[Paleopsych] Espenshade and Chung: The Opportunity Cost of Admission Preferences at Elite Universities
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The Opportunity Cost of Admission Preferences at Elite Universities*
Thomas J. Espenshade1 and Chang Y. Chung11Princeton University
Social Science Quarterly Volume 86 Issue 2 Pages 293-305 - June 2005
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[First, the summary from CHE:
Dropping Affirmative Action Would Harm Black and Hispanic Applicants but
Help Asian Applicants, Study Finds
News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.6.8
http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/06/2005060802n.htm
Disregarding race in college admissions would cause sharp drops in the
number of black and Hispanic students enrolled at elite institutions,
according to a new study by two researchers at Princeton University.
The study, described in an article published in the June issue of
Social Science Quarterly, also found that eliminating affirmative
action would significantly raise the number of Asian-American
students, while having little effect on white students.
If affirmative action were eliminated, the acceptance rates for black
applicants would fall to 12.2 percent from 33.7 percent, while the
acceptance rates for Hispanic applicants would drop to 12.9 percent
from 26.8 percent, according to the study. Asian-American students
would fill nearly 80 percent of the spaces not taken by black and
Hispanic students, the researchers found, while the acceptance rate
for white students would increase by less than 1 percent.
The researchers who conducted the study -- Thomas J. Espenshade, a
professor of sociology, and Chang Y. Chung, a statistical programmer
at Princeton's Office of Population Research -- looked at the race,
sex, SAT scores, and legacy status, among other characteristics, of
more than 124,000 applicants to elite colleges and universities.
"We're trying to put these admissions preferences in context so people
understand that lots of students, including those with SAT scores
above 1500, are getting a boost," Mr. Espenshade said in a written
statement. "The most important conclusion is the negative impact on
African-American and Hispanic students if affirmative-action practices
were eliminated."
Stephen H. Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars,
which opposes racial preferences in admissions, said the study's
findings revealed that affirmative-action policies are "about
discrimination."
"That it's Asian students who bear the brunt of affirmative-action
policies at elite institutions strikes me as an interesting finding in
and of itself," Mr. Balch said on Tuesday. "One of the dirty little
secrets in all of this is that one of the chief losers is a minority
group."
The article, "The Opportunity Cost of Admission Preferences at Elite
Universities," is online for subscribers and can be purchased by
nonsubscribers on the journal's [67]Web site. Social Science Quarterly
is published by the [68]Southwestern Social Science Association
_________________________________________________________________
Background articles from The Chronicle:
* [69]U. of California Admitted Fewer Students With Low SAT Scores,
a Recent Target of Critics, in 2004, Report Says (4/5/2005)
* [70]Michigan: Who Really Won? (1/14/2005)
* [71]Federal Court Declines to Set New Limits on Affirmative Action
(1/7/2005)
* [72]Affirmative Action Survives, and So Does the Debate (7/4/2003)
* [73]For Asians, Affirmative Action Cuts Both Ways (6/6/2003)
Opinion:
* [74]From 'Bastions of Privilege' to 'Engines of Opportunity'
(2/25/2005)
* [75]Putting the Michigan Rulings Into Practice (2/25/2005)
* [76]In California, a Misguided Battle Over Race (5/21/2004)
References
68. http://www.sssaonline.org/
69. http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/04/2005040502n.htm
70. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i19/19a02101.htm
71. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i18/18a03401.htm
72. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i43/43s00101.htm
73. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i39/39a02401.htm
74. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i25/25b01801.htm
75. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i25/25b02801.htm
76. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i37/37b01601.htm
E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles.
---------------------
The Opportunity Cost of Admission Preferences at Elite Universities* Thomas J.
Espenshade1 and Chang Y. Chung11Princeton University
Social Science Quarterly Volume 86 Issue 2 Page 293 - June 2005
doi:10.1111/j.0038-4941.2005.00303.x
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/templates/jsp/_synergy/images/print_PDF_icon.gif
Objective. This study examines how preferences for different types of
applicants for admission to elite universities influence the number and
composition of admitted students.
Methods. Previous research with these NSCE data employed logistic regression
analysis to link information on the admission decision for 124,374 applications
to applicants' SAT scores, race, athletic ability, and legacy status, among
other variables. Here we use micro simulations to illustrate what the effects
might be if one were to withdraw preferences for different student groups.
Results. Eliminating affirmative action would substantially reduce the share of
African Americans and Hispanics among admitted students. Preferences for
athletes and legacies, however, only mildly displace members of minority
groups.
