“Diversity Points”: How selective college admissions strategy shapes applicants’ understandings of diversity

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 13. Navigating College Preparation and Admission Processes

Abstract

Early affirmative action policies in the 1960s and 1970s were rooted in moral concerns about racial equity. Over time, legal challenges led the Supreme Court to limit the constitutionally permissible rationale for affirmative action; considering race became legally acceptable only because the government had a compelling interest in educational institutions being diverse. In response, universities shaped their affirmative action policies around this logic: that diversity, rather than being a form of repair for historical discrimination against marginalized communities, was a tool to improve the educational experiences of all students. Colleges turned to application prompts that positioned diversity accordingly, as something individuals contributed.
This project turns to the other side of admissions desk to understand applicants’ experiences. Drawing on 105 interviews with private college admissions consultants, volunteer college application advisors, and high schoolers applying to college, I ask how applying to selective colleges serves as a site of meaning-making that shapes how students understand diversity. I find that the imperative to demonstrate diversity encourages students to think about diversity both as an individual characteristic and as expansively as possible. Students come to define “diversity,” not as describing the overall composition of a student body, but as something that individuals possess (or lack). While students instinctively think about diversity in terms of race and socioeconomic status, those who feel they are not personally diverse on these dimensions – particularly White, middle-class applicants – expand their conceptions of diversity to include characteristics they do have. Diversity could also be about geographic origin, gender identity, or sexuality, for example. If students lack even those characteristics, they turn to their experiences engaging with others and to their own personality traits and interests. The effect of these broad interpretations of diversity is to render diversity as something accessible to everyone, while minimizing considerations of racial equity or power.

Author

• Tiffany Joyce Huang, The Ohio State University