Affir­ma­tive Action, a set of poli­cies enacted in 1965 that aimed at increas­ing educa­tion and career oppor­tu­ni­ties for histor­i­cally under­rep­re­sented and thereby disad­van­taged groups, was rejected by the United States Supreme Court on June 29, 2023.

In this deci­sion, the Supreme Court stated that under the Equal Protec­tion Clause of the Four­teenth Amend­ment, race, a protected class, cannot be a consid­ered factor in college admis­sions. The effect this change will have on the diver­sity of upcom­ing college classes is unclear, leav­ing high school coun­selors, admis­sions offices, and univer­sity appli­cants wonder­ing how previ­ous meth­ods will be altered.

Although there will be chal­lenges and demands K‑12 schools must fulfill to prepare students for new measures, Fair­fax County Public Schools, as well as several higher educa­tion offi­cials, have been prepar­ing for this restric­tion and are enact­ing new proce­dures in adjust­ment to the decision.

Some schools, such as Brown Univer­sity, display strong efforts to create new meth­ods to main­tain a student body that “[repre­sents] deep intel­lec­tual abil­ity and broad diver­sity of background.”

However, two ques­tions that insti­tu­tions of higher educa­tion are still work­ing to deter­mine are: What will the impact on histor­i­cally under­served groups be? And, how can schools such as Brown main­tain the bene­fits of diver­sity in light of this change to their admis­sions practices?

The main goal of Affir­ma­tive Action was help­ing disad­van­taged racial groups by bridg­ing historic inequal­i­ties in employ­ment and increas­ing access to educa­tion. It is widely debated whether these poli­cies heav­ily bene­fit­ted such groups or merely leveled the play­ing field.

Students at Justice High School, a diverse school with a large number of first gener­a­tion students, often strug­gle to navi­gate college appli­ca­tion and finan­cial aid systems. Other areas of vulner­a­bil­ity that higher educa­tion previ­ously consid­ered of students across the nation include disparate high school qual­ity, econom­i­cally vulner­a­ble house­holds, and finally racial background.

With no consid­er­a­tion of race, current seniors are worried about whether access to certain colleges will be altered. Senior Dibora Yilma believes that while not neces­sar­ily true, many students at Justice “have been made to believe that Affir­ma­tive Action was their ticket into these schools, or that they weren’t capa­ble of getting in on their own merit.”

The Supreme Court case, STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE states that “race is a deter­mi­na­tive tip for” a signif­i­cant percent­age “of all admit­ted African Amer­i­can and Hispanic appli­cants,” at Harvard. The second school in the Supreme Court case — Univer­sity of North Carolina (UNC) — noted that in the previ­ous UNC admis­sions process, read­ers consid­ered all appli­cants’ race, and could “[provide] an appli­cant a substan­tial ‘plus’ depend­ing on the applicant’s race.”

Yet, Justice High School’s Honors Govern­ment and AVID teacher, Eric Welch, does not see the Supreme Court deci­sion heav­ily affect­ing Justice High School senior appli­cants. “I think, first of all, [it was] a small percent­age of colleges where this actu­ally mattered — the very, very compet­i­tive ones. And it’s a very small percent­age of students that would have been affected.” Although Welch does acknowl­edge that several students at Justice were affected previ­ously — some­times posi­tively — he believes that “colleges were prepared for this change,” and they will continue to “prior­i­tize diver­sity and having students from multi­ple back­grounds go to their college.”

Since the Supreme Court ruling, colleges and univer­si­ties are no longer permit­ted to directly ask directly about the student’s race as a consid­er­able factor. This means higher educa­tion must find new approaches to attain­ing a diverse student body.

While colleges alter how they formu­late appli­ca­tions, Yilma believes the students’ approach will be mini­mally modi­fied. “The schools are the ones who have to navi­gate this change in how they can read appli­ca­tions, and my job is still to pack­age and present myself in the most authen­tic way possi­ble,” she said.

Although race can no longer be a blan­ket consid­er­a­tion in admis­sions, that does not mean that students cannot offer narra­tive infor­ma­tion about their back­ground that would make them attrac­tive to an institution’s desire for a diverse student body. Section VI of the Opin­ion of the Court asserts that univer­si­ties may still consider “an applicant’s discus­sion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrim­i­na­tion, inspi­ra­tion, or otherwise.”

