How SCOTUS’s affirmative action ruling impacts college admissions

Poll data reflect inconsistencies in public opinion on the use of race in college admissions. The 2022 Asian-American Voter Survey, conducted by Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote, found that 69% of respondents favoured affirmative action, as did 80% of Indian-American respondents. But a representative poll of American adults by The Washington Post in the same year found that 65% of Asian-American respondents would support the Supreme Court barring admissions policies that take race and ethnicity into account.

What exactly is the affirmative action debate in the US and will the recent judgment really put an end to discrimination? Will the judgment boost Asian American’s – this also includes the Indian diaspora in the US – prospects of admissions in US universities? Here are eight charts which explain this issue in detail.

What happens to Asian American applicants without affirmative action?

The process of seeking admissions to selective American universities is a black box. After students submit their applications – typically consisting of personal essays, test scores, recommendation letters, grades, and a resume – admissions officers and panels deliberate over each individual portfolio, following a process commonly referred to as “holistic review.” At many American universities, this whole-person approach to admissions included consideration of an applicant’s race – more specifically, the ways in which their racial background may have shaped their educational and extracurricular experiences.

Prior to the SCOTUS ruling, eight American states had already barred race-conscious admissions within their public universities: California (1996), Florida (1999), Michigan (2006), Nebraska (2008), Arizona (2010), New Hampshire (2012), Oklahoma (2012), and Idaho (2020). Two other states, Washington and Texas, previously passed similar bans, but they have since been rescinded. Some public schools within these states are known as “Public Ivies,” an informal term referring to state-funded universities that boast a quality of education near that of the prestigious (and private) Ivy League institutions. This group includes the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and several schools in California. At both UMich and UC-Berkeley, data suggest that the respective state affirmative action bans spiked Asian American enrolment in the years that followed – but seemingly at the cost of other racial minorities’ prospects. What explains the spike in Asian American applicants’ chances if affirmative action is done away with?

See Chart 1a and 1b

Race-conscious admissions practices reduce reliance on test scores, an area where Asian Americans excel

The premise of racial affirmative action relies on using an applicant’s race to better contextualise their academic and extracurricular performance through grade school, including standardised test scores. In the absence of such policies, university admissions committees tend to place more weight on so-called “objective” measures of aptitude, such as grade-point averages and standardised test scores.

Historically, Asian-Americans have excelled at standardised testing, so it makes sense why some Indian-Americans are looking forward to a forthcoming admissions landscape where test scores are weighted more heavily. But are standardised test scores really an objective criterion for merit?

See Chart 2a

High income applicants perform much better in such tests

An analysis of test scores by median household incomes shows a very strong positive correlation. The reason is not very difficult to understand. Wealthier students are more likely to pay for private test tutoring and to sit for exams multiple times, allowing them to score considerably higher. Race and income are highly correlated in the United States and whites and Asian-Americans are among the richest groups in the US. Some sociologists argue that standardised tests host a level of entrenched racial and ethnic bias, as such exams often employ idioms or make literary allusions unfamiliar to students of minority racial backgrounds. In the wake of such evidence, one can legitimately argue that test scores generate a bias against students from poor and minority groups in the system.

See Chart 3a and 3b

Affirmative action was not perfect, but doing away with it will be even worse for equality

A SAT score of 1600 from a Black applicant is, under affirmative action, more impressive than a 1600 from a white applicant. But what about a 1600 from a wealthy Black student versus a 1590 from a poor Black student, both of whom are from the same geographic area? While the latter may be more impressive given the student’s economic background, in the absence of specific income consideration, the higher-scoring student would have a leg-up. To be sure, this is not a guarantee that the higher-scoring student would get in, as there are factors beyond test score and race at play.

That challenge is likely to intensify sans-affirmative action, as a 1600 from any applicant would be weighed more heavily than a 1590 from any other, irrespective of financial or racial status.

Asian-Americans might be the wealthiest racial minority in the United States, but the group – which is itself broad and diverse – also has the largest wealth gap. According to a 2018 report by the Pew Research Center, those in the top 10% of wage distribution earn almost 11 times as much as those at the bottom. Indian-Americans top the Asian-American wealth bracket.

As a bloc, Asian-Americans indeed perform better on standardised tests, and it is likely that universities will place greater emphasis on these test scores in a post-affirmative action world. But this sort of increasing reliance is not likely to help all Asian-Americans, just the wealthy ones.

At the same time, a lens that – like racial affirmative action – looks at race as a proxy for income leaves poor students within all racial groups behind.

See Chart 4

The hypocrisy in SCOTUS judgment: affirmative action is bad, but legacy preference ignored

In the rulings against Harvard and University of North Carolina, the US Supreme Court said the schools failed to satisfy the “strict scrutiny” standard, a legal principle dictating when and how institutions receiving government funding – including universities – can constitutionally consider racial backgrounds.

Under this standard, race-conscious college admissions are only permitted if they both further a “necessary” state interest and also minimise “differential treatment on the basis of race.” Any sort of explicit race consideration can only stand if all other possible ways of achieving racial diversity have been exhausted.

But both schools, similar to most elite universities in the US, employ a distinct admissions policy called legacy preference, in which applications from the children or grandchildren of university alumni receive an extra boost.

Data confirm that most legacy students are white. The Supreme Court justices questioned whether racial affirmative action could meet the strict scrutiny standard while legacy admissions remained in place, arguing that abolition of legacy admissions would inherently increase racial diversity without requiring explicit consideration of applicants’ racial background.

Comparison of enrolment data at Harvard and MIT, both of which are schools that use racial affirmative action, support this argument. Last year, MIT’s overall admissions rate was 3.96% and Harvard’s was 3.24%, meaning that they are similarly selective. Unlike Harvard, however, MIT does not employ legacy preference. A comparison of MIT and Harvard admissions data by race shows a greater percentage of students of colour in the classes of 2025 and 2026 at MIT – specifically, a greater percentage of Asian-American students, without markedly adverse effects on enrolment from students of other minority racial backgrounds.

See Chart 5a and 5b

Anika Arora Seth is an intern with the Hindustan Times