The U.S. Supreme Court’s ban on the consideration of an applicant’s race raises difficult questions for many of the nation’s most-selective colleges. One concerns the role and meaning of application essays in the brave new race-neutral world.
The court carved out room for colleges to consider what applicants might write about their racial identity and experiences. This nuance has prompted many intense conversations among admissions officers and high-school counselors, who are still assessing the implications for their day-to-day work.
In case you just woke up from a very long nap, let’s look at what the court said that’s relevant here. In the majority’s opinion, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote: “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.” Roberts went on to say that a “benefit” given to an applicant who overcame racial discrimination “must be tied to that student’s courage and determination.” And 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.”
Now, a supercharged spotlight is shining on the college-application essay, the main way for students to express something personal about themselves when applying to highly selective colleges. Because institutions can no longer consider an applicant’s race per se, some experts predict, the essay will take on greater importance in admissions evaluations. And it will probably loom larger in the minds of many applicants hoping to stand out, especially underrepresented-minority students.
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.”
Some admissions officials have said that high-school students aren’t well prepared to describe such experiences. During a session at a national conference this spring, Shannon R. Gundy, assistant vice president for enrollment management at the University of Maryland at College Park, described how applicants often “don’t write about their trials and tribulations,” because they don’t want to or don’t know how: “We are going to have to educate students about how to write about who they are in a very different way than they do now.”
It’s important to note that many colleges don’t require essays. More than half of the Common Application’s 1,000-plus member institutions don’t require a Common App essay. And many of those that do require it don’t ask students to complete supplemental essay questions or short-answers prompts.
For all the angst that students might experience when writing their responses, application essays, in general, carry relatively little weight in the admissions process. Just 23 percent of institutions attribute “considerable importance” to application essays and writing samples in their evaluations, according to recent survey data from the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
Still, many of the nation’s most selective institutions require two or more essays and/or short-answer responses (Stanford University has eight). And those personal essays sometimes do matter a lot in individual cases. Oh, and don’t forget, because this is important: Personal essays often hold great meaning for the teenagers who write them.
That’s where things get tricky. Underrepresented-minority applicants have long felt pressure to describe how race and racism have shaped their experiences, which can be a difficult, even harrowing, task. That pressure could intensify now that colleges can’t consider racial status alone.
“I worry about encouraging students to talk about identity, and that being interpreted as a student feeling the need to sell trauma,” says Sara Urquidez, executive director of the Academic Success Program, which provides college advising to low-income students at public high schools in Dallas and Houston. “I worry about students feeling or becoming further tokenized.”
During college-application workshops this summer, Urquidez told students that their identity and personal story would become more important in admissions after the court’s ruling. But she knows some applicants will find it much easier than others to explore those topics. “Many of our kids grow up in schools that are siloed communities with a lack of diversity within them,” Urquidez says. “They rarely recognize the rich diversity of their experiences, because it’s normalized where they live, shop, work, go to church. They often don’t see their experiences as different or extraordinary, so they are hesitant to write about them because they don’t see their story as unique.”
Like many admissions insiders, Anna Ivey, an independent educational consultant, had been expecting admissions essays to fade into irrelevance amid the rise of ChatGPT and concerns about the authenticity of students’ writing. “Now, all of a sudden, there’s all this extra burden on essays and on applicants to know how to use those essays,” she says.
Ivey, a former dean of admissions at the University of Chicago’s law school, was concerned after reading what the court said about students describing their experiences with race. “I would tell Justice Roberts, You know, it’s really easy to say ‘Tell your story about how race has shaped your lived experience.’ There are grown-ups who write entire books about that, and now you’re asking a 17-year-old to describe their experience in 650 words or less. That’s a tall order, and it’s a burden only on certain students.”
I worry about encouraging students to talk about identity, and that being interpreted as a student feeling the need to sell trauma.
The Common Application invites students to answer one of six prompts. Or they can write about a topic of their choice, which 27 percent of applicants did last year — the most popular option. A question about what applicants learned from overcoming obstacles was the next most-selected prompt (22 percent). And 19 percent chose this one: “Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.”
