That may be the case for Georgetown University, which just had one of its former admissions officers acknowledge efforts to circumvent the Supreme Court’s rulings against the unconstitutional use of race in college admissions.
After the historic ruling in the Harvard and North Carolina cases barring the use of racial criteria in admissions, administrators and academics admitted what they had long denied: that race was having a major role in admissions.
In anticipation of the rulings, many schools eliminated standardized testing, including the California system. Without objective scores, there is less ability to identify the use of non-scholastic criteria for admissions. By eliminating or devaluing standardized testing, admissions offices can use the more subjective essays to achieve the same race-based results.
I wrote about how administrators were already preparing to use essays as an indirect way to achieve the same identifications and preferences in admissions. The essay “prompts” encourage students to effectively self-identify by discussing incidents where they faced discrimination. The shift to the essays would allow the removal of high-scoring students while elevating those with lower scores. That prediction was quickly confirmed, as top candidates were rejected based on their essays, while schools used the essays to flag their backgrounds.
The use of essays as a workaround was reinforced in the opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, who noted that minority students could still raise their own individual struggle with racial discrimination in essays. Yet Roberts stressed that schools cannot employ threshold classifications to give an advantage or disadvantage based on race.
In an interview on National Public Radio’s “Code Switch” show with its host Gene Demby, former Georgetown University admissions officer Aya Waller-Bey said the quiet part out loud.
Waller-Bey discussed “how admissions essays are used to help colleges bring in the type of students that they want.” Demby explores how, after the opinions, universities can still achieve “the kind of diversity that is seen as valuable and visible in the elite spaces.”
Waller-Bey reduced it to a single word: essays.
WALLER-BEY: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I mean, I think, increasingly so universities have to really be mindful of their institutional priorities right now because of the constraints placed on by the federal administration. So I think identities such as first-gen and low-income are actually becoming incredibly important. I think admissions officers and universities are trying to figure out how to mark students in the process. How can we identify students? How could we categorize them in ways that are, like, compliant and, like, constitutional? You know, because they…
DEMBY: Right, they won’t get you, like…
WALLER-BEY: Sued.
DEMBY: …Flagged for – yeah, exactly.
… But the consequence is students are now saying, “OK, they need me to disclose so they can see me in this process. They need to know my background, my identity. They need to know I’m first-gen. They need to know I’m low-income. They need to know I’m Black. They need to know all these things so they can see me qualitatively now – right?” – because of the limitations post the 2023 race – decision on race-conscious admissions.
As a threshold issue, it is not just “constraints placed by the current federal administration” but the Constitution.
The use of essays as a system of racial identification was predictable. Roberts is right that students should be able to discuss their past challenges, and such experiences can be powerful demonstrations of character and leadership. However, the use of such essays for a “code switch” to maintain racial preferences is dishonest and unconstitutional.
The only way to preserve the important role of essays without creating a new race-based admissions system is to maintain transparency in the use of standardized scores.
As I have previously written, such personal statements can and should continue to offer value for admissions, as tie-breakers within established bands of objective scores. While grade point averages are important, GPAs have also been subject to grade inflation and there is inconsistency between high schools. That is why standardized testing should remain the primary, but not exclusive, measure for admissions. While scores should place students within bands of applicants, essays can move the ranking of students within those bands.
The NPR interview was merely an acknowledgment of what is already widely known about the use of essays by the same administrators in higher education to achieve the same race-based results. What remains unclear is whether donors and (in state schools) legislators will insist on greater transparency and objectivity in admissions.