Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling against racial discrimination in college admissions, many colleges and universities continue to favor applicants of certain races and shun others. It’s easy — they use the loophold Chief Justice Roberts wrote into his opinion, namely that schools can look to personal essays students write about their claimed struggles because of race.

In today’s Martin Center article, Professor Adam Ellwanger argues that we ought to get rid of such essays.

He writes:

Many years ago, the personal statement, or admissions essay, was the part of the application where prospective students could make admissions committees aware of merits that might not show up on academic transcripts. But, since the institutionalization of affirmative action, this once-dynamic genre has hardened into a formulaic exercise in pandering for extra points.

Minority students know they can get a big advantage by writing about their hardships, oppression, etc. and non-minority students can’t. It’s easily gamed.

Ellwanger wants to see a complete return to merit-based decisions in higher education:

There are many strategies for doing so. Eliminating DEI policies is helping. Ending so-called “diversity statements” for faculty positions has strengthened the prospects for merit-based hiring among the professoriate. But removing the personal essay from the application package would do the same for the student body. Universities strongly committed to merit-based admissions could even remove all demographic indicators from applications: names, addresses, previous schools, etc.