3/00 La Griffe du Lion: "Standardized Tests: The Interpretation of Racial and 
Ethnic Gaps," http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/testing.htm

6/24/03 Los Angeles Times: "Court Affirms Use of Race in University 
Admissions,"
    The Supreme Court struck down the University of Michigan's 
undergraduate admissions policy because it gave 20 bonus points 
to "underrepresented" minority applicants, which the university said did 
not include Asian Americans.
    The University of Michigan Law School receives about 3,500 
applications for 350 seats in its entering class. It chooses from students 
who have outstanding grades and test scores. It also seeks a "critical 
mass" of "underrepresented minority" students who are black, Latino or 
Native American.
    In recent years, 13% to 20% of its entering class has been made up of 
minorities. The proportion would have dropped to about 4% had the law 
school been required to admit students strictly based on their grades and 
test scores, O'Connor said.
    Barbara Grutter, the white plaintiff, was rejected despite a 3.8 grade-
point average and a score of 161 on the Law School Admissions Test. 
This was better than many of the minority applicants who were admitted, 
O'Connor noted.
    Someday, she said, the nation should revert to a strictly "race-neutral 
admissions formula" at all colleges. But that time has not arrived, she 
added.
    Requiring a "race-blind admissions policy" now would exclude most 
of the black and Latino students at the nation's most selective schools, 
she said.
    Still, affirmative action should not continue forever, she concluded.
    "Enshrining a permanent justification of racial preferences would 
offend [the] fundamental equal protection principle" set by the Constitution, 
O'Connor said. "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial 
preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved 
today."
    In dissent, Rehnquist called the focus on attaining a "critical mass" of 
minority students "a naked effort to achieve racial balancing." Justices 
Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy agreed with him.

Feb. 2003 The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: "How Bans on 
Race-Sensitive Admissions Severely Cut Black Enrollments at 
Flagship State Universities,"
    California, Florida, Georgia, and Texas prohibit their state 
universities from considering race as a positive factor in the 
admissions process.
    In 2001 the University of Georgia began to use a race-neutral 
admissions policy. This year 65% of all applicants to the University 
of Georgia were accepted for admission. Only 46.5% of black 
applicants were admitted.
    Affirmative action was prohibited in 2001 for admission to the 
University of Florida at Gainesville. That year black first-year 
enrollments dropped to 460 from 829 a year earlier when 
race was still considered in the admissions process.  Black first-year 
enrollment dropped 45%.
    In the 2002 entering class there are 659 black students, up 43% 
from a year earlier. Blacks made up nearly 10% of the first-year class 
at the University of Florida, up from 7.1% the year before. Blacks 
were slightly more likely to be accepted than whites at the University 
of Florida this year. More than 65% of all black applicants were 
admitted compared to 58% of white applicants. Black enrollments at 
the University of Florida remain 21% below the level of two years 
ago when affirmative action was used.
    In 1996 voters in California passed Proposition 209 which banned 
racial preferences in admissions in the state university system. The 
ban took effect for graduate programs in 1997 and for undergraduate 
students in 1998.
    For applicants for the fall 1998 entering class, the number of blacks 
admitted to the University of California at Berkeley was down more 
than 57% from a year earlier. Only 95 black freshmen enrolled in 1998, 
down from 258 black first-year students the year before when 
affirmative action was still permitted. This was a drop of more than 63%.
    This year there are 142 black first-year students at Berkeley, and 
they make up 3.9% of the freshman class. The number of black students 
at Berkeley is up 49% from the low of 95 black freshmen in 1998. The 
number of black freshmen at Berkeley is down 45% from the level that 
prevailed before the ban on affirmative action was instituted in 1998.
    In March 1996 in the Hopwood case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for 
the Fifth Circuit ruled affirmative action at the University of Texas law 
school violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment 
of the U.S. Constitution. When the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear 
an appeal in the case, Texas' attorney general issued an opinion that 
all state universities should abolish affirmative action admissions plans.
