Few Supreme Court rulings shook the bedrock of upper education as much as Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and SFFA v. University of North Carolina. These two cases, separately decided but very much intertwined, made consideration of an applicant’s race in admissions decisions unconstitutional, upending 45 years of race-conscious affirmative action in higher education.
Approximately 10 years ago, the nonprofit legal advocacy organization Students For Fair Admission initiated legal actions against Harvard and UNC, alleging that their consideration of race in college admissions violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In short, SFFA contended that the Supreme Court’s influential affirmative action ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger was erroneously decided and should be overturned. In response, Harvard and UNC asserted that they did not unduly prioritize race or engage in discriminatory practices during admissions, maintaining that the limited consideration of race aligned with longstanding Supreme Court precedents.
However, on June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the Harvard case, overturning the previous lower court’s verdict by a margin of 6–2; Chief Justice John Roberts, in his majority opinion, deemed affirmative action in college admissions as unconstitutional. With the exception of military academies like the United States Naval Academy, institutions are no longer allowed to ask about an applicant’s racial identity.
For many colleges, this ruling threw off their admission strategies. For decades, universities cultivated a careful process designed to navigate the gap between diversity initiatives and legal constraints, which would now violate the U.S. Constitution. Boldly put, the make-up of a student body is a major selling point for establishments in higher education, and severing access to empirical racial statistics can make it more difficult to sustain a diverse student body.
Admissions officials and college administrators were abuzz about how this ruling would impact college admissions’ decision process. However, Dean of Admissions and Enrollment Management, JT Duck, feels little has changed in the Tufts admissions office.
“Since Tufts has long practiced a holistic, contextual, and individualized selection process, much of our process is unchanged from prior to the Supreme Court ruling on the SFFA case,” Duck wrote in an email. “We have used this Supreme Court decision as an opportunity to hone our selection process so that it aligns even more closely with the University and School mission and vision statements. That is, we spent several months over the past year examining what it is we strive to be as an institution - as stated in our mission statements - and reconfirmed that the qualities we value in the admissions process allow us to live out our stated educational mission as a university.”
Duck elaborated further in his email, citing the Court’s opinion itself, which stated that “nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise.”
Supplemental essay questions remain the one area to reflect on circumstances or elaborate on interests and passions. Duck honed in on the essay questions Tufts asks applicants.
“For many years, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions has asked first-year applicants to the School of Arts & Sciences and the School of Engineering to respond to one of three short answer prompts,” Duck wrote. “Every few years, one or more of those prompts change to better reflect the information we seek from applicants and to provide applicants with new opportunities to tell their stories. This year, one of those three prompts is new: ‘Using a specific example or two, tell us about a way that you contributed to building a collaborative and/or inclusive community.’ This question emerges directly from the Tufts University Mission Statement, and was made public via our website on June 21, prior to the Supreme Court ruling. We made no changes to our essay questions following the ruling.”
Issac Chomksy, a sophomore majoring in chemistry, appreciated the short-answer questions that were asked when he applied back in 2021 and reflected on the answers he wrote for his supplementals.
“I wrote a lot about my family background, what my family has done in the past, their legacy and how that has affected how I grew up and how that has influenced my academic interests,” Chomsky said. “My family background is predominantly Jewish. I have a very activist background, especially secular Jewish [activism], and when I was growing up, I heard a lot of stories from my family about their protests during the Vietnam War, and their involvement in those kinds of movements and the civil rights movement and hearing those sorts of stories obviously influenced me.”
Beyond the application questions, Tufts invests heavily in pre-college and community-based organizations, recognizing their pivotal role in supporting students from some of the diverse groups Tufts looks for.
QuestBridge, a national nonprofit based in Palo Alto, seeks to connect low-income and first-generation college students with institutions of higher education. They do so via the National College Match, a scholarship process that pairs low-income students with QuestBridge college partners. Students start an application online, submit by late September, rank up to 15 colleges and are subsequently notified if they become a finalist. In a scholastic courting process, finalists find out if a school matches with them by early December — if they match, the finalist gets a full four-year scholarship. If they do not match with any of their selected fifteen, applicants fill out the QuestBridge Regular Decision Form which still gives them aid, albeit less, but with a wider range of college partners. In addition, applying through QuestBridge offers the opportunity for colleges to gain deeper insight into an applicant’s personal journey. The essay prompts crafted by QuestBridge provide a platform to candidly share one’s challenges and triumphs, and per their website, they encourage applicants to discuss “extenuating circumstances” in their life; the program as a whole places a significant emphasis on an applicant's personal journey and lived identity.
From hosting specialized campus tours for community-based organizations to partnering with national organizations like QuestBridge, Tufts extends its outreach efforts to diverse communities — both locally and globally. These initiatives provide crucial support to students navigating an increasingly daunting college admissions process, ensuring equitable access to higher education. Furthermore, these organizations not only bolster Tufts’ recruitment efforts but also foster long-term relationships with traditionally underrepresented communities abroad and within the United States.
Other on-campus groups serve as auxiliary arms of Tufts’ diversity initiatives. Following the Supreme Court ruling, University President Sunil Kumar, Vice Provost Monroe France and Provost Caroline Attardo Genco formulated an Executive Strategy Group for Inclusive Access, which continues to meet regularly.
“[The program consists] of myself, deans, DEIJA leaders, admissions leaders and others from across the university, we suggest strategies to best ensure inclusive excellence in all of Tufts’ academic programs, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, while complying with the law and consulting with admissions professionals, legal experts, and others, as appropriate,” Vice Provost France wrote in an email to the Daily. “University leadership will then consider these recommendations for translation into program-level policies and practices. As a part of this work, my team and I have been partnering closely with admissions teams across all schools–not just undergraduate admissions–to ensure best practices.”
The results of Tufts’ efforts are evident in the composition of its student body, with the Class of 2027 marking the most ethnically and racially diverse cohort in the university’s history.
“As for how Tufts approaches diversity in its admissions process, we seek to build a class from among applicants with a range of backgrounds, talents, interests, and perspectives and from a range of geographies,” Duck wrote. “The Class of 2027, the most recently enrolled class, was the most ethnically and racially diverse class ever to enroll at Tufts. Students came from more than 1,100 high schools, the largest number of high schools ever represented in a single, incoming class—and included more than 300 that had not sent a student to Tufts in the previous five years, if ever.”
Despite the challenges posed by recent legal rulings, it appears Tufts remains steadfast in its commitment to diversity and inclusion, ensuring that all students have the opportunity to thrive. But what does thriving look like? The second part of this series will explore what kinds of resources Tufts offers students of diverse economic and cultural backgrounds, whether those resources are being taken advantage of, what community building and connection within diverse groups on campus looks like, the role of student leadership and representation and more.
