How You Say It: Why the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decision Complicates College Admissions Essays
Across the country, high school seniors are busy writing their college admissions essays. Many of them, especially students of color, have learned about the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action and are wondering whether they should discuss their race or ethnicity. Some have already decided that they will.
As writer, teacher, and admissions counselor who’s spent the last nine months preparing for this moment, I’m concerned that many young people — especially those in under-resourced schools and communities — will write moving essays that won’t help them get into college, because they will be missing a key point: in this new era, it may not just be what you say, but how you say it.
Here’s why. Although the high court struck down affirmative action, the decision allows colleges to consider a student’s discussion of how race has impacted their life, as long as it is “tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.”
Yet that allowance also presents a new challenge: how exactly does a teenager write about race in an way that colleges can legally take into account?
For students of color, the stakes are high. If they fail to meet that standard, colleges may have to ignore parts or all of their essays.
To illustrate the problem, imagine two high school seniors: Scott and Samuel. Both students are Black, both have straight As, both lead clubs for students who feel marginalized at their school, and each is the only Black kid in their high school.
In his personal essay, Scott writes movingly about the discrimination he’s faced at school, as well as his pride in being Black — he values his family and his heritage, which are deeply meaningful to him.
Samuel also writes about discrimination, but he explains how racial adversity motivated him to work harder in his classes and get all As. Later, he describes how racial prejudice inspired him to lead the club for all marginalized students, so that they would feel included and supported.
Both could be powerful essays, but under this new regime, only one of them may help the writer get into college.
In my assessment, Samuel’s essay would show multiple character traits: resilience and achievement in his academic success, as well as leadership, empathy, and community engagement in his extracurriculars. If a college is looking for these qualities in all applicants, regardless of race — and many schools are — an admissions officer could safely take them into account.
But Scott’s essay sounds like precisely what a college — at least a college that wants to avoid a lawsuit — would have to ignore. His personal discussion of race is not directly tied to any race-neutral quality that a college is likely to be seeking. A college with progressive values might be especially unlikely to give him points for writing about racial pride, because if they did so, they could also need to give points to another student’s discussion of, say, white nationalist pride.
This decision thus creates yet another burden for students of color applying to college — and yet it’s now the law of land. Fortunately, there are steps those in both K-12 and higher education can take in the coming months to help address this problem.
First, high school counselors, teachers, and community-based nonprofits can help students understand the personal qualities that college admissions officers want. As I’ve written elsewhere, these include traits like achievement, intellectual curiosity, empathy, maturity, and resilience. Once they understand these qualities, educators can help teens write essays that show them developing those qualities and putting them into action.
Second, in the coming months colleges can and should take steps to help students handle this new burden. First and foremost, college admissions offices should openly communicate to students and educators the personal qualities they’re looking for. These traits — and their relative importance — vary from school to school; Emory University, for example, has in the past assigned each applicant a numerical rating on intellectual curiosity.* Colleges should be especially proactive about helping counselors and teachers at under-resourced high schools develop the skills to tell their stories under this new legal regime.
In addition, college applications could be modified to steer students in the right direction. For example, the Common Application could introduce an optional essay on identity, just as an optional essay on COVID-19 was added in 2020. Such a prompt could read, “If you feel that experiences related to your race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation make you a stronger candidate for admission, please discuss them below. Be sure to clearly tie your personal experiences to qualities and abilities that you would contribute to a college community.”
Whether the Supreme Court intended it or not, students of color must now jump through new hoops if they want colleges to take into account what, for many, is a core aspect of their identities. Yet this can also be a moment of opportunity. Now is the time for selective colleges to finally become more transparent about their admissions practices and to develop new means of connecting with students from underserved populations. In a world where essays will matter more than ever, we need to make sure every student has an equal shot at success.
*See Jeffrey Selingo, Who Gets in and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions (New York: Scribner, 2020), 89.
