Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    Hands-On Career Preparation
    An AI-Driven Work Force
    Alternative Pathways
Sign In
Race-Conscious Admissions

Here’s How Yale Is Changing Its Admissions Practices for a New Era

By Eric Hoover September 7, 2023
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 29: Pro Affirmative Action supporters and and counter protestors shout at each outside of the Supreme Court of the United States on Thursday, June 29, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Demonstrators outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in June ahead of the ruling on race-conscious admissions.Kent Nishimura, Los Angeles Times, Getty Images

Students for Fair Admissions on Thursday dismissed its lawsuit against Yale University, bringing another chapter in the race-conscious admissions saga to a close. The Ivy League institution hours later announced changes to its undergraduate-admissions process.

SFFA, which recently prevailed in its litigation against Harvard College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, filed a lawsuit challenging Yale’s admissions policies back in 2021. That case was later stayed pending the outcome of the Harvard and UNC cases. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

Students for Fair Admissions on Thursday dismissed its lawsuit against Yale University, bringing another chapter in the race-conscious admissions saga to a close. The Ivy League institution hours later announced changes to its undergraduate-admissions process.

SFFA, which recently prevailed in its litigation against Harvard College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, filed a lawsuit challenging Yale’s admissions policies back in 2021. That case was later stayed pending the outcome of the Harvard and UNC cases. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling against race-conscious admissions in June, Yale and SFFA discussed the university’s response to the decision, according to a joint stipulation of voluntary dismissal filed in a federal court in Connecticut.

Yale, the filing said, provided supporting documentation that it has updated its training materials to clarify that race may not be used as a factor in admissions; that it plans to “take technological steps” to hide “check box” data on race from admissions officers during the review process; that it will not run reports during the review cycle that would provide aggregate data regarding the racial composition of admitted students to date; and that it will not consider race as a factor in “calculating or awarding financial aid.”

race-conscious-admissions-new-promo-square.jpg
The Context
What to Know About Race-Conscious Admissions
June 29, 2023
Here’s background on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the practice nationwide.

But the latter will not represent a change in existing practice, Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid at Yale, told The Chronicle on Thursday. “That is not new policy — that is pre-existing policy,” he said. “We don’t look at race at all. We look at students’ family income and assets. Our formula is completely driven by those, and that’s the way it has been for decades.”

Still, the changes described in the filing provide a snapshot of how admissions practices are changing in an era of heightened scrutiny. In July, SFFA said it sent an email to 150 private and public institutions urging them to take four specific actions in light of the court’s ruling. One was to stop making check-box data about applicants’ race available to admissions officers.

Several institutions, including Harvard College, have said publicly that they plan to do exactly that. This spring, the Common Application, the online platform that more than a million students use each year to apply to college, announced that it would allow its 1,000-plus member institutions to hide information about students’ race and ethnicity starting in August. Applicants may still choose to answer those voluntary questions. Member colleges already can hide information about an applicant’s birthday, gender, Social Security number, and test scores.

In August, the Departments of Education and Justice issued a question-and-answer document about complying with the Supreme Court’s decision. But that widely anticipated federal guidance didn’t clarify whether colleges should redact information about race and ethnicity in all application materials that admissions officers see during evaluations. “In collecting and using data, institutions should ensure that the racial demographics of the applicant pool do not influence admissions decisions,” the guidance said. “The Court’s decision does not prohibit institutions from reviewing such data for other purposes, but institutions should consider steps that would prevent admissions officers who review student applications from using the data to make admissions decisions.”

The federal guidance didn’t mention financial aid and scholarships, and neither did the court’s opinion. But many admissions officials fear that future lawsuits will target race-conscious financial-aid policies.

There’s a lot of anxiety out there, and we really wanted to convey to folks that, obviously, the law has changed, but what we value has not.

Yale described several other changes to its admissions practices and recruitment strategies in a news release on Thursday. To bolster its holistic evaluations of applicants, the university said, the admissions office has updated its application questions for the 2023-24 cycle, adding a new option to its three short-answer essay prompts. One asks students to reflect on a time when they discussed an issue important to them with someone who held an opposing view. Another asks them to reflect on the importance of their membership in a particular community. And the third, new this year, asks them to “reflect on an element of your personal experience that you feel will enrich your college. How has it shaped you?”

