The aftermath of the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA) has put a spotlight on the capriciousness of admissions practices at selective colleges. In SFFA, the Supreme Court ruled that race-based admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After immense consternation about the impact of the ruling, dire warnings, and earnest discussion about how colleges should respond, the truth is that we have limited insight into what’s changed, how colleges are actually responding, or whether they’re even abiding by the law.

Here’s what we do know: At MIT, black and Latino first-year enrollment plunged, while the number of first-year Asian-American students spiked. At Wellesley, black student enrollment fell by nearly half and that of Latino students by almost a third. At Boston University, where the share of black freshmen fell by two-thirds, university president Melissa Gilliam termed the numbers “concerning and disappointing.” Meanwhile, Yale, Princeton, and Duke saw a drop in Asian-American enrollment and no change in black enrollment.

What’s going on? Are the admissions departments at MIT, Wellesley, and BU staffed by bigots who’d been covertly awaiting an excuse to turn away black and Latino applicants? Is Yale using “holistic admissions” to circumvent the law and micro-manage the racial makeup of the student body? Are some selective colleges using Chief Justice Roberts’s “essay loophole” (allowing the use of race-conscious application prompts) to sidestep the law?

Continue reading at The Martin Center.