For many ambitious high school seniors, the standard end-of-summer blues arrive with an additional layer of intensity, as they reluctantly contemplate how to navigate the daunting application process for admission to elite universities. Harvard College permitted students to begin applying on Aug. 1, and the Common App released its essay prompts way back in February. That means 12th graders who have their aims set high now confront a looming question: What should I write about in my personal statement?

Those brief but pivotal essays often make all the difference between acceptance and rejection. While hopeful students compete to gain entry to America’s most elite campuses, we should all closely scrutinize this process. After all, who gets in plays a major, even inordinate, role in determining who will ultimately be permitted to walk the nation’s corridors of power.

For striving Black high school seniors, the generalized essay anxiety arrives in a particular, acute form: Should my personal statement address race? The Supreme Court decision two years ago eliminating affirmative action in college admissions fomented considerable uncertainty about the transformed admissions landscape, and the second Trump administration’s recent assaults on higher education have only exacerbated the confusion.

President Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Education Secretary Linda McMahon have repeatedly brandished the court’s decision, seeking to prohibit universities from considering race in any way whatsoever, even though the opinion plainly requires no such thing. In early August, the Trump administration controversially demanded that all American colleges and universities relinquish data about admitted and rejected applications broken down along racial lines, evidently preparing to decrease further the already-depressed Black enrollment numbers at many of the nation’s pre-eminent educational institutions.

Far from putting the issue of race and higher education to bed, the Supreme Court’s decision set the stage for the latest battles engulfing the campus courtyard. Indeed, the future of college admissions and the nation’s perennial race question have never been more hotly contested. But the perils of one ascendant approach — call it the racial trauma narrative — have also never been clearer.

Since the 1970s, conservatives have routinely aimed to eliminate affirmative action in college admissions. In June 2023, the Supreme Court delivered that long-sought triumph, when Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion killing affirmative action in a case called Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.