Conclusions. Elite colleges and universities extend preferences to many types
of students, yet affirmative action is the one most surrounded by controversy.
In an earlier article in this journal, Espenshade, Chung, and Walling (2004)
examined the strength of admission preferences for underrepresented minority
students, athletes, and alumni children at three highly selective private
research universities in the United States. Using data from the National Study
of College Experience on 124,374 applications for admission during the 1980s
and the fall semesters of 1993 and 1997, they found that elite universities
give extra weight in admissions to candidates whose SAT scores are above 1500,
who are African American, and who are student athletes. A smaller, but
nevertheless important, preference is extended to Hispanic and legacy
applicants. African-American applicants receive the equivalent of 230 extra SAT
points (on a 1600-point scale), and being Hispanic is worth an additional 185
SAT points. Other things equal, recruited athletes gain an admission bonus
worth 200 points, while the preference for legacy candidates is worth 160
points. Asian-American applicants face a loss equivalent to 50 SAT points. The
underrepresented minority advantage is greatest for African-American and
Hispanic applicants whose SAT scores are in the 1200 [-] 1300 range, and not
for applicants near the lower end of the SAT distribution as some have
suggested (cf. Dugan et al., 1996 ). Finally, the advantage that athletes have
over nonathletes in elite university admissions has been growing, whereas the
strength of the minority student advantage, especially for Hispanic candidates,
has been waning.
An important but unanswered question has to do with the opportunity cost of
these admission preferences. Who are the beneficiaries and, by extension, who
loses a seat at academically selective universities because some students are
favored over others in the admission process?
The admission process at academically selective colleges and universities
inevitably entails opportunity costs (Bowen and Levin, 2003; Shulman and Bowen,
2001 ). A decision to admit one student involves a choice not to admit someone
else. When preferences enter into the mix, applicants who are denied admission
often feel that they would have been next in line to be accepted had
preferences not played a part (Kane, 2003). In this article, using the same
data, we extend the work of Espenshade, Chung, and Walling (2004) and ask two
questions. First, what is the impact of affirmative action on the profile of
students admitted to elite universities? In other words, who gains and who
loses as a result of admission preferences for underrepresented minority
students? And, second, to what extent do preferences for athletes and legacies,
both of whom are disproportionately white, offset the effects of affirmative
action?
Answering these questions is inherently difficult. One reason is that the
selection process at elite private institutions is typically more nuanced and
subjective than the explicit point systems formerly relied on by undergraduate
admission officers at the University of Michigan and other large public
universities (University of Michigan, 2002; Zwick, 2002:39 ). With a more
numerical approach, it would be relatively straightforward to see how
applicants' comparative rankings would be reordered as points were removed for
being a minority applicant, an athlete, or a legacy (Kane, 2003).
More importantly, many of the factors affecting the makeup of the first-year
class are themselves endogenous to the choice of a particular preference
regime.1 Eliminating racial and ethnic preferences, for example, could
discourage applications from members of minority student groups (Bowen and Bok,
1998; Conrad, 1999; Klitgaard, 1985).2 The proportion of admitted students who
eventually enroll (the so-called yield rate) might also be adversely affected
if minority students would be less likely to matriculate at campuses where
there are relatively few members of their own group (Bowen and Bok, 1998;
Conrad, 1999 ) or if financial aid is more restricted at less academically
selective schools to which minority students might be more likely to apply in
the absence of affirmative action (Dugan et al., 1996 ). Finally, institutions
that are no longer able to consider an applicant's race or ethnicity may still
try to meet representational goals by altering the weights assigned to other
factors in the selection process. Fryer, Loury, and Yuret (2003) predict that
schools will "flatten" the function that relates test scores and other measures
of academic performance to the probability of admission and give greater
emphasis to socioeconomic background and other personal factors. Indeed, in
response to the Board of Regents' 1995 decision to end affirmative action at
the University of California, the Berkeley law school faculty voted to reduce
the importance of LSAT scores and other numerical indicators from "greatest" to
"substantial" weight (Guerrero, 2002:91 [-] 92).
One way to gauge the effect of admission preferences on the composition of
entering classes is to consult expert opinion. In 1976 [-] 1977 all U.S. law
schools were asked how many minority students they had in their first-year
classes and how many of these would have been admitted if it had been
impossible to detect the racial background of applicants. Respondents believed
the number of African-American students would have declined by 82 percent. Only
27 percent as many Chicano students would have been accepted. Just 28 percent
of all minority students, including Asians, would have been admitted under a
race-blind procedure (Klitgaard, 1985:155).
