The Supreme Court decision was toothless because it allowed universities to create race proxies, and they're exploiting it to make the decision irrelevant. It's even perfectly fine to discuss race in college essays, for example: "Rice University asked students how their perspectives were shaped by their “background, experiences, upbringing, and/or racial identity.”" (<a href="https://apnews.com/article/college-application-affirmative-action-f0c006a6210ab244c1b6b4c2b1926b6d" rel="nofollow">https://apnews.com/article/college-application-affirmative-a...</a>). They'll fine-tune them to achieve the exact racial makeup they want eventually. The bigger surprise is that a few schools haven't done it (yet?).
It is obviously the increase in those who haven’t checked boxes. There have been so many articles about this and nearly every article has a comment from an Asian student saying they work to ensure their essays don’t reveal their race. Clearly the college admission advisors are telling Asian students to not mention their race.<p>Also, I’m not sure if international students count here but there’s likely been a drop in Asian students applying to US universities which if they do count may affect the numbers as well.
It is not hard to understand if you flood your student body with underachievers thus risking institutional reputation.<p>For me, I no longer pick medical specialists who graduated from Harvard since 2017. Others at various later date. And I felt vindicated after reading<p><a href="https://casetext.com/case/hernandez-v-yale-medical-group" rel="nofollow">https://casetext.com/case/hernandez-v-yale-medical-group</a>
> Among the variables shaping the current numbers is the jump in the percentage of students who chose not to check the boxes for race and ethnicity on their applications. At Princeton, for instance, that number rose to 7.7 percent this year from just 1.8 percent last year. At Duke it rose to 11 percent from 5 percent. Universities may not know whether the “unknown” number includes more white and Asian American students.<p>Well that's pretty significant. And ironically, there could be a link between the increased focus on race in admissions and applicants "opting out," so to speak.
Meritocracy. Some folks keep saying that word, but I don’t think it means what they think it means<p>“We estimate that Asian American applicants had 28% lower odds of ultimately attending an Ivy-11 school than white applicants with similar academic and extracurricular qualifications. The gap was particularly pronounced for students of South Asian descent (49% lower odds).”<p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55119-0#:~:text=We%20estimate%20that%20Asian%20American,(49%25%20lower%20odds)" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55119-0#:~:text=W...</a>.
The UC system wasn’t allowed to consider race or implement affirmative action, at least in the past. As I recall they had significantly higher rates of Asian students compared to the private universities (like Ivy leagues) where affirmative action policies racially discriminate against Asian students
'Lets end affirmative action!'<p>'We are going to sue you for something that affirmative action helped avoid'<p>I know i'm likely oversimplifying it but I am trying to highlight the ridiculousness of it