What you need to know about college admissions now that affirmative action is gone
With the Supreme Court decision banning race-conscious affirmative action, the college admissions process is about to change for everyone. Hundreds of colleges have stopped requiring standardized tests, essays are likely to become much more important, and admissions decisions may become much more subjective.
We asked readers to send us their questions about college admissions, and answered a few below.
I won prizes in an extracurricular activity. Does that help?
How much do extracurricular activities count in an application? For example, I am a writer who has entered a handful of contests and self-published a number of stories. How far do I have to go to get into a Top 20 or my dream school, Columbia? —Jackson Urrutia-Andrews, Folsom, California.
That’s a tough question to answer without a clearer picture of your entire application.
But we got your question from Terry Mady-Grove, an admissions counselor for a university in Port Washington, NY. She said it was highly unlikely that one extracurricular activity alone would propel you to a Top 20 university.
Even winning a writing contest isn’t necessarily the ticket to Columbia, she said, but showing a long-standing passion for writing can be a big help.
“What can really distinguish a student is dedication over a period of time,” said Ms. Mady-Grove. “While entering competitions can be a plus, authentic, sustained dedication and displaying a true love of writing will be key.”
Yes, there is a demand for male students.
Do men have an advantage as there are more female applicants? — Denise Somsak, Evendale, Ohio
You have encountered a problem that poses a dilemma for university admissions officers: the gender gap.
Nationally, more women than men apply to college, attend college, and earn degrees. Female students make up nearly 60 percent of the nation’s student body.
While it would be difficult to get an admissions officer to confirm it, there have been reports which suggest that male students have an easier time going to university.
An analysis by The Brown Daily Herald of the 2021-22 admissions cycle found it that Brown University received 13,000 more applications from women and that men had a clear advantage in admissions. During that cycle, 6.73 percent of male applicants were admitted, compared to 4.06 percent of females, the analysis found.
But a look at the admissions numbers at another highly selective campus, the University of Virginia, found it that the acceptance rate was about the same for men and women. But because more women than men apply, more women are also admitted.
Why not pick names out of a hat?
If there are no standards (no required SAT scores), if we can’t talk about race (no affirmative action), and if it’s based only on average grades, why don’t we just move to a lottery system? – Chelsey Kueffer, Captain Cook, Hawaii
The idea of lottery admission to highly selective schools, such as the Ivy League, seems to be the antithesis of the current process. But some academics have started talking about lotteries as a possible way to reform college admissions.
Whether it will ever happen is an open question.
Michael Sandel, a Harvard political theorist, wrote a book attacking meritocracy, “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?”
He was concerned that students at elite colleges failed to recognize that luck, not just hard work, played a role in their success. And he suggested that elite schools like Harvard keep it a lottery for students above a basic minimum.
How would that work?
L. Song Richardson, president of Colorado College, said she was intrigued by Mr. Sandel’s idea of a lottery.
“What I like about the idea of lottery admissions is that it’s more transparent,” she said in an interview.
It would be a kind of guided lottery, she says. Students would first have to meet a certain threshold – say, grades or test scores or some other statistic – and then their names would go into the hat.
“We assume that every person above the line can be successful at the school,” said Dr. Richardson. “And now we can shape the class however we want or not, or don’t shape it at all and just let it be a lottery.”
A college could maintain its values by giving two tickets to alumni families, for example, if it had a legacy admission policy. Or it could give more tickets to full-fee or low-income students.
The lottery, she said, would eliminate the most subjective part of recordings: who happens to read the file.
“We all have our own biases, whether they’re conscious or not,” she said. “And what a lottery system does is that it takes that away. Students could say that they are special because they are above the line.”
The downside is that a lottery takes away that almost magical feeling of being chosen by a hidden force, a greater wisdom, the very syndrome it’s supposed to combat, she admits.
So she adds, “I think that’s why a lot of schools probably wouldn’t do it.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.