ADVERTISEMENT

Quinlan said he and his staff had just begun to discuss how to best evaluate what applicants might choose to share about their racial identity or experiences in a way that’s thoughtful — and that complies with the court’s ruling: “It’s going to be a lot of discussion, a lot of norming, and a lot of unlearning, which will not be easy.”

Starting this fall, Yale said, admissions officers will incorporate data from the Opportunity Atlas — an online mapping project that gauges economic mobility in specific neighborhoods at the census-tract level — into their evaluations of applicants. That data, the university said, would complement place-based and race-neutral data provided by the College Board’s Landscape tool, which Yale’s admissions staff has been using in its evaluations of applicants from under-resourced areas since 2017.

“In Landscape, you can see all the data around the neighborhood and the school, and the way that the test score, if the student has one, is put in context of test scores over time at the school, which is incredibly powerful,” Quinlan said. “So a student with a 29 on the ACT might be below our median score, but that 29 on the ACT could be the highest score by 10 points at the school. And that information is a huge indicator of promise and potential.”

The Opportunity Atlas, Quinlan said, will allow admissions officers to better understand the context of applicants who come from neighborhoods with relatively little socioeconomic mobility: “That’s another thing we can consider in our whole-person review process.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Yale also said it would expand its outreach in several ways. The university plans to hire two new admissions officials who will engage regularly with college-access organizations and oversee outreach initiatives that include current students and alumni, for instance. The university plans to create new programs and events for students through the Small Town and Rural Students College Network, known as Stars. And Yale plans to build or bolster long-term initiatives to expand its pipeline of high-achieving students from diverse backgrounds, including the creation of an intensive college-preparatory summer program for underrepresented students.

“This is incredibly important and serious work,” Quinlan said. “There’s a lot of anxiety out there, and we really wanted to convey to folks that, obviously, the law has changed, but what we value has not. We’re going to redouble our efforts to get messages out there about affordability and diversity. We’re going to invest in new staff members and resources — plans that cross a lot of different dimensions. Honestly, things that have been in our sights for years, but now we are extremely motivated to accomplish.”

When asked if Yale is planning to assess whether to continue considering applicants’ legacy status in admissions, Quinlan said the question is part of an ongoing conversation: “We’re continuing throughout the year to look at admissions priorities and policies with university leadership, with stakeholders such as faculty and trustees. That’s what I’ll say about that.”

Ed Blum, founder of SFFA, did not immediately respond to the a request for comment late Thursday.

Read other items in What to Know About Race-Conscious Admissions.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Correction (Sep. 8, 2023, 9:53 a.m.): A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Yale added three new essay prompts for 2023-24; just one of them is new.
Tags
Admissions & Enrollment Race Law & Policy Access & Affordability
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
Eric Hoover
About the Author
Eric Hoover
Eric Hoover writes about the challenges of getting to, and through, college. Follow him on Twitter @erichoov, or email him, at eric.hoover@chronicle.com.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Photo-based illustration of scissors cutting through a flat black and white university building and a landscape bearing the image of a $100 bill.
Budget Troubles
‘Every Revenue Source Is at Risk’: Under Trump, Research Universities Are Cutting Back
Photo-based illustration of the Capitol building dome topping a jar of money.
Budget Bill
Republicans’ Plan to Tax Higher Ed and Slash Funding Advances in Congress
Allison Pingree, a Cambridge, Mass. resident, joined hundreds at an April 12 rally urging Harvard to resist President Trump's influence on the institution.
International
Trump Administration Revokes Harvard’s Ability to Enroll International Students
Photo-based illustration of an open book with binary code instead of narrative paragraphs
Culture Shift
The Reading Struggle Meets AI

From The Review

Illustration of a Gold Seal sticker embossed with President Trump's face
The Review | Essay
What Trump’s Accreditation Moves Get Right
By Samuel Negus
Illustration of a torn cold seal sticker embossed with President Trump's face
The Review | Essay
The Weaponization of Accreditation
By Greg D. Pillar, Laurie Shanderson
Protestors gather outside the Pro-Palestinian encampment on the campus of UCLA in Los Angeles on Wednesday, May 1, 2024.
The Review | Conversation
Are Colleges Rife With Antisemitism? If So, What Should Be Done?
By Evan Goldstein, Len Gutkin

Upcoming Events

Ascendium_06-10-25_Plain.png
Views on College and Alternative Pathways
Coursera_06-17-25_Plain.png
AI and Microcredentials
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin