June 29 marked one year since the Supreme Court ruling that banned race-conscious admissions. Like other universities, American University issued immediate statements expressing disappointment in the decision. The University’s last update about the decision’s impact came on September 15, 2023. A year later, here’s a look at what has changed and what hasn’t.
The ruling barred colleges and universities from considering a student’s race in a holistic application review. This overturned 50 years of precedent which allowed the practice because it served the compelling government interest of allowing colleges to benefit from having diverse student bodies.
AU, among many other universities, previously included race as a one of many factors in application consideration. Since the ruling, AU has relied on its Office of Undergraduate Enrollment — with the guidance of the Office of General Counsel — to implement new application evaluation practices, according to Jeremy Lowe, assistant vice provost of undergraduate enrollment. Beyond these specific changes, AU’s existing recruitment strategies aim to continue bringing diverse applicants to the school.
The Eagle spoke with several members of admissions staff, examined University promotional materials, attended an information session for prospective students and analyzed admissions data to report the University’s efforts to recruit a diverse class of applicants.
Changes to the admissions process
The simplest change to the admissions process was how admissions counselors no longer see an applicant’s race when they read an application, according to Lowe.
The ruling did allow colleges to consider a student’s experience with race if they write about it in their application. However, it gave no guidance on how admissions counselors should navigate this ambiguity. To figure out what this meant for application review, AU turned to its Office of General Counsel.
The Office of General Counsel, which handles all legal services and advises the University, collaborated with the Office of Enrollment in the several months leading up to the decision to document existing admissions processes and assess how a decision might impact them, according to Evelyn Thimba, vice president of the Office of Enrollment Management. After the decision, a working group including leadership from the Office of Enrollment and the Office of General Counsel throughout the fall of 2023 to discuss the implementation of necessary changes.
Crucial to implementation was new training for admissions counselors as they began the review process in November and December. To understand how to evaluate applicants who mention experiences with race, they attended a two-hour training with the Office of General Counsel before they started reviewing applications.
Essentially, Lowe said, reviewers must consider how an applicant’s experience with their race can “translate to a quality we would want to see within our community.”
“We do look for students that have resilience and have overcome personal challenges,” Lowe said. “I think that translates well to a college community where you're undoubtedly going to face personal challenges that you're going to have to overcome.”
AU also changed its supplemental question — an optional application question specific to AU — to include language about how the University aims to value diversity.
Instead of describing “Why are you interested in American University?” applicants this past year had about 300 words to explain why they want to be a part of a community that values diverse perspectives.
“At American University, Inclusive Excellence is a cornerstone of the academic experience for our students, and we deeply value the learning that is inspired by the diversity of backgrounds and life experiences that all our community members bring with them,” the first part of the question read. “Please share why you would like to join this community.”
This question gives students a space to share how they would benefit from learning in a diverse community, but also opens it up for an applicant to discuss how their own identity might influence their idea of why diversity is important.
Next year, though, Lowe said the question will likely change again. While some students gave “truly exceptional responses,” many of the responses “were just kind of like, ‘I value inclusivity. I want to be at a place that values inclusivity.’”
“We just felt that it didn't give us the type of depth that we were hoping that it would. In the age of ChatGPT and AI, you know, it's like, well, ‘to what extent is this actually an authentic representation of whomever the student is?’” Lowe said. “So, we were kind of wrestling with that throughout the review cycle, and not saying that the prompt didn't serve its purpose, I think in a post-SCOTUS cycle, it got what we wanted.”
Lowe couldn’t share anything about the new question yet but said that it would be finalized by the time the Common App opens on August 1.
Philosophy for evaluating applicants
Even before the Supreme Court decision, Lowe said the University didn’t rely heavily on race when evaluating applicants.
“Interestingly, it wasn't a part of how we asked our team to assess applications,” he said. “A reader would know an applicant's race. We didn't suppress it, but we didn't ask them to do anything differently for that application because of the racial background.”
