Black and Latino students make up about two-thirds of Texas’ public schools. But they are vastly underrepresented at its top universities, and Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling will shake up an already complicated application process.
, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.Heading into her senior year, Sydney Vallair had zeroed in on her top choices and felt “ahead of the game” when it came to applying for college.
The college application process has always been a stressful and opaque process, especially for students from underrepresented backgrounds eyeing top schools. Thursday’s decision by the high court has thrown in whole new layers of uncertainty. As colleges and universities rethink their approaches to admissions, students of color are having to rethink everything from the subjects of their essays to the schools they’re targeting.
On Thursday, the court ruled along ideological lines in two cases that the methods that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard University use to consider race in admissions violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, effectively ending affirmative action along racial lines at public and private universities across the country.
Struggling with the elevation change and the steepness of her climb, she described finally looking out at what she said was a beautiful view. Those types of stories are not uncommon among students in Texas public schools, in which the majority of students today are Latino and considered economically disadvantaged. School resources are far from equitable — even as school districts across the state work to increase opportunities for students. The state’s education system was built on a legacy of disparities and long-winding fights for equity.
But Thursday’s ruling, EMERGE CEO Anastasia Lindo Anderson said, could also push colleges interested in diversity to enact more holistic reviews of prospective students, which could benefit students from underrepresented backgrounds. That could mean further cementing the move away from factors like standardized test scores.
Outside of the Top 10% Plan, Texas universities largely accept students through a holistic review process that considers a multitude of factors in their applications, including grade point average, personal essays, extracurricular activities, letters of recommendation and standardized test scores, if required. They often consider certain circumstances about a student’s life that put their academic achievements in better context.
Data shows that states that have banned race in admissions saw immediate drops in the number of students of color applying and enrolling. Large, selective public universities in California and Florida both saw Black student enrollment decrease following bans on affirmative action in college admissions.found that schools that are less selective get more diverse in the wake of bans on the use of race in college admissions.
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