Redesigning the College Admission Process to Ensure Racial Equity

Harvard and the University of North Carolina’s admissions processes were unlawful. College admission officers, who have for years attempted to reconcile the increasingly restrictive legal landscape with the near-universal desire to improve postsecondary access for under-represented students, are steeling themselves against the uncertainty of how they will serve these often-clashing mandates in the future. At the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), a membership organization of college admissions officers and counselors where I serve as the chief education and policy officer, we seek to expand the terms of engagement of admissions professionals. We want to move away from the obsessive clash and attention over spots at highly selective colleges and instead focus on the much larger issue of the fundamental flaws with the college application and enrollment process.

“The effects of systemic racism touch every element of college admission—a process that, at its origin, was not designed to promote equity.” – Toward a More Equitable Future for Postsecondary Access

While disruptive forces, such as the equal rights and civil rights movements, as well as prior Supreme Court decisions, have altered the landscape of college admissions over the past century, the fundamental design of the admission process at many highly-selective institutions remains remarkably similar to the original design. As a result, we--the public, policymakers, and institutions--spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about improving exclusive admissions processes. But the truth is, the most selective institutions in 2016 only enrolled 21 percent of first-time undergraduate students. Our collective bandwidth would be better spent shoring up the institutions that serve most students. This means not only making selective schools more inclusive but also centering higher education as the public good it is and allocating sufficient resources to those institutions that serve most students.

In January 2022, NACAC published a joint report with the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) entitled, Toward a More Equitable Future for Postsecondary Access. Funded by Lumina Foundation, the report provided a broad series of recommendations for colleges and universities hoping to restructure their college application and admission systems to be more equitable.

Recommendations relevant to this report include:

• Minimizing the Application Burden on Students: After discussing the admission process with students of color, the report committee found that the college application process presented multiple barriers to access. The report recommended that institutions analyze available technology and K-12 data and explore ways to reduce the need for a separate application in favor of a more streamlined system that eliminates barriers to access.
• Rethinking What We Consider as Admission Criteria and Why: Students often described the application process as a set of activities and considerations that often seemed divorced from the K-12 experience and/or designed to hold them to a different standard than more privileged and/or white students. Standardized testing, unequal access to curricular and extracurricular activities, essays, and letters of recommendation were frequently cited as examples of ways in which the admission process added “sediment” on top of students’ strengths as demonstrated through K-12 achievements and experiences. The report recommended that colleges carefully consider what they ask students to submit and whether those requirements (a) provide colleges with useful information about students’ potential for success, and (b) create equity challenges that could be reduced or by eliminating or replacing them.
• Rethinking Selectivity: Selectivity exerts a fundamentally inequitable influence on the path to postsecondary education. It does so not because the system is designed on a complete definition of “merit,” which remains elusive and ill-defined, but because in many cases it is designed to exclude even highly-qualified students due to an inequitable system of inputs. For institutions that choose to exercise a degree of selectivity in their enrollment process, they should develop methods for entry that are, to the extent possible, least susceptible to the influence of systemic racism.
• Diversifying the Face of the Institution: Students involved in the project noted that at many institutions, they were unable to see or relate to someone who looked like or deeply understood them during the application process. While admission offices have diversified over the years, they are still less representative of under-represented populations than the student bodies at four-year institutions, which are in turn less representative of the overall population. As admission offices seek to further diversify, engaging with prospective and current students of color will be an imperative if institutions are to better understand and serve successive generations of college applications.

In response to the Court’s decision, the federal government can play an important role in reducing the barriers that keep students out of higher education and, importantly, in assisting colleges and universities to modernize and re-design the college admission process. Such policy actions could include, but are not limited to:

• Right-sizing the Court’s Decision: As the court decision will further restrict race-conscious admission, which will exhibit a discouraging effect on under-represented students of color, the Administration can use its considerable resources to provide encouragement and resources to assure students that college is within reach. In addition, the Administration can ensure that the Court’s decision is not misconstrued or misrepresented by opponents of equity, who will almost certainly seize on the Court’s decision to advance their discriminatory and regressive agenda. Helping colleges and universities understand the legal contours of the decision will ensure that they do not overreact and further restrict equity initiatives.
• Supporting Counseling and College Advising: Congress and the Administration can increase support for programs that support school counseling and college advising, including, but not limited to, ESSA Title IV-A, GEAR UP, and TRIO. In the future, the federal government should, in conjunction with states, implement policies that would guarantee that every student has equitable access to college advising and school counseling to help prepare them to succeed academically and make the transition to postsecondary education.
• Protecting Civil Rights: Given persistent inequities in K-12 and higher education, the federal government should further explore the impact of the unequal allocation of resources on under-represented students’ civil rights.
• Supporting Innovation in College Access and Admission: Federal research and development programs, such as the Fund for Improvement of Postsecondary Education, can be oriented to assist colleges and universities with redesigning recruitment, admission, and enrollment policies so they are fundamentally designed for equity.
• Reimagining Higher Education as a Public Good: In the bigger picture, protracted legal debates over seats at highly selective colleges, which constitute a small minority of four-year colleges in the United States, seems a colossal waste of public energy and resources. NACAC urges state and federal lawmakers to instead reimagine higher education as a public good. A “moon shot” policy that removes financial barriers to attending college—true to the original vision for the Higher Education Act—would go a long way toward relegating the obsessive debate over seats at highly selective institutions to the history books.