In an email sent out regard­ing essay prompts on updated appli­ca­tions, UVA Pres­i­dent Jim Ryan and Provost Ian Baucom stated that the infor­ma­tion gained from this response is consid­ered because it relates to a “person’s unique abil­ity as an indi­vid­ual to contribute to the univer­sity, and not on the basis of race or ethnic­ity alone.”

This prompts the ques­tion of whether an essay high­light­ing aspects of an applicant’s race and ethnic­ity places more of a chal­lenge on disad­van­taged students, who have less help at home or less assis­tance with writ­ing college appli­ca­tion essays. Many school systems, includ­ing FCPS, have programs to miti­gate disparate social capi­tal that fami­lies may or may not have as they navi­gate college admissions.

Dr. Lynette Henry, Manager of FCPS’s College Success Program (CSP), notes the district will likely need to add direct support and guid­ance for students to tell their stories, specif­i­cally through college appli­ca­tion work­shops and presen­ta­tions. Henry adds this will take partic­u­lar sensi­tiv­ity when work­ing with students who may have differ­ent levels of comfort shar­ing indi­vid­ual stories which “might be very painful,” or include some­thing that students “may not want to share.” The CSP acknowl­edges the impor­tance of help­ing students tell their story in a way that main­tains dignity and privacy, while also using the essay to lever­age what assets the indi­vid­ual can bring to a college community.

In the absence of racial consid­er­a­tions, college admis­sions offices are contem­plat­ing how other factors might be prox­ies for main­tain­ing or increas­ing the diver­sity that schools are worried will be nega­tively impacted by the end of Affir­ma­tive Action. Some exam­ples under consid­er­a­tion include ensur­ing spots for partic­u­lar numbers of first-gener­a­tion status students, students from a vari­ety of high schools, or econom­i­cally vulner­a­ble students.

A letter sent out by Colgate Univer­sity Pres­i­dent Brian W. Casey promotes the university’s full intent to explore further measures that must be taken to attract a gifted and diverse student body. Colgate Univer­sity has also joined a new recruit­ment consor­tium — which includes Cornell Univer­sity, the Univer­sity of Rochester, Syra­cuse Univer­sity, Haver­ford College, Carleton College, and Clare­mont McKenna College — designed to “intro­duce Colgate to even wider appli­cant audiences.”

Fair­fax County Public Schools is a massive system, compar­a­tively larger than many others in the coun­try. More­over, the strength and value of the resources provided to students in this district cannot be under­es­ti­mated. Henry believes “that as a district, [FCPS has] to prepare, [to] make changes that are neces­sary, and continue to support our students’ success.”

Addi­tion­ally, Welch notes just how useful the AVID program can be for Justice students, stat­ing, “[from] 11^th grade into Senior year, what we give [students] in personal support is the equiv­a­lent of what some fami­lies spend $5,000 on.” Along with direct support from AVID teach­ers with essay writ­ing, the program offers oppor­tu­ni­ties such as one-on-one essay support from educated and expe­ri­enced lawyers, fee waivers for college appli­ca­tions, and visits to vari­ous colleges.

The AVID program, along with the work of Justice’s College and Career special­ist Ms. Ander­son, makes strong efforts to develop pipelines between Justice and other universities.

Teach­ers and offi­cials in FCPS, as well as higher educa­tion admis­sions offi­cials together empha­size the impor­tance of taking advan­tage of resources and oppor­tu­ni­ties that FCPS offers. The size of FCPS offers Justice students an advan­tage that is not avail­able to all students across the coun­try who may be impacted by this change. Robust support from programs such as district CSP and the AVID program provides many ways for a student to high­light the attrac­tive­ness of their multi­cul­tural back­ground and educa­tion in a school as diverse as Justice. Welsh concurs, stat­ing “There’s an assump­tion that [Justice] students needed affir­ma­tive action to get into college. I don’t think they neces­sar­ily did. [It] helps them, but we have students who do the IB diploma, who get over 4.0 GPA, who play sports, who are in the theater, in music, doing all these amaz­ing commu­nity service activ­i­ties — that makes ‘em compet­i­tive, I don’t care who they compete with.”