Some Colleges are Using Application Essays to Bypass Affirmative Action Ban
“Some experts argue that the court’s ruling encourages students to write on racial conflict, trauma and adversity.”
Lots of people, including us, predicted that this is exactly what would happen.
This story is from the New York Times, and Professor Jacobson is quoted:
After Affirmative Action Ban, They Rewrote College Essays With a Key Theme: Race
Astrid Delgado first wrote her college application essay about a death in her family. Then she reshaped it around a Spanish book she read as a way to connect to her Dominican heritage.
Deshayne Curley wanted to leave his Indigenous background out of his essay. But he reworked it to focus on an heirloom necklace that reminded him of his home on the Navajo Reservation.
The first draft of Jyel Hollingsworth’s essay explored her love for chess. The final focused on the prejudice between her Korean and Black American families and the financial hardships she overcame.
All three students said they decided to rethink their essays to emphasize one key element: their racial identities. And they did so after the Supreme Court last year struck down affirmative action in college admissions, leaving essays the only place for applicants to directly indicate their racial and ethnic backgrounds.
High school students graduating this year worked on their college applications, due this month, in one of the most turbulent years in American education. Not only have they had to prepare them in the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war — which sparked debates about free speech and antisemitism on college campuses, leading to the resignation of two Ivy League presidents — but they also had to wade through the new ban on race-conscious admissions…
Some experts argue that the court’s ruling encourages students to write on racial conflict, trauma and adversity. Natasha Warikoo, a professor of humanities and social sciences at Tufts University, said that the Supreme Court justices are “expecting that a story of adversity is going to play the role that race played when we had race-conscious admissions.”
But Joe Latimer, the director of college counseling at Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, said he believes it is not necessary for students “to sell their trauma.” Instead, he advises his students to present their identities as “strength based,” showing the positive traits they have built from their experiences as a person of color.
Critics of affirmative action say they are worried about essays becoming a loophole for colleges to consider an applicant’s race. “My concern is that the system will be gamed,” said William A. Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell University who founded the nonprofit Equal Projection Project.
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Comments
Affirmative action and race cards sell well in Higher ed.
Water is also wet.
C’mon people. Look at how these people conduct themselves.
To go off to a four-year college today is like going off to the merry old Land of Oz. The professors are the munchkins, the dean is like the imbecilic wizard.
You do not need these flying monkeys in your life. What you need is to develop skills and skill-sets, experiences that will get you paid, that over time you can build a career.
The people who run these swanky-looking colleges… they are laughing at you.
That’s right. They’re laughing at you.
Are certain words creeping into his conversation? /
Words like ‘transphobe?” /
And ‘systemic racism’?” /
Well, if so my friends, /
Ya got trouble, /
Right here in University City! /
With a capital “U” /
And that rhymes with “W” /
And that stands for Woke!
Wadayatawk wadayatawk
CA public universities banned affirmative action admissions back in 90s.
“The ban first took effect with the incoming class of ’98. Subsequently, diversity plummeted at UC’s most competitive campuses. That year, enrollment among Black and Latino students at UCLA and UC Berkeley fell by 40%, according to a 2020 study by Bleemer. As a result of the ban, Bleemer found that Black and Latino students who might have gotten into those two top schools enrolled at less competitive campuses.”