Conservatives hailed the Supreme Court’s decision in early June to overturn affirmative action as a win for meritocracy and high schoolers knee-deep in college admissions. But over a month after the ruling, most education experts say it was a “rhetorical” victory rather than a substantive one.
Top college prep instructors like Andy Lockwood think that elite schools will continue to implement affirmative action practices — just at a private, decentralized level. (READ MORE: With Affirmative Action Dethroned, It’s Time to Tackle the Ivy League’s Classism Problem)
“It’s anyone’s guess just ‘how’ diverse colleges will be in 2024-25,” Lockwood writes on his blog. “My gut feeling is that admissions officers will come up with creative ways to continue to recruit underrepresented minorities and ethnicities, and things won’t look that much different.”
According to an SAT/ACT prep tutor who agreed to speak to The American Spectator anonymously, one of the “creative ways” universities could tip the scales would include assigning students adversity scores, thus obliquely factoring in race without explicitly acknowledging it.
The dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law has already vowed to implement “unstated affirmative action” at both the student and faculty levels.
“When we do faculty hiring, we’re quite conscious that diversity is important to us,” Erwin Chemerinsky said in a viral Twitter video. “You can think it [diversity]. You can vote it [diversity]. But our discussions are not privileged, so don’t ever articulate that that’s what you’re doing.”
EXCLUSIVE: Berkeley Law School dean Erwin Chemerinsky explains how he has secretly enacted a policy of racial discrimination in faculty hiring—which is illegal in California.
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Some schools might remain test-optional in order to admit students from legacy or minority backgrounds with lower test scores.
“Colleges are a little cute about this,” Lockwood writes. “They don’t readily release their stats on the number of admitted students who submitted their scores…. Admissions offices used test-optional policies to recruit other classes of students, in addition to underrepresented minorities: legacies, athletes, international students, children of professors.”
But there is a caveat: Sending in test scores, especially if they are within the school’s general range, will boost a student’s acceptance chances, Lockwood notes.
Regardless of whether the student hails from a minority or legacy background, most education experts agree that submitting competitive test scores helps students qualify for merit-based scholarships.
“Many merit-based scholarships either require or strongly prefer good SAT or ACT scores,” Lockwood’s blog states. “Skipping standardized testing can potentially leave tens of thousands of dollars on the table.”
Outside scholarships, however, are less concerned with test scores and generally search for “memorable” students.
“One of the best ways to stand out to an admissions committee, and also a scholarship judge committee, is when you uniquely leverage your own interests,” scholarship coach Ryan Kelly told The American Spectator. “But when it really comes down to these applications, what judges want to see — and this bleeds over into admissions as well — is a student demonstrating how they have grown as a person and what they’re genuinely passionate about.”
Furthermore, even if the school doesn’t assign an adversity score to its applicants, Lockwood argues that students can use admissions essays to demonstrate their “lived experiences.”
“Here’s what I’m going to tell my private clients and bootcampers next session: if you genuinely faced an obstacle, whether you’re black, white or purple, AND it’s significant enough to YOU to write about, by all means, fire away,” Lockwood writes.
However, Lockwood warns students not to “trauma dump” and make a “mountain out of a molehill,” arguing that victim playing repulses admissions counselors.
According to the Hechinger Report, some schools are six times more likely to accept legacy students than non-legacy students.
“Alumni children who received offers matriculated at much higher rates, giving the school more certainty in their future enrollment numbers,” reporter Jill Barshay writes. “And these loyal families with multi-generational ties to the college were far more likely to donate funds, money that the school needs, in part, to offer scholarships to others.”
Due to recent criticisms surrounding legacy admissions, some schools — such as Carnegie Mellon University — have decided to remove legacy consideration from their admissions process.
With the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action, most college prep experts think that there will be little to no change in the college admissions process and universities’ priorities. Colleges will still look to implement DEI initiatives, whether they are hiring faculty or admitting new students. However, the Supreme Court’s decision has opened up a door for law firms to file suit against any racial-preference programs — promising efforts, but ones still in their infancy.
So where does this leave students in the college application process?
Right where they were before. Students should have competitive test scores and a strong GPA; engage in lots of extracurricular activities; write a creative and compelling story for an admissions essay; and — most importantly — pray that the college admissions odds are in their favor.
Elizabeth Crawford is a rising senior at Hillsdale College studying politics. A member of The American Spectator’s 2023 intern class, Elizabeth enjoys drinking good tea and plans to pursue a career in journalism.
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