    In 1996, 501 black students were admitted to the undergraduate 
program at the University of Texas at Austin. The next year, there were 
419 black admits. In the fall of 1997, there were 163 black enrollees, 
one more than had enrolled a year earlier. Because of a large increase 
in white enrollments, the black percentage of the freshman class at the 
Austin campus dropped from 2.9% in 1996 to 2.5% in 1997.
    In the current 2002-03 academic year there are 271 black first-year 
students at the Austin campus. This is 67% more than was the case in 
1996 before the Hopwood decision was announced. In 1996 blacks 
made up 2.9% of all entering students. Today, blacks make up 3.4% of 
the freshman class. The black student graduation rate at the University 
of Texas at Austin is 51%.
    The University of Texas law school did not graduate its first black 
student until 1954. By 1974, 22 blacks had graduated from the law 
school. In the mid-1970s, an affirmative action admissions program 
was set in place. By 1979 there were 17 blacks in the graduating class. 
In 1986 there were 44 black graduates. From 1986 to 1996, there was 
an average of 36 blacks in each first-year law class.
    In 1996, immediately before the Hopwood ruling that year, 65 black 
students were admitted to the University of Texas law school. The next 
year, after the ban on affirmative action went into effect, only 11 black 
students were admitted to the law school, a drop of 83%. There were 31 
black students in the first-year law school class in 1996. In 1997 there 
were four black first-year students, a drop of 87%. This year, the sixth 
entering class since the Hopwood decision, there are 21 black first-year 
students. Black enrollments are only one half the level that prevailed 
in 1992.
    As late as 1994, 31 black first-year students enrolled at the Boalt 
Hall law school at the University of California at Berkeley. The next year 
the regents imposed the affirmative action ban, which went into effect 
in 1997. In 1996, the last year of race-sensitive admissions at Boalt 
Hall, 20 first-year black students enrolled, a drop of 35% from the 
previous year.
    In 1997 the regents' ban on affirmative action went into effect for 
graduate programs at the University of California. That year black law 
school admits dropped from 77 to 18, a decrease of 76.6%. Black first-
year enrollments dropped from 20 in 1996 to one in 1997. In each of the 
past two years 14 black first-year students have enrolled. Today first-year 
enrollments are less than one half the level of black enrollments that 
prevailed when Boalt Hall practiced affirmative action.
    In 1994, black enrollments at the UCLA law school reached a high of 
46. The next year, after the affirmative action ban was announced, black 
enrollments dropped by more than one half to 20. In 1997, when the ban 
took effect, there were only 10 black first-year law students at UCLA. 
In 1999 only three black first-year law school students enrolled at UCLA. 
Since 1999 black enrollments have edged up each year. This past fall 
13 black students enrolled, less than one third the total black first-year 
enrollments that existed eight years ago in 1994 when affirmative action 
was still practiced.

12/18/02 Wall Street Journal: "Law Schools Hatch Rebellion Against
U.S. News Rankings: Group of Law Schools Weighs Plan To Deny
LSAT Scores to Magazine,"
    For years, college and university administrators have griped about the
influential U.S. News & World Report rankings of their institutions. Among
their complaints: The magazine's standings stoke the competitive frenzy over
college admissions and inflate the importance of applicants' test scores.
    Under a concept being developed by the Law School Admission
Council, a nonprofit organization of 185 U.S. law schools and 15 in Canada
that administers the Law School Admission Test, member schools would no
longer be told the actual LSAT scores of their applicants -- and so couldn't
provide schoolwide scores to the magazine.
    Under the proposed change, when a law school asks the council for an
applicant's LSAT score, the council would disclose only how that student's
score ranks among all the school's applicants. For example, it might say
that the student's score was in the 63rd percentile of applicants, or in
the 55th percentile of students whom the school admitted the previous
year. But the council wouldn't divulge the applicant's individual score.
    The change "would take some pressure off the use of this test in
the admissions process, which we believe is desirable," says
admission council President Philip Shelton. As a result, he contends,
LSAT scores would fade in importance for admissions compared
with other credentials, such as grades and leadership ability.
