You have just been appointed the Director of
Undergraduate Admissions at the University of Michigan. You
have been told to revamp the undergraduate admissions system in
light of the Supreme Court opinions in Grutter v. Bollinger
and Gratz v. Bollinger. The University typically
receives about 25,000 applications for admission to its freshman
class and it admits about 50 percent of these to produce a class
of 5,000 students. It has employed about 17 full-time
undergraduate admissions counselors to read admissions files for
an initial read under its now unconstitutional point-based
admissions system. In the past, these counselors used academic
achievement (including high school grades, scores on standardized
tests, quality of high school curriculum, and competitiveness of
high school) in addition to a variety of factors including race
that added a specific numbers of points to a students admissions
score. Borderline files were sent to a faculty admissions
committee for further review.
How would you change the admissions system while still trying to
achieve the goal of a more racially diverse student body?