Now that race-based affirmative action in college admissions has been struck down in a landmark Supreme Court decision, colleges and universities are scrambling to diversify their student bodies without violating civil rights laws.
Some of the top-ranked schools are rolling out a variety of new essays that prompt for demographic information with leading questions — and some are even going so far as to directly ask about the race of prospective students.
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore asks students to “tell us about aspects of your identity (eg race, gender, sexuality, religion, community, etc.) or life experiences that have shaped you as an individual…”
Meanwhile, Rice University in Houston asks applicants: “What perspectives shaped by your background, experiences, upbringing and/or racial identity inspire you to join our community of change agents at Rice?”
And every Ivy League school has added application questions about students’ backgrounds, according to college admissions expert and Ivy Coach managing partner Brian Taylor.
Supreme Court rejects race-based affirmative action in college admissions this summer.REUTERS
This is a clever weakness: ask about race … without in real terms require students to write about their race.
And some schools are not so clear about their motivations.
Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, even cites the Supreme Court decision in its essay prompt.
“In the 2023 Supreme Court majority decision syllabus written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the author notes: ‘There is nothing that prohibits a university from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affects the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to character qualities or unique ability that a particular applicant can contribute to the university,’” Sarah Lawrence’s application reads.
Rice University application essay questions about student background are some of the rudest.Getty Images
“Based on examples from your life, qualities of your character and/or unique abilities you possess, describe how you believe your goals for a college education might be influenced, influenced or affected by the Court’s decision.”
These schools are pushing the envelope as far as possible – and the federal government seems to be taking over for them.
The Biden Administration’s Department of Education is also weighing in, giving colleges tips on how to “increase racial diversity” in higher education without violating the Supreme Court’s ruling.
In a report released Thursday, the administration urged schools to increase targeted outreach to nonwhite communities and give “meaningful consideration in admissions to the difficulties students face … including racial discrimination.”
New York’s Sarah Lawrence College explicitly cites the Supreme Court decision in their admissions essay instructions.AP
Taylor says the new essay prompt leaves many students grasping at straws: “They’re often confused because they think to themselves, ‘If I’m not an underrepresented minority if I’m not a member of the LGBTQ community, how do I answer this question?'”
The school is right that diversity is important. We don’t want colleges to be filled only with very lucky students who can afford the best SAT tutors — or whose families make large donations.
However, implicitly asking about race pressures students to write about their ethnicity instead of their character to help their admissions prospects.
“Some students are upset because they feel they have to write about their race in their essay prompts. And they’re right,” Taylor said, referring to their increased chances of admission. “They have to say they’re Black or Latino or Native American , and they have to tell him how they shape themselves.”
Bunmi Omisore, a 19-year-old Duke freshman, told The Post she was glad she was in the last class to apply before the decision for this reason.
“I wrote about things like my family, ‘The Bachelor’ and cycling in my application essay,” Omisore said. “But if I applied now, I think I would have to lose writing about some parts of my personality and choose to write about things I don’t like to think about, like my experience with racism or my racial trauma.
“You’re going to have a lot of minority students basically telling one story, and it’s unfair because that takes away from the uniqueness of the applicant,” he added.
Duke University student Bunmi Omisore is concerned that the Supreme Court decision will inadvertently pressure students to write about their race in application essays. Courtesy of Bunmi Omisore
This tactic not only abuses legal loopholes — it also reduces students to their immutable characteristics and incentivizes them to performatively expose themselves to their race. That is the opposite of progress.
Abolishing legacy admissions — which disproportionately favors white applicants — and implementing socioeconomic affirmative action, which would boost disadvantaged students of all backgrounds, are two better ways to promote diversity
Colleges need to figure out how to do this without engaging in racial essentialism.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