Nearly every law school requires applicants to take the LSAT,
which measures reading comprehension as well as reasoning ability
and is scored on a 120-180 scale. 
    In 2001-2002, the council administered 134,251 LSAT tests to more 
than 100,000 students; about 20% of students take it twice. Once a 
school receives an application, it contacts the council for the applicant's 
score.
    A year ago, the council appointed a group headed by Richard
Geiger, dean of admissions at Cornell University's law school, to
brainstorm ways of reducing the reliance on the LSATs. Mr. Geiger
describes the plan that resulted, which includes the new way of
handling LSAT scores, as "a solution that seems to have wheels."
    Mr. Shelton says the plan is still "embryonic," and would require
approval from the council's 18-member board. Among unresolved
questions are whether the applicant would be told his or her
numerical score, and whether participation in the plan would be
compulsory for all law schools. At the very least, he says, "some
solid number" of the nation's top 25 law schools would have to buy
into the idea for it to succeed. If all goes well, he says, the council,
based in Newtown, Pa., would test the plan on a sample of students
entering law school in 2004, and then implement it for 2005.
    Since whites significantly outscore minorities on the LSAT,
Mr. Shelton adds, law schools that de-emphasize the test would
also have the "flexibility" to admit more minorities -- pending the
outcome of a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on the
legality of race preferences at the University of Michigan law
school.

12/8/02 New York Times: "Using Synonyms for Race, College Strives for 
Diversity,"
    When a federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled in 1996 that the 
University of Texas Law School could not legally consider race in admitting 
students, lawyers at Rice University, a highly selective private college here, 
reluctantly decided that the ruling applied to it, too. Almost overnight, the 
admissions officers at Rice stopped saying aloud the words "black," 
"African-American," "Latino," "Hispanic" or even "minority" in their 
deliberations.
    The next year, the proportion of black students admitted in the freshman 
class fell by half; the proportion of Hispanics fell by nearly a third. The 
university feared that openly defying the federal court could cost it $45 
million annually in federal aid, about 15% of its budget.
    But like other colleges, Rice says it remains fiercely committed to having 
a diverse student body, so in the years since, it has developed creative, 
even sly ways to meet that goal and still obey the court. Thus the admissions 
committee, with an undisguised wink, has encouraged applicants to discuss 
"cultural traditions" in their essays, asked if they spoke English as a second 
language and taken note, albeit silently, of those identified as presidents of 
their black student associations. 
    Those efforts, along with stepped-up recruiting at high schools with 
traditionally high minority populations, yielded a freshman class last year 
with a near-record composition of blacks and Hispanics. Of the 700 
freshmen, 7% are black, 11% Hispanic.
    The experience of Rice provides a preview of the subtle ways that life 
would most likely change inside the admissions offices of colleges like 
Yale, Princeton and Stanford should the Supreme Court decide to impose 
strict restrictions on affirmative action. Those restrictions could be issued 
next year, when, the court said this week, it intends to consider two cases 
challenging racial preferences in admissions at the University of Michigan. 
At issue is the court's 1978 Bakke decision, which has been widely 
interpreted as permitting public and private colleges to consider an 
applicant's race a "plus" in assembling a class.
    Public universities - including those in Texas, Florida and California - 
have responded to lower-court decisions and other efforts to roll back 
Bakke by automatically accepting a set percentage of students ranked at 
the top of each public high school in their states. Because some of those 
high schools have heavy minority populations, a minority presence in the 
university system is assured.
    But private colleges like Rice have long shunned such formulas as too 
mechanical and impersonal and have instead adopted a more nuanced 
approach that colleges elsewhere see as a blueprint, should they face a 
prohibition like that imposed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, whose 
jurisdiction is Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.
    "You can no longer say to the committee, `This is a great African-
American from New York,' " said Julie M. Browning, the dean for 
undergraduate enrollment at Rice. "You have to drop a lot of language 
associated with affirmative action." Instead, Ms. Browning said, the 
admissions team at Rice has developed a whole new vocabulary - 
including the overarching goal of achieving "cultural inclusiveness" in the 
student body - to justify its admissions decisions.