A more satisfactory approach is to rely on a quantitative analysis of how
individual applicants' probabilities of being admitted change depending on
which preferences are in effect. In the remainder of this article we present
the results of several micro-simulation exercises aimed at illustrating how the
profile of students admitted to our three elite universities would differ
depending on whether a candidate's racial background was considered in the
admission decision and whether preferences were granted to athletes and to
legacies. We combine athlete and legacy preferences because athletes and
legacies comprise a relatively small proportion of the applicant pool and
because both student groups are largely white. Our analysis is based on the
1997 cohort of applicants to reflect recent conditions, and we assume that
satisfactory answers to who loses and who gains under different preference
structures can be obtained by turning selected preferences on and off and
ignoring second-round effects.
More specifically, our simulations are based on the logistic regression model
for the 1997 cohort in Table 7 in Espenshade, Chung, and Walling (2004) . This
equation is used to predict a probability of admission (at the institution to
which the application was sent) for each of the 45,549 applicants in the 1997
cohort. Predictor variables include sex, citizenship status, SAT score,
race/ethnicity, recruited athlete, and legacy status. Following a procedure
suggested by Kohn, Manski, and Mundel (1976) , we also generated a random
proportion on the uniform distribution between 0 and 1 for each applicant. An
applicant was assumed to be accepted if the random proportion was less than or
equal to the predicted probability of admission; otherwise they were put in the
rejected category. The effect of removing race from consideration was captured
by setting all regression coefficients on racial background to zero or,
equivalently, by assuming that all applicants are white (the reference
category). We eliminate preferences for athletes and legacies by setting the
athlete and legacy coefficients to zero.3
Before examining the effects of withdrawing preferences for selected groups of
students, we first want to ask how well our simulation methodology reproduces
the actual distribution of students admitted in 1997. The results are shown in
Table 1 . There is remarkably good agreement between the number and
distribution of students actually admitted and those in the simulation. For
example, 899 African-American candidates were accepted from the 2,671 who
applied, in contrast to 910 who were expected to be admitted in the simulation.
The overall acceptance rate for African-American applicants was simulated to be
34.1 percent in contrast to an actual rate of 33.7 percent. This high degree of
correspondence between the actual and expected profiles of admitted students
adds credibility to the simulations we discuss next.
Table 2 shows the actual profile of admitted students in 1997 and the
micro-simulation results of removing racial/ethnic admission preferences while
keeping those for athletes and legacies (Simulation 1), retaining preferences
for underrepresented minority students but eliminating them for athletes and
legacies (Simulation 2), and removing preferences for both minority students
and for athletes/legacies (Simulation 3).4 To understand the impact of
affirmative action, we compare the actual distribution of students with
Simulation 1, which ignores applicants' race or ethnicity. The result of
eliminating admission bonuses for African-American and Hispanic applicants
would be dramatic. Acceptance rates for African-American candidates would fall
from 33.7 percent to 12.2 percent, a decline of almost two-thirds, and the
proportion of African-American students in the admitted class would drop from
9.0 to 3.3 percent. The acceptance rate for Hispanic applicants would be cut in
half [-] from 26.8 percent to 12.9 percent, and Hispanics would comprise just
3.8 of all admitted students versus an actual proportion of 7.9 percent. If
admitting such small numbers of qualified African-American and Hispanic
students reduced applications and the yield from minority candidates in
subsequent years, the effect of eliminating affirmative action at elite
universities on the racial and ethnic composition of enrolled students would be
magnified beyond the results presented here.
White plaintiffs in Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) and Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)
argued that they were unfairly denied admission while some less qualified
minority students were accepted. Our results show that removing consideration
of race would have a minimal effect on white applicants to elite universities.
The number of accepted white students would increase by 2.4 percent, and the
white acceptance rate would rise by just 0.5 percentage points [-] from 23.8 to
24.3 percent. Many rejected white applicants may feel they would have been
accepted had it not been for affirmative action, but such perceptions probably
exaggerate the reality. It would be difficult to tell from the share of white
students on campus whether or not the admission office was engaged in
affirmative action.
Asian applicants are the biggest winners if race is no longer considered in
admissions. Nearly four out of every five places in the admitted class not
taken by African-American and Hispanic students would be filled by Asians. We
noted earlier that Asian candidates are at a disadvantage in admission compared
to their white, African-American, and Hispanic counterparts. Removing this
disadvantage at the same time preferences for African Americans and Hispanics
are eliminated results in a significant gain in the acceptance rate for Asian
students [-] from 17.6 percent to 23.4 percent. Asians, who comprised 29.5
percent of total applicants in 1997, would make up 31.5 percent of accepted
students in the simulation, compared with an actual proportion of 23.7 percent.
