Now, though, she has no idea what to say — especially to students of color.
“If you haven’t prepared for the test [or] a lot of extracurriculars, I don’t know if they’re going to get a shot, and that’s really sad,” Stagner said. “And I’m really concerned about what this will do to their mindset when and how they enter a school.”
A Black high school student in D.C., who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he fears personal and professional consequences — including potentially from college admissions officials — said the Supreme Court’s decision is limiting. in the universe of schools that he considers realistic.
“This could change the entire path of my future,” the 15-year-old wrote to The Post. “Why don’t they let people like me succeed and make themselves and their families proud?”
The Supreme Court’s decision comes after years of steady declines in college and university enrollment, a trend accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. The drop begins to stabilize in the fall of 2022, but the total head count across the country is more than 5 percent below pre-pandemic levels. Trends varied by race: Enrollment of Hispanic and Asian undergrads rose slightly, while enrollment of White, Black and Native American undergraduates fell.
The absence of affirmative action from American colleges and universities will likely reduce minority enrollment in top schools across the country, a Washington Post analysis concludes. The Post examined 30 years of data on race and ethnicity from eight states that have banned race-based admissions policies in higher education and found that the selective schools saw Black and Hispanic enrollment declined, while less selective public universities saw increases in student populations.
For students applying next fall, the personal essay will pose many new, thorny questions — especially for students of color, said Alex Trefftz, who works at Know Your Options, a is a college counseling firm based in Virginia.
In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that the decision does not prevent the “university from considering the applicant’s discussion of how race has affected his life, whether through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”
Trefftz said this part of the decision won’t change how he advises White or “model minority” students. But it will change what he says to “Black and Brown” applicants, whom he encourages to talk about their racial identity if they can frame it in terms of challenges they’ve overcome.
“It’s going to be up to the students who feel like that’s their story to make it implicit, obvious — as much as they can,” Trefftz said.
Roberts’ carve-out amounts to “a small fraction of the room the Court left” for colleges to learn about an applicant’s race, said David Hawkins, chief education and policy officer of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, with over 26,000 members. whole country. Counselors everywhere need to know how to “operate” without running afoul of the Supreme Court’s broader ruling against consideration of race, which would require counselors to make “a dangerous balancing act,” Hawkins said.
To make things more complicated, some students may feel more intimidated at the prospect of discussing their race.
Lucy Tu, a 21-year-old Harvard student who is Chinese American, said she spent a lot of time writing about her racial and ethnic background in her personal statement, describing how she grew up as a “third culture” child – not Chinese enough or not. American enough to fit in at home or in his predominantly White K-12 schools in Nebraska.
“Honestly if I go back and apply again after this decision, I will be more afraid than before to talk about my identity,” Tu said. “I still have a lot of questions, a lot of concerns about doing that.”
Still, others involved in the college admissions process say it’s too early to tell if and how they might advise students differently. Amy Smith Jasper, who leads My College Fit, an admissions consulting firm in Richmond, plans to see how the diversity of student bodies changes at different schools — and advises her clients. .
“Once it really affects how college campuses are made up,” Jasper said, “that’s when it affects the way I advise students.”
Jasper said he works with students of different races and that applicants sometimes share a desire to discuss their racial background. It’s more common for high-schoolers to want to write about their socioeconomic status, he said.
Students, on the other hand, envision a new future, both good and bad.
Elijah Wright, a 16-year-old from Arizona, did not think the decision would affect him personally, because he is White. But Wright, who intends to attend Stanford and study computer science, laments that the decision could make elite colleges — including the school of his dreams — less heterogeneous.
“There’s going to be some different perspectives that you’re going to get from minorities that just aren’t there because of this decision,” Wright said. “It’s not going to change where I go to college, maybe, but it’s definitely going to change the people around me.”
Others, however, are celebrating.
Matthew Yefimov, a White 15-year-old from Maryland, believes the ruling will improve his chances of getting into a good school, because universities will no longer view his race as a disadvantage. Yefimov plans to apply to the University of Maryland, but may now set his sights on the Ivy League, where “before, I didn’t have a chance to get in,” he said.
Yefimov said he wants to see historically marginalized groups better represented on college campuses and suggested that universities should start weighing socioeconomic class more heavily.
“Race should not be considered,” he said. Schools “need to prioritize students who come from low-income families or first-generation families — there are different ways to help them.”
Kelly Olmos, a first-generation Latino and low-income student in Chicago, feels lucky that she got through college admissions before the bombshell hit the Supreme Court.
Olmos, 18, is going to Harvard next fall. He said he wasn’t sure if affirmative action helped him get accepted; he noted that he was Hispanic on his application but did not mention his racial identity on his personal statement. Instead, he wrote about his shyness as a child.
Olmos said she worries about future students like her — those who didn’t grow up with high-level connections or money for expensive, prestigious extracurriculars. How can they now that there is no affirmative action? And what, he wanted to know, would this mean for Harvard’s campus in the next four years? Does the student’s body turn white?
“I just don’t know,” Olmos said. “Do I have a community there?”
Hawkins, of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said he fears the message that high-schoolers might get in the color of the Supreme Court’s decision.
“Our biggest fear,” he said, “is that students from underrepresented groups will feel like the door is closed to them.”
Moriah Balingit contributed to this report.
