College Admissions

Elite universities have swapped explicit racial preferences for essay prompts, adversity indexes, and soft quotas that still sort students by ancestry, so policymakers should require transparent race-neutral standards that reward achievement rather than identity.

The Supreme Court ended explicit racial preferences in 2023, but elite universities now disguise the same quotas through essays and socioeconomic proxies. Race-neutral admissions based on individual merit would help students match schools where they can actually succeed.