Other aspects of admitted students, including the distribution of SAT scores
and, especially, the proportions of students who are athletes or legacies, are
hardly affected by affirmative action.
The remaining question is the extent to which athlete and legacy preferences
offset preferences for underrepresented minority applicants. White students
comprise fewer than half of all applicants in 1997, yet they account for
three-quarters of athletes (73.3 percent) and a similar proportion of legacies
(75.6 percent). This fact alone suggests that preferences for athletes and
legacies are likely to boost the proportion of whites among admitted students.
We return to the simulation results to see the magnitude of these effects.
Suppose we begin with a situation where admission officers give no extra
consideration to minority applicants, athletes, or legacies (see Simulation 3).
Now introduce race consciousness into the decision making (Simulation 2). The
effect of affirmative action for African Americans and Hispanics and of what
some might term "disaffirmative action" for Asians is a substantial increase in
the African-American and Hispanic shares of admitted students and a sharp
decline in the Asian proportion. The combined African-American and Hispanic
proportion increases from just over 7 percent to 17.5 percent, while the Asian
share falls from one-third to one-quarter. Acceptance rates for these groups
move in the same direction.
Next, comparing Simulation 2 with the actual distribution of accepted students
is equivalent to adding athlete-legacy bonuses on top of those for
underrepresented minority applicants. With the inclusion of preferences for
athletes and legacies, the proportion of admitted students who are white rises
somewhat (from 49.5 to 51.4 percent) as does the acceptance rate for white
applicants. Minority student effects go in the opposite direction, but they are
not large. The African-American share among admitted students declines modestly
from 9.2 to 9.0 percent, the Hispanic share falls from 8.3 to 7.9 percent, and
Asians now account for 23.7 percent of all admitted students instead of 25.1
percent. Acceptance rates for each minority student group also decline, but the
changes here are mostly small as well. The impacts would be greater either if
the athlete and legacy bonuses were larger or if athletes and legacies
accounted for more than a small share of all applicants. If the time trends
detected earlier in Espenshade, Chung, and Walling (2004) persist, there may
come a time when the rising preference for athletes in combination with a
relatively stable bonus for legacies is sufficient to fully offset the
weakening preferences for underrepresented minority applicants. Not
surprisingly, the proportions of athletes and legacies among admitted students
increase when admission officers give these characteristics more weight in
admission decisions.5
No other research of which we are aware has examined the potential for athlete
and legacy preferences to counteract admission bonuses for underrepresented
minority applicants. Our findings on the effects of affirmative action are
consistent with results reported elsewhere. For example, Kane (1998:432)
contends that: "The proportion of minority students at [elite colleges and
universities] would be extremely low if admissions committees ignored the race
or ethnicity of applicants."Bowen and Bok (1998:31) estimate the effect of
"race-neutral" admissions policies in the 1989 entering student cohort by
assuming that "black applicants, grouped by SAT ranges, would have the same
probability of being admitted as white applicants in those same ranges." At the
five academically selective schools for which they have admission data,
acceptance rates for African-American applicants would fall from 42 to 13
percent if the race of applicants were ignored, while the proportion of white
applicants admitted would only increase from 25 to 26.5 percent (assuming that
whites filled all the seats created by accepting fewer African-American
applicants). The impact on African-American enrollment would be equally
dramatic. The share of African-American students in the first-year class would
be expected to fall from 7.1 to 2.1 percent. Using a nationwide sample from the
National Education Longitudinal Study, Long (2004b) finds that eliminating
affirmative action at all colleges and universities would reduce the
underrepresented minority share of students accepted from 16.1 to 15.5 percent
across all four-year institutions and from 10.6 to 7.8 percent at the highest
quality 10 percent of schools.
Dugan et al. (1996) estimate the effect of eliminating affirmative action on
graduate management education programs. Using data on a sample of all
applicants in the early 1990s, they find that failing to consider a candidate's
minority status in admission would reduce the probability of acceptance for
African Americans from 70 percent (the actual figure) to 52 percent. The rate
for Hispanics would decline from 78 to 60 percent. However, the acceptance rate
for Asians, who experience a disadvantage in admission, would increase slightly
from 53 to 57 percent. Similar results are obtained from an analysis of more
than 90,000 applications to law school in the 1990 [-] 1991 application year.
