In the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision overturning race-based affirmative action in college admissions, colleges and universities are now faced with the challenge of diversifying their student bodies while adhering to civil rights law.
Several prestigious schools are introducing new essay prompts that discreetly inquire about applicants’ demographics through leading questions, and some are even directly asking about their race.
For example, Johns Hopkins University prompts students to “tell us about an aspect of your identity (e.g. race, gender, sexuality, religion, community, etc.) or a life experience that has shaped you as an individual…”
Similarly, Rice University 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?”
Moreover, every Ivy League school has included a question about students’ backgrounds in their applications, as noted by college admission expert and Ivy Coach managing partner, Brian Taylor.
These schools have found a clever way to ask about race without explicitly requiring students to write about it in their essays.
Some institutions are quite upfront about their motives. Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, even refers to the Supreme Court’s decision in its essay prompt.
The Sarah Lawrence application reads: “In the syllabus of a 2023 majority decision of the Supreme Court written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the author notes: ‘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.'”
The prompt then requests students to describe how they believe their goals for a college education may be impacted by the Court’s decision, drawing upon examples from their lives, qualities of their character, or unique abilities they possess.
These schools are pushing the boundaries, and the federal government appears to be encouraging them.
The Biden Administration’s Department of Education has provided colleges with guidance on how to “enhance racial diversity” in higher education while complying with the Supreme Court ruling.
In a report released last Thursday, the administration urged schools to make targeted outreach efforts to non-white communities and to give “meaningful consideration in admissions to the adversity students have faced… including racial discrimination.”
According to Taylor, these new essay prompts have left many students perplexed, as they question how to respond if they do not belong to an underrepresented minority or the LGBTQ community.
While diversity is undoubtedly crucial, the implicit inquiry about race puts pressure on students to write about their ethnicity instead of focusing on their character to enhance their chances of admission.
“Many students are disappointed that they feel compelled to write about their race in their essay prompts. And they are justified in feeling that way,” Taylor explained. “They need to explicitly mention their Black, Latino, or Native American identity and explain how it has shaped them.”
Bunmi Omisore, a 19-year-old Duke freshman, expressed relief that she applied before the ruling was issued, as she worries that the pressure to write about her race would overshadow other aspects of her personality and experiences.
“In my application essays, I wrote about my family, ‘The Bachelor,’ and biking,” Omisore said. “But if I were applying now, I think I would have to sacrifice writing about those parts of my personality and instead focus on topics I don’t really enjoy thinking about, such as my experiences with racism or racial trauma.
“This would result in many minority students essentially sharing a single narrative, which is unfair as it diminishes their uniqueness as applicants,” she added.
This approach not only exploits a legal loophole but also reduces students to their immutable characteristics and encourages performative self-reduction to their race, a step backward in progress.
Instead, a better way to promote diversity is to abolish legacy admissions, which disproportionately favor white applicants, and implement socioeconomic affirmative action to support disadvantaged students from all backgrounds.
Colleges must find solutions that do not rely on race essentialism.
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