Instead, he explained, AU uses race-neutral tools to better understand an applicant’s environment. These tools, which help identify students’ school and neighborhood backgrounds, allow AU to note which students might be under-resourced. These students, Lowe noted, are more often students of color.
He cited CollegeBoard’s Landscape tool, which the University began using when it launched in the fall of 2019. The tool provides basic information about a student’s high school, how a student’s ACT or SAT scores compare to others at their high school and information about the student’s neighborhood or region.
“Even though race wasn't directly a part of it, it was trying to reduce the biases that our team might have toward an applicant because they lacked resources that other students with our pool [had],” he said.
Lowe explained that when it comes to curriculum, the University looks for students who have taken advantage of their school’s more challenging classes. Students get recognition for those classes regardless of whether those classes have a formal distinction like Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate.
Still, the racial demographics of the University’s enrolling class haven’t changed much over the past few years. AU’s annual Academic Data Reference Books show that the percentage of white students in each enrolling class has hovered between 56 and 60 percent for the last few years.
Hispanic registrants make up the majority of minority registrants at 15 percent, about double the percentage of each Asian and Black or African American registrants. While multiracial and Black or African American registrants have increased in the past three years, the percentage of Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders and the percentage of American Indian or Alaska Native have remained under one percent.
AU also tracks international students as a separate group, meaning their races and ethnicities aren’t directly accounted for.
Ongoing efforts for diverse admissions
Before the University begins evaluating applications, it recruits diverse applicants primarily through working directly with high schools and community-based organizations. Some of these partnerships, long-since part of the recruitment process, are structured through contracts, but most are informal and involve AU admissions counselors helping run application or essay workshops.
AU’s admissions department includes about 20 admissions counselors who are assigned to different domestic and international regions. Each year they visit high schools and community-based organizations in their region to meet with students, host information sessions, attend college fairs and help with workshops.
“The benefit of that is you have a lot of consistency from one year to the next and you have staff that know these organizations really well and what they have to offer,” Lowe said.
Kevin Mondragon, an assistant director of admissions who oversees Puerto Rico, Connecticut and parts of New York, said staff are encouraged to look at data from previous years of which high schools tend to send applicants to AU alongside schools that the University hasn’t received as many applications from recently. Staff are also encouraged to look at a school’s demographics as they select schools to visit to ensure they’re working to recruit and work with students who have different backgrounds.
High school visits often involve 15 to 20 minute presentations with small groups of students, according to Mondragon. While doing visits in the region, counselors also visit with “as many [community-based organizations]” as possible to reach more students. These, he said, often serve students who don’t get as much support from their high school counselors who may be swamped with high caseloads.
“A lot of these [community-based organizations] are doing that work and making college more accessible to students,” Mondragon said. “So part of our work with community-based organizations is doing essay workshops, application and financial aid workshops. Some of our staff members have actually sat in with students to help them with the FAFSA application or the College Board CSS profile. So it really just depends. We’re there to assist with whatever they need.”
The University also holds a number of structured partnerships with organizations including College Track, IDEA Public Schools and Chicago Scholars. These partnerships involve memorandums of understanding, similar to contracts, and are individualized to each organization to give AU more access to their events, according to Kevin Medina, the former director of admissions for special populations and transfers for the 2023-24 admissions cycle.
“With having those [connections] it allows their counselors or their advisors to also share AU’s name … at the top of the list,” Medina said. “And so that’s, again, mutually beneficial in terms of we can provide resources, but again, we get access to a lot of different things.”
Some of these partnerships also involve data sharing with the organization about where its students are in application processes. However, Medina said the primary focus is providing more resources to students, regardless of whether AU is at the top of their list for applications or not.
“Essay workshops … interview skills, resume building, things of that sort that are going to be transferable regardless of where [they go],” he said. “And then if a student ultimately decides that AU is a good fit, and they want to apply, then, you know, great. And we'll have those conversations and continue to work through that process.”
Medina added that these partnerships have always been important to the University, even before the July 2023 Supreme Court decision. The University, he said, is always open to meeting with more community-based organizations to discuss forming structured partnerships. However, AU doesn’t want to stretch itself across too many organizations, so it can adequately support the ones it does partner with.
