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Data on incoming college freshmen classes has started to emerge, more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision that dramatically altered the college admissions process.
The court struck down affirmative action in college admissions and removed race as a direct consideration for admission.
The Associated Press reported this month that some selective colleges are reporting drops in the number of Black students in their incoming undergraduate classes, with other colleges, including Princeton University and Yale University, showing little change.
Law schools like Indiana University Maurer School of Law, IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law and the Notre Dame Law School will soon start finding out what initial impact the Supreme Court’s ruling has had on their incoming class’s makeup.
Aaron Taylor, executive director of the AccessLex Center for Legal Education Excellence, which advocates for affordability and access to law school, told Indiana Lawyer he has not heard much yet from law schools on what they’re seeing in terms of admissions and applications.
“What I think is happening is most schools will be cautious about the information they make public,” Taylor said.
Taylor noted that many law schools start accepting applications around the beginning of September.
Law schools made changes to application process
In its June 2023 decision, the high court’s conservative majority overturned admissions plans at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges, respectively. The vote was 6-3 in the North Carolina case and 6-2 in the Harvard case.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote universities can still consider how an applicant’s life was shaped by their race, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability.”
IU Maurer, IU McKinney and the Notre Dame Law School all made adjustments to their law school applications after the Supreme Court decision.
The Biden administration offered guidance last year through the U.S. Education and Justice departments on strategies schools can use to promote racial diversity on their campuses without the use of affirmative action.
IU McKinney School of Law Dean Karen Bravo said in October 2023 she sincerely hopes the volume of law school applications at IU McKinney and other law schools would not be affected by the Supreme Court decision.
At IU McKinney, Bravo said the school responded to the Supreme Court’s decision by making changes to its application.
The Law School Admission Council, through which IU McKinney handles its law school applications, put in a mechanism by which the applications are in compliance with the Supreme Court decision’s language prohibiting race as a factor in college admissions. The applications now do not ask about race or ethnicity, nor do they ask for a diversity statement.
In a Sept. 4 email to Indiana Lawyer, Bravo said, “IU McKinney has worked to ensure that its admissions practices are consistent with the Supreme Court decision and is proud to have brought in a strong and diverse class of future lawyers.”
Indiana Lawyer reached out to Dean Christiana Ochoa of IU Maurer, but she was unavailable for comment. Notre Dame Law School did not respond to an email seeking comment from Dean G. Marcus Cole.
Ochoa told Indiana Lawyer in October that the law school was abiding by the Supreme Court decision and had looked at all avenues that were legal in terms of admissions.
She said she thought it was too early in the cycle to see what impact the decision will have on prospective law students and the number of applications received at IU Maurer.
As dean of the law school, Ochoa said her job was to ensure students, faculty and staff feel like they’re part of a school where there’s a learning environment that is open and accessible to people coming from a broad range of backgrounds.
Notre Dame added new “prompts” on the university’s law school applications.
The Spivey Consulting Group, which bills itself as one of the country’s premier law school admissions consulting firms, posted a Notre Dame prompt that talked about the school’s mission to educate a “Different Kind of Lawyer” and mentioned Cole’s open letter to the Notre Dame law community in 2020 following the death of George Floyd.
The prompt then asked applicants what experiences, hardships or adversity they have faced that have shaped their perspectives on law and justice, and, “How has your own circle, culture, and community inspired you, your morals and ethics?”
Anna Hicks-Jaco, Spivey’s chief operating officer, said her firm has heard from a lot of minority law school applicants that they were galvanized by the Supreme Court decision to apply to law school.
The company works with approximately 1,000 law school applicants every year on a remote basis.
Hicks-Jaco said that for the upcoming application cycle, it appears that there will be more law school applicants.
She said, based on LSAT data she’s seen, there’s an upsurge in the number of applicants and Spivey’s client and inquiry numbers are up from last year.
In Spivey’s experience with law school admissions, the firm tends to see a little bit of an increase during presidential election years, Hicks-Jaco said.
The Spivey COO noted that most law schools changed their applications in the last application cycle to comply with the Supreme Court decision.
Admissions data should be available in December
Hicks-Jaco said the American Bar Association’s 2024 Standard 509 Information Reports will give more insight into the extent of the Supreme Court ruling’s initial impact.
“I’m really waiting on that data,” Hicks-Jaco said.
The ABA mandates that certain disclosures be made available to the public from each accredited law school. Law schools are required to post their Standard 509 reports on their websites each year by Dec. 15.
The reports include the gender, race, ethnicity and non-resident status of the student body as a whole and of the first-year class, broken down by full-time and part-time. The Standard 509 reports also contain data on the gender, race, ethnicity and nonresident status of the students receiving JD degrees in the previous academic year.
Taylor said law schools have gradually figured out what they can and cannot do in terms of their applications and the admissions process, with schools asking students, in broader language, to describe challenges they have overcome and write about their life experiences.
He said practically every law school removed references to race and ethnicity from prospective students’ applications.
Based on most affirmative action ban studies he’s seen, Taylor said he expected to see an overall immediate decline in the number of Black, Latino and Native American students applying to law school.
Taylor added that he expected an intensifying decline in years two, three and four following the Supreme Court decision.
“People who want to apply next year, they’ll see what happened this year,” Taylor said.•
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