It also offers clarity on how colleges can consider race in the context of an applicant’s individual experience. The court’s decision bars colleges from considering race as a factor in and of itself, but nothing prohibits colleges from considering “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life,” the court wrote.
“A university could consider an applicant’s explanation about what it means to him to be the first Black violinist in his city’s youth orchestra or an applicant’s account of overcoming prejudice when she transferred to a rural high school where she was the only student of South Asian descent,” according to the guidance.
The administration clarified that colleges don’t need to ignore race as they choose where to focus their recruiting efforts. The court’s decision doesn’t forbid schools from targeting recruiting efforts toward schools that predominately serve students of color or low-income students, it says.