Questions about adversity, including racial discrimination, are already infused into many applications. Over the years, selective colleges have adopted essay questions that invite students to describe personal hardships.
Ivey has collected numerous examples, such as this one, from Babson College: “Historically marginalized and oppressed identities experience racism, prejudice, and discrimination at an alarming rate. As One Babson, we are taking action to stand against injustice and to ensure students have the community, support, and resources they need. If you have ever experienced discrimination, in any form, due to your racial, religious, gender, or sexual identity, we welcome you to share that experience in whatever way feels meaningful to you.”
That essay prompt was optional. But this one, from Indiana University at Bloomington, was required: “If you encountered any unusual circumstances, challenges, or obstacles in pursuit of your education, share those experiences and how you overcame them. (Response required in 200-400 words).” The essay, applicants were told, might be used in scholarship considerations.
The University of Miami has recently used a prompt describing the institution’s mascot — an ibis — as a symbol of courage and resilience during major storms: “Considering your ability to control your own motivation and behavior, how have past experiences helped build your courage and resilience to persist in the face of academic and life challenges so that, once these storms pass, you can emerge in continued pursuit of your goals?”
Such prompts, especially for required essays, can read like forced therapy. But many institutions use prompts that are more open-ended and inclusive — and don’t emphasize hardships.
During the 2021-22 admissions cycle, Duke University’s application included a statement about the importance of diversity: “If you’d like to share a perspective you bring or experiences you’ve had that would help us understand you better, perhaps a community you belong to or your family or cultural background, we encourage you to do so here.”
The University of Colorado at Boulder has included this essay prompt: “We value difference and support equity and inclusion of all students and their many interesting identities. Pick one of your unique identities and describe its significance.”
The opportunity to write about racial identity and experiences can be empowering for some students but traumatic for others, says Alicia Oglesby, associate director of college counseling at the Winchester Thurston School, in Pittsburgh, Pa. Each year, about a quarter of the Black and Latina/o students she advises describe their racial identity in application essays. “Some students really should share their personal story, albeit tragic, to show how that has shaped their academic life in high school,” she says. “It’s a helpful part of understanding the context in which they’ve learned and grown.”
But other students just don’t want to talk about their race, ethnicity, identity, or culture. “Those students shouldn’t talk about it, then,” Oglesby says. “It’s not how they see the world, yet, so let them share how they see fit.” Since the Supreme Court’s decision, Oglesby has been thinking carefully about whether she might advise more Black and Hispanic students to discuss the impact of their race or culture in their essays. “I don’t know yet,” she says.
Uncertainty abounds for admissions officers, too. Justice Roberts warned colleges in his opinion that they “may not simply establish through applicant essays or other means [what] we hold unlawful today.” An applicant, he wrote, “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.”
EducationCounsel LLC, a consulting firm that advises colleges on legal issues, recently published a working draft of its preliminary guidance on complying with the Supreme Court’s decision on race-conscious admissions. It emphasized an important distinction: It’s still legally permissible to consider applicants’ “skills, knowledge, or character-related qualities” arising from their individual experiences — which might relate to their racial identity — but it’s not OK to consider “an applicant’s racial status, without more, in admissions.”
But how, exactly, do admissions officers separate, in their own mind, the fact of an applicant’s race and ethnicity from the relevant experiences that they choose to describe in an essay?
Ericka Matthews-Jackson, senior director of undergraduate admissions at Wayne State University, in Detroit, has grappled with that question for years. Previously, she served as assistant dean of admissions at the university’s law school in the aftermath of a statewide ban on the consideration of race in admissions, in 2006.
“Once race was no longer a factor we could consider, the most challenging thing was having to evaluate and advocate on behalf of students who didn’t have certain opportunities because of their race, but not being able to highlight that race was the reason,” Matthews-Jackson says. “You have to do mental gymnastics. The fact that structural racism has been a part of this country since its inception is not something that you can take into consideration, but you know that has impacted the lives of so many of the applicants that are before you.”
For colleges and applicants alike, the application essay just became more fraught than ever.