    That new lexicon was evident this morning as the seven-member 
admissions committee met under a vaulted stucco ceiling here to winnow 
the list of nearly 500 students who have applied for early admission to the 
Class of 2007.
    One of the first candidates under consideration had an obviously 
Hispanic last name, but no one on the committee mentioned it. Though 
other colleges affix color-coded stickers to the folders of minority 
applicants, Rice blots out students' answers to questions on their 
application about race or ethnicity. (Office assistants who are sworn to 
secrecy first record the answers for later use to make a statistical profile 
of applicants.) While there were obvious clues that this applicant was 
Hispanic - a recommendation from a teacher noted his "desire to 
represent his Hispanic heritage" - the members of the committee found 
other ways to support his case, including his good grades in hard 
courses. "He is first-generation college," said Jamila Mensa, the 
admissions officer charged with making the presentation. "The teacher 
described him as altruistic."
    Another committee member, noting problems in the student's family, 
used admissions' shorthand to describe the candidate as "an overcome," 
and later said, "I just like the `overcome' here." In the committee's 
opinion, these qualities helped the student rise above an SAT score 
more than 150 points below the 1400-point median at Rice in recent 
years. After just a few minutes of discussion, he was unanimously 
admitted.
    For opponents of affirmative action, who have long argued that 
colleges have different standards for white and nonwhite applicants, the 
vote on this student would have provided little comfort. In response to 
a reporter's question, university officials refused to release statistics 
that they have gathered comparing the SAT scores of minority 
applicants accepted to Rice to those of non-minority applicants. They 
said only that the scores of minorities are generally lower nationally, 
and in the Rice pool as well.
    Partly by engaging in delicate minuets like those danced by the 
committee this morning, Rice has faced no legal challenges in the six 
years since the lower court ruled in the case known as Hopwood v. 
Texas.
    "You can't be using race or ethnicity as a factor in admission," said 
Richard Zansitis, the university's general counsel, in explaining the 
ground rules of Hopwood, which could serve the Supreme Court as a 
blueprint. "On the other hand, if a student has shown leadership - it may 
be in the black students association, it could be the chess club - that's 
something to look for in assessing that student as an individual. 
Whether it's leadership in an ethnic or racial organization is irrelevant."
    The timing of the Hopwood decision was especially inopportune for 
Rice, which generally receives about 7,000 applications for a freshman 
class of about 700. Founded by a wealthy cotton trader in the early 
1900's as an exclusively white institution, the university went to court in 
1965 to change its charter so that minority students would be welcome 
to study on its campus of gingerbread buildings. By 1996, the 
proportion of blacks (7.7%) and Hispanics (11%) in the freshman class 
was among the highest of any top college in the nation. Six years later, 
the Class of 2006, which arrived on campus this fall, was 7.1% black 
and 11% Hispanic. The percentage of Asian-Americans was 16%.


11/20/02 Associated Press: "Rights panel: Diversity lags under UC plan. 
Admissions policy adopted to replace race-based system is called 
ineffective. UC disputes that."
    The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported fewer blacks and 
Hispanics were admitted and enrolled in the University of California 
graduate law and medical programs in 2001 than in 1995. The state 
voted to end race-based admissions in 1996, although the ban did not 
take effect until 1998-99.  Fewer blacks enrolled as undergraduates in 
2001 than in 1995, as well.  The number of Hispanics who enrolled grew 
slightly in that period. But they made up a smaller portion of the student 
body.
    The University of California said last month that minority enrollment 
at the medical and law schools is lower than it was before the passage 
of Proposition 209.
    In Texas, the report showed fewer blacks and Hispanics were 
admitted and enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin in 2001 than 
in 1996, before a federal court outlawed affirmative action in 
admissions at public universities.

10/22/02 The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: "The Progress of 
Black Student Enrollments at the Nation's Highest-Ranked Colleges 
and Universities,"

10/02 The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: "The Expanding Racial 
Scoring Gap Between Black and White SAT Test Takers"
    Under an admissions system in which race can no longer be used as a positive factor in the admissions process, standardized test scores will 
almost certainly become a more important component in deciding who is admitted and who is rejected at our leading colleges and universities. 
