The new Common Application went live on Tuesday, marking the official start of the 2023-24 admissions cycle. As eager applicants were logging in to the shared online platform, The Chronicle took a quick peek at colleges’ supplementary essay prompts to see how they might have changed in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision on race-conscious admissions.
Let’s start with Harvard College, one of two highly selective institutions whose consideration of applicants’ race the court deemed unconstitutional. This year, Harvard ditched a previously optional essay prompt on its supplement and replaced it with five required short-answer questions (200 words each). One of the questions says: “Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard?”
That’s essentially the same prompt that Harvard included in a list of 10 possible prompts for the optional essay during the 2022-23 cycle. And it’s more or less the same as the many broadly conceived, open-ended diversity prompts that highly selective colleges have been including on their supplements for years.
Though the Supreme Court ruled that colleges could no longer consider an applicant’s racial status, it left the door open for the consideration of an applicant’s racial identity or experience. “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in the majority’s opinion. But he cautioned that a “benefit” given to an applicant who overcame racial discrimination “must be tied to that student’s courage and determination.” A benefit given to a student whose heritage or culture inspired them to pursue an achievement “must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university.”
That’s the needle that admissions offices now must thread in crafting essay prompts — and evaluating what applicants write about race. As The Chronicle recently reported, the particulars of the court’s ruling have put “an extra burden” on application essays — and on the students who must decide what to write about.
In an email to college counselors on Tuesday, Harvard’s admissions office seemed to downplay the changes to its supplement. “The seeds for the newly required questions, or the actual questions themselves, have all previously existed in the supplement. This is an evolution of last year’s supplement, not a reset or reimagining of what the admissions committee wishes to know about all applicants in their whole person, contextual review.”
Though Harvard will essentially invite applicants to reflect on diversity, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will not. This year, one of its two short-answer prompts asks applicants to “discuss one of your personal qualities and share a story, anecdote, or memory of how it helped you make a positive impact on a community.” The other prompt asks students to describe an academic topic that interests them.
That’s a change from last year, when UNC’s supplement told applicants that “Carolina aspires to build a diverse and inclusive community. We believe that students can only achieve their best when they learn alongside students from different backgrounds.” Among the optional prompts: “Describe an aspect of your identity and how this has shaped your life experiences or impacted your daily interactions with others.”
Last week, UNC’s Board of Trustees approved changes to the institution’s non-discrimination policy stating that the institution “shall not ‘establish through application essays or other means’” any “proxies premised upon race-based preferences in hiring or admissions.” If UNC considers the personal experiences of applicants, it said, “each applicant ‘must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.’” Though that language borrowed from the Supreme Court’s opinion, one board member said the resolution went “well beyond” the ruling.
Colleges have long asked applicants to describe how they’ve overcome barriers, setbacks, and personal hardships. In his public remarks after the court’s ruling, President Biden called for “a new standard, where colleges take into account the adversity a student has overcome when selecting among qualified applicants.” That, he continued, should involve “understanding the particular hardships that each individual student has faced in life, including racial discrimination.”
Columbia University added a new essay prompt that invites applicants to write about adversity — in 150 words or less: “In college/university, students are often challenged in ways that they could not predict or anticipate. It is important to us, therefore, to understand an applicant’s ability to navigate through adversity. Please describe a barrier or obstacle you have faced and discuss the personal qualities, skills or insights you have developed as a result.”
The University of Virginia recently announced a new prompt that applicants could take in a variety of directions: “What about your background, perspective, or experience will serve as a source of strength for you or for those around you at UVA?”
Amherst College offers three optional prompts for its supplementary essay requirement this year. “We seek an Amherst made stronger because it includes those whose experiences can enhance our understanding of our nation and our world,” says one prompt, excerpted from the college’s Trustee Statement on Diversity and Community. “We do so in the faith that our humanity is an identity forged from diversity, and that our different perspectives enrich our inquiry, deepen our knowledge, strengthen our community, and prepare students to engage with an ever-changing world.”
And the question asks: “In what ways could your unique experiences enhance our understanding of our nation and our world?”
Some prominent colleges have yet to update their supplements on the Common Application. But so far, no institution has added a prompt as bold as the optional one that Sarah Lawrence College added recently. “In a 2023 majority decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, ‘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 applicant can contribute to the university,” the prompt says. “Drawing upon examples from your life, a quality of your character, and/or a unique ability you possess, describe how you believe your goals for a college education might be impacted, influenced or affected by the Court’s decision.”
Kevin McKenna, Sarah Lawrence’s dean of admission and financial aid, told Inside Higher Ed that the new prompt was meant to “give our applicants who are so inspired a space to address a challenging topic in society.”
New prompts aren’t the only way that college applications are changing. In light of the ban on the consideration of an applicant’s racial status, the Common Application now gives member institutions the option of hiding applicants’ race and ethnicity data from admissions officers (the organization will continue to use the information for research purposes). Officials at several colleges have recently told The Chronicle that they would wait for federal guidance — expected this month — before deciding whether to take that step.
But Harvard did not wait. In the email to college counselors on Tuesday, the institution’s admissions office said that though Harvard applicants may still disclose their race and ethnicity via the Common App’s check boxes, “that information will be suppressed for all applicants in the PDF of the application that our admissions offices receive for review.”
