Admissions shifting well before ruling

At the University of Minnesota, administrators decided to make a bold move. They scrapped a "points-based" admissions system that gave minorities an edge by weighing race along with test scores and grades, replacing it with one that used a more "holistic" approach to achieve diversity.

That was two years ago.

Today that decision by the university that straddles the Mississippi River looks prescient.

Since Monday's Supreme Court rulings, which permitted the use of race in college admissions but outlawed numbers-bound approaches, some public universities have announced they will begin retooling their admissions procedures. But at other elite institutions, including Minnesota, the game was afoot well before the gavel dropped. At the University of Texas at Austin and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for example, a quiet shift to a more individualized - and costly - admissions process has been under way for several years.

Others, however, must now scramble. Those with a more mechanized approach to affirmative action will have to adjust their admissions systems in the wake of the court's rebuke to the point system used by the University of Michigan.

But the high court's other ruling Monday, upholding the University of Michigan's law school admissions policy, has largely affirmed what some call the "holistic" style of admissions used by most elite, private universities.

Meanwhile, some public universities that have selective admissions processes had already moved so decisively away from consideration of race in admissions that this week's high court endorsement of the concept of affirmative action could prompt them to shift toward some consideration of applicants' race - but using a more nuanced system that takes many more factors into account.

"The court has sent a clear message to all institutions nationwide that have a numerically based admissions system that they're going to have to revisit that," says Travis Reindl, director of state policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities in Washington, which represents public four-year institutions.

The University of Minnesota began shifting away from a just-the-numbers approach, in part, because of past court rulings in Texas and Georgia that overturned systems that gave points for race. But it also came about because administrators believed it was the right thing to do and because of dissatisfaction with the old system.

"It was difficult to manage our enrollment well," says Wayne Sigler, director of admissions. Also, "parents, applicants, and high school guidance counselors were telling us they wanted each application reviewed."

The Twin Cities campus has a new "holistic" admissions system that will assess each of its 17,326 applicants for the fall semester on 17 different academic and other measures - including a person's race. It's a much more complex system that requires many extra "readers" for thousands of applications.

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