How The End Of Affirmative Action Will Impact College Admissions

Last week, the Supreme Court mostly ended the use of race in college admissions. In a pair of decisions released on June 29, the six Republican-appointed justices ruled that the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The ruling prevents the systematic consideration of race in admissions decisions by colleges and universities. However, colleges and universities may still have some leeway to consider race on a case-by-case basis. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts left the door open for universities to take race into account for individual students:

“At the same time, nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.”

However, he did also warn colleges against using this limited flexibility as a widespread loophole:

"Universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today."

Impacted institutions usually have 25 days to comply with a Supreme Court ruling, so high school students applying to college this fall will do so without affirmative action and race-conscious admissions.

How college admissions will change without affirmative action

The end of race-conscious admissions represents a massive change to the college admissions process, particularly at highly ranked brand-name colleges with low acceptance rates. While institutions like Harvard have seized upon Roberts’ language as a means of continuing to give some consideration to race, evidence from state-level affirmative action bans suggests that race will play much less of a role than it did previously.

So what does this mean for the college admissions process? The exact impact will vary from institution to institution, but I would offer the following overarching predictions.

1. The SAT and ACT will be further de-emphasized, with more institutions adopting test-blind policies.
2. Geography and college essays will play a larger role in admissions decisions.
3. Minority students will see a big drop in admissions chances at selective colleges, while Asian and White students will see a modest increase.

The SAT and ACT will be de-emphasized in college admissions.

Standardized tests like the SAT and ACT were already in decline. In 2020, most U.S. colleges and universities adopted test-optional or test-blind admissions policies, responding to massive testing disruptions in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. As access to testing rebounded across 2021 and 2022, the SAT and ACT regained some of their importance, though only MIT formally opted to re-instate the pre-pandemic norm of requiring an SAT or ACT score to apply.

However, a CollegeVine analysis of admissions decisions at the 200 U.S. colleges and universities with the lowest acceptance rates found that the SAT and ACT are still less important in admissions decisions. Before the pandemic, SAT and ACT scores explained between 20% and 25% of the variance in admissions decisions (a 20-25% weight). In 2022, the first post-pandemic year with unencumbered testing access, the weighting dropped to between 12% and 20%.

Once affirmative action is banned, we expect that to drop even further, to between 10% and 15%. The reason is that SAT and ACT scores have the largest racial performance gaps of any metric used in the admissions process. An analysis of College Board data by Mark J. Perry at the American Enterprise Institute found that 51,306 White and 47,376 Asian students scored between 1400 and 1600 on the SAT in 2022. Just 7,928 Hispanic and 2,016 Black students scored in the same range. Put another way; there are nearly ten times as many White and Asian students (98,682) in the target SAT score range for selective colleges as Hispanic and Black students combined (9,944). The ACT also has similar score differences between racial groups.

So selective colleges looking to maintain some degree of Black and Hispanic representation on campus will need to de-emphasize the SAT and ACT. The SAT and ACT will likely become less important to admissions decisions at Ivy League schools like Harvard, Princeton, or Yale and other selective colleges like Stanford, UChicago, Vanderbilt, and Duke.

More colleges will go test-blind

But as long as selective colleges still give some consideration to standardized test scores, it will be hard to escape the math problem outlined above. That's where test-blind policies, completely removing the SAT and ACT from admissions decisions, come into play. Many prominent institutions have already adopted test-blind policies, including the University of California and California State University systems, Caltech, Pitzer, Reed, Dickinson, and the University of San Diego.

Institutions that care deeply about on-campus diversity may follow in their footsteps - adopting test-blind policies for all admissions decisions or even on a program-by-program basis. STEM majors like engineering or statistics tend to be more test-heavy, so the SAT and ACT are more valuable predictive variables for these majors than for programs like literature or political science. Even if faculty pressure prevents institution-wide adoption, colleges may make admissions decisions for some of their programs test-free.

Geography and essays will play a bigger role in admissions

The Court's ruling and oral arguments last fall also provide clues about which aspects of college admissions will rise in importance. During oral arguments in the SFFA cases last October, race-neutral alternatives for achieving on-campus diversity received a lot of attention. Many colleges plan to respond to this ruling by adopting a "place, not race" policy, following in the footsteps of Texas' famous Top 10 Percent Law. Where a student lives and attends high school will likely play an increased role in admissions decisions.

Essays will also be more important in admissions decisions, particularly those responding to prompts exploring race and identity. Like Harvard, many institutions are focusing on the Chief Justice's language about "an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life" while they sketch out their response to the decision. Many institutions plan to add new essay prompts or increase word counts on existing ones dealing with race, identity, and a commitment to diversity.

How admissions chances will be impacted for Black, Latino, Asian, and White students

Even with these changes, Black, Latino, and Native students will face a much more difficult college admissions process. A CollegeVine analysis of race-blind admissions policies at those same 200 colleges found that Black students would see their chances of admission drop by between 45% and 65%. Latino students would see their chances of admission drop by between 25% and 45%.

White and Asian applicants would see a modest increase in chances: 2-3 percentage points for White students and 4-5 percentage points for Asian students. But as outlined above, the fact that so many White and Asian students have grades and test scores in the target range for selective colleges means that the admissions process will still be extremely competitive for these students.