controversial end to affirmative action in US higher education admissions.

Which president got rid of affirmative action?

In an executive order Tuesday night, Trump dismantled the decades-old requirements that federal contractors practice affirmative action by trying to employ more women and people of color.

What percent of Black people support affirmative action?

The slight majority of Black adults, overall, consider the ruling “mostly a good thing” (52%), while 48% call it “mostly a bad thing.” However, Black adults aged 40 and older mostly view the decision negatively (56%), while a larger majority of younger Black adults, aged 18 to 39, view it positively (62%).

Is there a downside to DEI?

A common flaw with many DEI training programs is they help employees to identify unconscious biases, but then fail to provide actionable steps on how to address these biases. Focusing on awareness alone ignores the structural inequalities that sustain a discriminatory culture in the long run.