Expanding Access After Affirmative Action by Josh Wyner

Published on October 3, 2023

By: Josh Wyner

As expected, the Supreme Court has drastically limited the use of race in college admissions. Now presidents and admissions officers are considering ways to adjust their admissions processes. But if educating a talented and diverse student body is the goal, reforming admissions should not be their central focus.

The nation’s colleges with the highest average SAT scores — the most-selective four-year institutions — have pursued racial diversity through admissions for decades, and here are the results: Compared to the other nearly 2,000 U.S. colleges, the 129 most-selective ones enroll substantially fewer lower-income (25 percent versus 36 percent) and Black (9 percent versus 13 percent) students. While Hispanic student enrollment at these institutions is closer to the national average among colleges (12 percent versus 13 percent), it falls far short of the percentage of Hispanic people in the United States (19 percent and growing).

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