The nonprofit Common App released a report this week detailing applicant trends across the first college application cycle since last year’s SCOTUS ruling.
In short: Common App found no meaningful deviations from historical data that would indicate SCOTUS’ ruling on Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) v. President & Fellows of Harvard College (Harvard) and SFFA v. University of North Carolina (UNC) impacted college applicant behaviors.
Methodology: The report analyzed national application data across 6 million domestic applicants between the 2019-20 and the present 2023-24 admissions cycles to over 800 member colleges. After the SCOTUS decision, Common App continued to collect race and ethnicity data from applicants; member colleges were able to opt-out of viewing applicants’ responses.
Zoom in: The study revealed no significant changes in how applicants self-reported their race and ethnicity on their profiles. There were also no substantial deviations in terms of the number of applications submitted per applicant, or the percentage of applicants who applied to selective colleges (or, colleges with admission rates of less than 25%)—across all racial and ethnic groups.
Common App also looked into whether or not applicants were more frequently using words or phrases that signify racial and ethnic identity (e.g., Black people, Latinx, multi-ethnic, etc.) in their essays. Just 12% of underrepresented minority (URM) students used one or more of the terms included in the study in 2023-24, down from 16% in 2020-21.
Yes, but: This data is just the beginning, and is some of the first of its kind. Additionally, the data may not have been impacted by the timing of the SCOTUS ruling, since many rising seniors would have already made college plans. A March study by Niche found that 55% of students were not aware of the SCOTUS ruling at all, and only 15% believed the ruling affected them personally (17% for underrepresented minority students).
The big picture: The Better FAFSA rollout debacle and the return of standardized testing requirements for selective schools will also have lasting effects on college admissions and enrollment, making it more difficult to tell whether or not the SCOTUS ruling actually made a difference. “Those issues, in many ways, have eclipsed race-based admission as the most acute challenge facing students and families today,” said Jenny Rickard, CEO of Common App, during a private briefing of the report on June 12.
Further reading: Check out the latest coverage of the data from WGBH, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post [subscription model], and Inside Higher Ed.