    The latest statistics on standardized test scores for college admissions 
show clearly that if the race-neutral admissions policies now in place in 
California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Washington State are applied nationwide, blacks will be almost totally excluded from admission to the 
nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities. The reason for this is 
that only a very tiny percentage of college-bound black students score at 
the top of the SAT scale. 
    Under the SAT scoring system, students hoping to qualify for admission 
to any of the nation's 25 highest-ranked universities and 25 highest-ranked 
liberal arts colleges need to score at least 700 on each portion of the SAT. 
    For admission to the very highest ranked, brand-name schools such as Princeton or MIT, applicants realistically need scores of 750 to be 
considered for admission. Yet, as we shall see, only a minute percentage 
of black test takers score at these levels. Thus, in a race-neutral admissions environment, high-ranking colleges and universities will choose their first-
year students from a pool in which there will be very few blacks. 
    Let's be more specific about the SAT racial gap among high-scoring applicants. In 2002, 122,684 African Americans took the SAT test. They 
made up 9.2% of all SAT test takers. But only 838 African-American college-bound students scored 700 or above on the math SAT and only 
822 scored at least 700 on the verbal SAT. Nationally, 83,689 students of 
all races scored 700 or above on the math SAT and 59,662 students 
scored 700 or above on the verbal SAT. Thus, in this top-scoring category 
of all SAT test takers, blacks make up only 1% of the students scoring 700 
or higher on the math test and only 1.4% of the students scoring 700 or 
higher on the verbal SAT. 
    If we eliminate Asians and other minorities from the statistics and 
compare just white and black students, we find that 5.1% of all white SAT 
test takers scored 700 or above on the verbal portion of the test. But only 
0.7% of all black SAT test takers scored at this level. Therefore, whites 
were more than seven times as likely as blacks to score 700 or above on 
the verbal SAT. Overall, there are more than 43 times as many whites as 
blacks who scored at least 700 on the verbal SAT. 
    On the math SAT, only 0.7% of all black test takers scored at least 700 compared to 6.2% of all white test takers. Thus, whites were nearly nine 
times as likely as blacks to score 700 or above on the math SAT.  Overall, 
there were 51 times as many whites as blacks who scored 700 or above 
on the math SAT. 
    If we raise the top-scoring threshold to students scoring 750 or above 
on both the math and verbal SAT - a level equal to the mean score of 
students entering the nation's most selective colleges such as Harvard, 
Princeton, and CalTech - we find that in the entire country 195 blacks 
scored 750 or above on the math SAT and 218 black students scored 
750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Nationwide, 26,838 students scored at least 750 on the math test and 20,160 scored at least 750 on 
the verbal SAT. Therefore, black students make up 0.7% of the test takers 
who scored 750 or above on the math test and 1% of all test takers who 
scored 750 or above on the verbal section.  
    Once again, if we eliminate Asians and other minorities from the 
calculations and compare only blacks and whites, we find that 0.18% of all 
black test takers scored 750 or above on the verbal SAT compared to 
1.7% of all white test takers. Thus, whites were nearly 10 times as likely 
as blacks to score 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Overall, 
there were 54 times as many whites as blacks who scored at or above the 
750 level. 
    On the math SAT, only 0.16% of all black test takers scored 750 or 
above compared to 1.8% of white test takers. Thus, whites were more than 
11 times as likely as blacks to score 750 or above on the math SAT.  
Overall, there were 65 times as many whites as blacks who scored 750 
or above on the math section of the SAT. 
    In a race-neutral competition for the approximately 50,000 places for 
first-year students at the nation's 25 highest-ranked universities, high-
scoring blacks will be buried by a huge mountain of high-scoring nonblack students. Today, under prevailing affirmative action admissions policies, 
there are about 3,000 black first-year students matriculating at these 25 high-ranking universities, about 6% of all first-year students at these 
institutions. But if these schools operated under a strict race-neutral 
admissions policy where SAT scores were the most important qualifying yardstick, these universities could fill their freshman classes almost 
exclusively with students who score at the very top of the SAT scoring 
scale. As shown previously, black students make up at best between 
1% and 2% of these high-scoring groups. 
