What's next when it comes to race in college admissions?

It's hard to say, but I'll take a stab at it.

No one knows what effect the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Harvard case will have on black admissions at top colleges. It’s likely that fewer blacks will be admitted and enrolled, but the drop-off might be small.

I’m sure elite colleges will strive for that result. Thus, the outcome will probably depend on the extent to which courts let them get away with being a bit more creative in using blackness as a plus, so as to maintain something close to the status quo.

As Heather Mac Donald points out, the Court did not entirely foreclose such creativity, but instead stated that colleges can consider, based on an applicant’s personal essay, how race has affected his or her life and character. Later in this post, I’ll discuss how this dynamic might play out

Notwithstanding the wiggle room left by the Court, the pro-discrimination crowd is confidently predicting the worst (from its perspective) for race-based admissions. Today’s Washington Post devotes several articles to claiming that the sky is falling.

One of the articles claims (in the paper-edition title) that “the fallout from the gutting of race-conscious applications is already being felt.” This is a rather odd assertion inasmuch as the application screening process at elite colleges — and, indeed, the application process itself — presumably is on summer break right now.

In fact, “the fallout” described by the Post turns out to be anticipatory. The Post quotes a private school teacher who says she “feels sick” when she considers how conversations about college with students will go this fall.” She tells the Post:

If you haven’t had test prep or lots of extracurriculars, I don’t know if they’re going to have a shot anymore, and that’s really sad.

Here’s a thought: If you want to attend an elite college, invest in a SAT prep course and be active in after-school programs.

It may be too late for rising seniors to load up on and excel in extracurricular activities. But what I find sad is that black students may have believed, justifiably, that they could get admitted to an elite college without preparing for the SAT and being highly active in after-school-programs.

One of the many virtues of the Court’s rulings is that should encourage black students to step up their game. Those who choose not to — who take a defeatist attitude now that their special status has been altered— were terrible candidates for elite colleges all along.

The Post quotes a rising high school senior who says the Supreme Court’s ruling means colleges cannot see her as the young black woman she is. Actually, the Supreme Court all but invited her to write an essay describing the young black woman she is — the “personal essay” loophole I mentioned above.

The same woman added: “I will most likely have to limit myself to only applying to historically black colleges rather than having the opportunity to get accepted to Ivy Leagues” and “this could affect the jobs or careers that I would have in the future.”

Nonsense. There are plenty of alternatives to the Ivy League in addition to historically black colleges. If this woman had any shot at being admitted to an Ivy League school under the race-based preference system, she now has a shot at being admitted to a range of colleges below that level.

But the real question is why she feels entitled, by virtue of her race, to have a better shot at “jobs and careers in the future” than white and Asian-American students who are better prepared to perform well in college.

Let’s return, though, to the personal essay loophole. The Post reports that “college counselors everywhere” will have to figure out how to “operationalize” this “sliver” of room the Court left open for colleges to learn about an applicant’s race.

This statement is revealing. In fact, it gives the game away.

The personal essay applicants submit to colleges are supposed to be just that — personal. They aren’t supposed to be “operationalized” by college counselors to enable colleges to continue to prefer blacks. Yet, an entire industry will now be all-the-more dedicated to doing just that.

I think Asian-American students as a group will have a remedy. Many of them will be able to tell colleges, honestly, that they have overcome major obstacles — e.g., coming to America from a foreign country, growing up with parents struggling to make it in an unfamiliar land, etc. — and achieved a high level of academic success.

Read fairly, these essays are likely to be at least as compelling as those of black applicants as a group. If colleges give such essays by Asian applicants less weight than those of black applicants — as evidenced by (1) so-so performing blacks with good essays being admitted ahead of highly accomplished Asians with similarly good essays and (2) no major change in Asian-American representation in the student body — it should be possible (albeit arduous) to prove discrimination against Asian-American applicants.

However, white applicants might be hard pressed to come up with stories as moving (in the eyes of admissions officers) as black and Asian-American applicants. This shouldn’t make much difference in the admissions process. But given the Court’s loophole and the strong commitment of elite colleges to quota-style diversity, it probably will.

Thus, to address the question with which I opened this post, it’s quite possible that the Supreme Court’s decisions will result in a significant increase in Asian-American enrollment, mostly at the expense of white applicants, with black enrollment decreasing only slightly.