What else did we learn at the Supreme Court?

Last week’s post examined some things we learned about admission when the Students for Fair Admissions cases went before the Supreme Court. This week’s post examines a few more such lessons. I try to observe the “mental hygiene” (sorry) practice of checking existing hypotheses against new information flowing in. My ideas are holding up quite well. Take a look!

There is a lot of inertia in admission, because it’s tricky to satisfy everyone.

The justices kept needling the lawyers for both colleges about when the schools plan to phase out race-based affirmative action or what degree of diversity would be enough to end the practice. The plaintiffs’ lawyer made the same point—that colleges have no plans to phase out race-based affirmative action in part because they have not declared what degree of diversity they’re aiming for—several times. The defense lawyers declined to give a clear answer.

Let’s look at some snippets from the transcript.

From the plaintiffs’ lawyer:

“UNC officials testified that they cannot imagine any scenario that would actually lead them to end their racial preferences. […] There was a reference to climate surveys, but the Director of Admissions [at UNC] testified at trial that he had not looked at a climate survey in 10 years.”

“The head of UNC’s race-neutral alternatives committee testified that if the racial distribution on campus was 20 percent African American, 20 percent Asian American, 20 percent Hispanic, and 20 percent Native American, that was still not sufficient to convince her that they would stop using race.”

“The chancellor of the university said if UNC had the highest level of minority representation in the country, that would not be sufficient to convince them that they should stop using race.”

“Harvard doesn’t know what number it needs to get the educational benefits of diversity. It doesn’t know what evidence to consult to know whether it has that. It doesn’t know what the evidence would even look like.”

And here are the defense lawyers dodging the question:

• “We do not have some sort of racial target or a target for other diversity metrics.”

• Adequate diversity is “a qualitative standard that is difficult to measure.”

• “Harvard’s view about when [to phase out race-based affirmative action] doesn’t have a date on it.”

A right-wing polemicist would look at these quotes and conclude that Harvard and UNC are rabidly woke and will never be satisfied.

I think there’s a more boring explanation: the admissions offices have found a formula that minimizes criticism, so they don’t want to abandon it. I’d wager the real cause is some blend of laziness and conflict avoidance—sure, with certain political views stirred in from each of those constituencies. The faculty, trustees, coaches, alumni, fundraising office, etc. are tolerably content with what the admissions offices are doing now. So, the admissions offices don’t want to rock the boat.

This judgment doesn’t have any immediate implications for your kid, but it does make me more confident that my views are staying correct over time. If the incentives aren’t changing, the good-enough admission logic from last year will probably prevail this year too. This is a variation on Chesterton’s fence. Things are the way they are for a reason.

Different majors have different admission rates.

Some majors offer a broader path in than others. Jim Jump, a college consultant I respect, wrote about variation in admission rates by major on his blog last month.

Harvard’s lawyer brought it up at the Supreme Court too. A student who is “interested in majoring in the humanities” would receive “a major tip that Harvard gives because of Harvard’s recent inability to matriculate excellent students who want to major in the humanities.”

At some colleges, like the Big Ten schools Jim Jump wrote about, it can be tough to change majors once admitted. But at many colleges, including Harvard, it is very possible to state one major in the application and change once on campus. As the plaintiffs’ lawyer succinctly put it, “Students change majors like they change socks.”

So, it would be unwise for a Harvard applicant to tell the admissions office that he or she wants to major in a popular department like computer science, economics, or biology.

What are better options? You could schedule a one-on-one session to discuss what could be plausible for your kid.

Admissions officers are rushed.

UNC and Harvard are not immune to the trend of receiving many, many applications. We learned from the SCOTUS transcripts that UNC gets around 40,000 and Harvard around 61,000 applications a year. Admissions officers have to read all of them, or at least process them all in some cursory way in an initial cull before paying more attention to the “good pile.”

This mad rush has several implications. The first is that you have to make your application obvious and gestalt-consistent. I haven’t read college admission celebrity Sara Harberson’s book Soundbite, but I think this is the point she’s making too. In your coursework, essays, extracurriculars, and letters of recommendation, present one story.

The second implication is one I plan to discuss in more detail in a series of posts, and it is this: standardized tests will remain important, and your kid should take one. They’ll stay important because the automation and quantification that have driven down costs relentlessly in many other fields must look pretty appealing to an admissions office facing tens of thousands of applications—or to university presidents who don’t want to pay to employ more application readers. Your kid should take a standardized test because (inter alia) having good test scores will help him or her stand out among tens of thousands of applicants, all clamoring for the attention of a rushed admission officer.

Different types of applicants face different odds.

Colleges report one overall admission rate, but that number hides a lot of complexity. Different applicant pools, some of which overlap, have different odds of admission. For example, applicants of one ethnicity are competing with each other, and applicants from certain regions of the country are competing with each other. Kids who apply early decision are competing within that pool, at least at first.

At the Supreme Court, Harvard’s lawyer acknowledged that about a third of Harvard’s classes consist of athletes, legacies, applicants on the Dean’s List (basically relatives of large donors), and children of faculty—collectively termed ALDCs. Those kids face much better odds: for Harvard applicants between 2009 and 2014, athletes had an admission rate of 86 percent, legacies 34 percent, Dean’s List kids 42 percent, and faculty children 47 percent. For applicants who didn’t fit in any of those categories, the admission rate was about 6 percent.

You may well feel frustrated by those numbers. It’s not like you can go and get a job at Harvard right now (well, probably; I don’t know who you all are!). And each of those ALDCs is taking away a spot that could be your kid’s.

So what to do? Find a smaller or less competitive pool to compete in, if you can. Being able to pay full tuition will slot your kid into such a pool. A specialized extracurricular can also narrow the competition. Harvard’s lawyer explained that being “an oboe player in a year in which the Harvard-Radcliffe orchestra needs an oboe player will be the tip.” In this example, each oboe-playing applicant would be competing primarily against other oboe players.

What if your kid doesn’t play the oboe? To learn the checklist of traits that make extracurriculars appeal to admissions officers, you can sign up for that online class. If you’d like more personalized advice, tailored to your child’s goals and strengths, about extracurriculars or anything else, you can sign up for a one-on-one consultation. I look forward to working with your family!