    If the nation now insists on race-blind college admissions, it must face 
the near certainty that the percentage of black students at the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities will drop from the present 
average of about 6% to 2% or less.

10/02 The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. 
	In 1997, prior to the ban on race-based admissions, 515 black students 
were admitted to the University of California at Berkeley. This spring 290 black 
students were admitted to Berkeley, a drop of more than 43%.
	At UCLA 32% fewer black students were admitted this year than was 
the case in 1997 when race-based admissions were permitted at the University 
of California system.
	The medical school of the University of California at San Diego has only 
one black student currently enrolled, down from 14 black students three years 
ago.
	At the medical school of the University of California at San Francisco, 
black enrollments are down 31% over the past three years.
	At the UCLA business school, black enrollments are down 42% from 
three years ago when race-based admissions was allowed.
	At Berkeley's Haas School of Business, black enrollments have 
dropped 29% over the past three years.

10/10/02 Sacramento Bee: "Diversity rises at UC med, law schools. The university says efforts to lure underrepresented students are 'beginning to
show success.'"
    The percentage of underrepresented students enrolling in the University
of California's medical and law schools went up this year, UC officials said Wednesday.
    At UC's five medical schools, the proportion of first-year American Indian, African American and Latino students rose to 16.5% in fall of 2002 from
11.9% in 2001.
    Such enrollments also climbed at UC's three law schools, to 16.2% this
year from 11% in 2001, UC officials said in a statement.
    The number of underrepresented students in the law and medical schools
fell after voters passed the anti-affirmative action initiative Proposition 209. Before the 1996 initiative, the proportion of underrepresented minorities consistently was greater than 20%, UC officials said.
    Earlier this year, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante called on the UC regents to implement a new comprehensive admissions-review policy approved for undergraduates. On Wednesday, Bustamante said "we need to have
admissions based on merit, through comprehensive review, at medical
schools, law schools and graduate programs in the UC system."
    The number of first-year underrepresented students in medical school went
up at all campuses with that program: Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego
and Berkeley. UC statistics did not separate the numbers by race or ethnicity.
    At UC law schools, the numbers were broken out. At UC Davis, the
percentage of underrepresented American Indians stayed at 0.5%. The percentage increased among African Americans to 4.2% from 1.9% and
rose among Latinos to 11.6% from 6.5%. UC Berkeley showed increases
among American Indians and Latinos, but not African Americans. UCLA saw
increases in the percentage of African Americans, but lost ground among American Indians and Latinos.

10/3/02 The Dartmouth: "Steinberg '88 examines the admissions process,"
Jacques Steinberg (Dartmouth '88) takes a sympathetic view of the college admissions process in his new book, The Gatekeepers. Steinberg spent 
the 1999-2000 school year shadowing the work of Ralph Figueroa, an admissions officer at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. Steinberg acknowledged that the admissions process could often be "personal" and "idiosyncratic," even "arbitrary." Steinberg's account of Figueroa's reactions 
to the applications of Tiffany Wang and Aggie Ramirez nicely demonstrates 
this idiosyncrasy. Wang scored a 1470 on the SAT I, well above Wesleyan's average, and has taken six Advanced Placement courses to date. Ramirez scored 1090 and received a smattering of C's and D's in her senior year. Nonetheless, Figueroa, after much deliberation, assigned Wang a "deny 
plus" and Ramirez an "admit minus." He sensed -- from Tiffany's relatively 
low class ranking and a teacher's recommendation saying she was surprised 
that Tiffany made National Merit Semifinalist -- that Tiffany had not challenged herself as she should have in high school. By contrast, Ramirez had already 
won a scholarship to a private boarding school in Maryland, been elected president of her class and thrown herself into extracurricular activities. 
Ultimately, both Wang and Ramirez made Wesleyan's wait list.