“I think that there's an importance to it, but again, we've always had that mindset that it's important to work with these students,” Medina said. “And that's always been a goal. … I don't think it's really changed [since the ruling] in terms of like, we weren't working with these organizations and now we are. We've always worked with them. And we've always really valued those relationships and the importance of providing the resources for students.”
Restructured scholarships
The University no longer offers full-ride scholarships targeted at students of color following the restructuring of the Frederick Douglass Distinguished Scholars program. These changes — planned independently of the race-conscious admissions ruling — mean that, instead of accepting five exceptional first-year students and offering them full rides, the program now welcomes 20 second-year students and covers most of their tuition for their remaining three years.
The University also offers full-ride scholarships to 10 “high-achieving, low-income” students from D.C. schools with the AU District Scholars Award, alongside merit scholarships varying from $6,000 to $22,000 annually.
The University still offers the similarly-named Frederick Douglass Scholarship “aimed at promoting access and opportunity, which means that we are looking at students who are first-generation students who are coming from very specific, maybe rural backgrounds, or students who are traditionally underrepresented on college campuses, not necessarily by race or ethnicity,” said Thimba.
Alongside these merit scholarship options, the University puts more of its budget into need-based aid, according to Lowe. This shift to prioritize need-based aid happened in the mid-2010s. He said AU put 60 percent of its financial aid resources towards need-based aid for the incoming class in fall 2024.
“If you look at the metrics, we still meet full financial aid,” he said. “Now I firmly recognize that what a student's financial aid need that we see is and what we're allowed to award to financial aid might not be the reality for that family. But in the aggregate, I think AU is doing an excellent job of meeting the financial needs of applicants that are admitted.”
This year, a faulty FAFSA form complicated aid package estimates for families, but AU provided aid package estimates to families who filled out the CSS profile on time with their application to the University, Thimba said at a spring Faculty Senate meeting.
How the University Markets Inclusive Excellence
When students reach the supplemental question about why a university must value diversity and inclusion, they may be familiar with the term “Inclusive Excellence” from just AU’s admissions materials.
Inclusive Excellence — the University’s plan for supporting a “more equitable future” that addresses “sharp underlying differences in the campus experiences of people of color compared to their white counterparts” — is absent from the University’s main admissions presentation that families watch before embarking on a campus tour.
Inclusive Excellence is also not typically included in presentations at high schools or community-based organizations unless students have questions about it, according to Mondragon.
“For our regional sessions — so when we go to different cities — we usually talk about it more than this presentation,” Mondragon said. “And to be honest with you, I wish it was something that was included in this [on-campus] presentation. But that’s why we are working with the marketing team to develop a slide that focuses on that piece because it is such an important part of what we’re doing here at AU. It’s also an important part of our admissions process.”
Lowe said the Office of Enrollment is developing some new presentations for screens in the Welcome Center that will include the University’s work on Inclusive Excellence, which he hopes will be ready by the end of July.
While promotional flyers at the Welcome Center in the Katzen Arts Center advertise programs like Black Affinity Housing, AU Hillel and other affinity programs, they don’t explicitly mention the term Inclusive Excellence.
For the supplemental prompt, Lowe said the decision to use the phrase was meant to give applicants more flexibility “to interpret those two words, or that phrase, as they saw fit.”
“And if we were to say ‘This is what Inclusive Excellence means to AU. What does it mean to you?’ or something like that, we probably would have just gotten responses that neared whatever we said it meant to AU,” he said.
Thimba added that it’s been important for the University to continue promoting its commitment to Inclusive Excellence and sharing what diversity means within the University community.
“We believe that by doing so, students coming from different racial backgrounds will see that they belong to this kind of a community and would be welcome here, and they'll find their space here,” she said. “We are building a community where we want everybody to have a sense of belonging.”
This article was edited by Walker Whalen, Olivia Wood, Maya Cederlund, Tyler Davis and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Ariana Kavoossi and Ella Rousseau.
