ON FEB. 22, the Center for Equal Opportunity released a report authored by Drs. Robert Lerner and Althea Nagai. Analyzing data collected from public colleges and universities from all over the country, the study concludes that most schools grant admission preferences to African-American and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic applicants.
One of the schools covered by the study is the University. The school supplied 1999 admissions data pursuant to a freedom-of-information request from the CEO. The statistical analysis in the study concludes that U.Va. weighs race heavily in its admission decisions. It's not just a "tie-breaker" or a minor "plus factor."
To understand just how heavily race is weighed, consider three academic profiles. The first, A, comprises students with a verbal SAT of 650 and a math SAT of 650, and in the 96th percentile of their high school classes. The second, B, is a notch lower: a 600 verbal SAT and 600 math SAT, and in the 92nd class percentile. And the third, C, is another rung down: 550 verbal SAT and 540 math SAT, and in the 85th class percentile.
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Now let's compare the chances of admission that students with each profile have. The student with an A profile has a 100 percent chance of admission if he is an in-state African American, and a 97 percent chance even if he is an out-of-state African American. For Hispanics with an A profile, an in-state student has a 96 percent chance, but the chances for an out-of-state applicant drop to 58 percent. And for Asians and whites, the chances for an in-state student are only 84 percent and 82 percent, respectively - and drop to 26 percent and 22 percent, respectively, for out-of-state applicants. Race matters, a lot.
And the results are even more dramatic for students with a B or C profile. An in-state African American with a B profile has a 99 percent chance of being admitted, which drops to 86 percent if he is out-of-state. For B-profile Hispanics, the chances are 80 percent for in-state applicants and only 21 percent for those out-of-state. And for Asians and whites, the chances of admission for an in-state applicant are only 51 percent and 46 percent, respectively, and they drop to only 6 percent and 5 percent, respectively, for out-of-state students.
The results are also dramatic for in-state applicants with a C profile. For them, the odds are 91 percent if you are black, but only 31 percent if you are Hispanic, and then fall to only 10 percent and 8 percent, respectively, for Asians and whites. In other words, your odds are better than nine out of ten if you're black, but less than one out of ten if you're white. For out-of-state C profile students, African Americans have a 40 percent chance of admission and Hispanics a 30 percent chance; for both Asians and whites, the chances are only 1 percent.
The entire report is posted on the CEO's Web site, www.ceousa.org. In addition, the Web site contains an interactive feature, an "admissions predictor." Visitors to the Web site can type their SAT scores and class rank and demographics and the predictor calculates their chances of admission at U.Va., based on the school's 1999 data. By clicking each race separately you can see just how critical race and ethnicity are to your chances of admission.
After the CEO issued its first study of U.Va., two years ago, the University launched an internal review and concluded that its mechanically discriminatory policies would not be able to withstand a legal challenge. But rather than stop discriminating, U.Va. instead vowed to continue its consideration of race and ethnicity.
The CEO has made another freedom-of-information request, this time for U.Va.'s secret discussions of how it would consider race and ethnicity in the future. But U.Va. has stonewalled, asserting that nothing was ever committed to paper, or at least not to a document that it is willing to release.
U.Va. is a public institution, supported by the taxpayers and constrained by the anti-discrimination principles of the U.S. Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And yet the University is refusing to let the public know how and how heavily race and ethnicity are being weighed in deciding which students get admitted.
If U.Va. wants to consider factors besides grades and test scores - like an impoverished family background, for instance, or the intellectual diversity a student would add - that's fine, but it should consider it for whites and Asians as well as blacks and Hispanics. The Board of Visitors should insist that U.Va. stop discriminating against students because of their skin color and ancestry, now.
(Roger Clegg is general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Washington, D.C.)
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