Wightman (1997:15 [-] 16) shows that of 3,435 African-American applicants who
were accepted by at least one law school, just 687 or one-fifth as many would
have been accepted if admission decisions were based solely on LSAT scores and
undergraduate GPAs. If instead admission determinations were based exclusively
on undergraduate GPAs, more than 60 percent of African-American candidates who
were originally accepted by at least one law school would still be completely
shut out. Wightman finds similar patterns for other racial and ethnic minority
groups, but the impacts are most severe for African-American students.
A final test comes from a real-world "natural experiment." The Board of Regents
for the University of California system voted in 1995 to eliminate affirmative
action in higher education. This decision was reinforced in November 1996 by a
statewide vote in favor of Proposition 209. Impacts on graduate programs took
effect with the fall of 1997 entering classes. Effects on admission to
undergraduate programs were delayed until the fall of 1998. The impacts are
striking. Compared to the fall of 1996, the number of underrepresented minority
students admitted to the University of California [-] Berkeley Boalt Hall Law
School for the fall of 1997 dropped 66 percent from 162 to 55 (Guerrero, 2002
). African-American applicants were particularly affected as their admission
numbers declined by 81 percent from 75 to 14, but acceptances of Hispanics also
fell by 50 percent. None of the 14 admitted African-American students chose to
enroll. Of the 55 minority students admitted, only seven enrolled in the fall
of 1997, a falloff that had the effect of reducing the underrepresented
minority share in the first-year class to 5 percent in 1997 compared with 26
percent in 1994 (Guerrero, 2002:159). Similar impacts were felt at law schools
at UCLA and UC [-] Davis.
Numbers at the undergraduate level mirrored those in graduate programs. At UC
[-] Berkeley, just 10 percent of all undergraduate students admitted for the
fall of 1998 were underrepresented minority students compared with 23 percent
admitted in the previous year (Guerrero, 2002:146 ). The largest declines
occurred among African Americans, whose admission numbers fell by 66 percent
between 1997 and 1998. Admission to the undergraduate College of Letters and
Science at UCLA was similarly affected (Committee on Undergraduate Admissions
and Relations with Schools, 1999 ). Acceptance rates for African Americans fell
from 57 percent in 1997 to 31 percent in 1998. Those for Hispanics (including
Latino Americans and Chicanos/Mexican Americans) declined from 51 to 30
percent. These declines were offset by small increases in admission rates for
Asian Americans. In general, our simulation results are in very good agreement
with the California experience.6
Critics of affirmative action in American higher education often overlook the
fact that elite universities give added weight in the admissions process to
many different types of student characteristics. In this article, we use
micro-simulation analysis to investigate the effect on the profile of admitted
students of eliminating preferences for one or more categories of students.
Data for the 1997 entering class indicate that eliminating affirmative action
would reduce acceptance rates for African-American and Hispanic applicants by
as much as one-half to two-thirds and have an equivalent impact on the
proportion of underrepresented minority students in the admitted class. White
applicants would benefit very little by removing racial and ethnic preferences;
the white acceptance rate would increase by roughly 0.5 percentage points.
Asian applicants would gain the most. They would occupy four out of every five
seats created by accepting fewer African-American and Hispanic students. The
acceptance rate for Asian applicants would rise by one-third from nearly 18
percent to more than 23 percent. We also show that, even though athlete and
legacy applicants are disproportionately white and despite the fact that
athlete and alumni children admission bonuses are substantial, preferences for
athletes and legacies do little to displace minority applicants, largely
because athletes and legacies make up a small share of all applicants to highly
selective universities.
References
• Arenson, Karen W. 2003. "Change on Early Admission Produces Application
Shifts."New York Times November 13.
• Bowen, William G., and Derek Bok. 1998. The Shape of the River: Long-Term
Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Bowen, William G., and Sarah A. Levin. 2003. Reclaiming the Game: College
Sports and Educational Values. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Card, David, and Alan B. Krueger. 2004. Would the Elimination of
Affirmative Action Affect Highly Qualified Minority Applicants? Evidence from
California and Texas. NBER Working Paper 10366, March. Cambridge, MA: National
Bureau of Economic Research.
• Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools (CUARS).
1999. 1998 [-] 1999 Report to the Academic Senate at UCLA. Los Angeles, CA:
CUARS.
• Conrad, Cecilia A. 1999. "Affirmative Action and Admission to the
University of California."Pp. 171 [-] 96 in Paul Ong, ed., Impacts of
Affirmative Action: Policies and Consequences in California. Walnut Creek, CA:
AltaMira Press.
• Dugan, Mary Kay, Nazli Baydar, William R. Grady, and Terry R. Johnson.
1996. "Affirmative Action: Does it Exist in Graduate Business
Schools?"Selections Winter: 11 [-] 18.
• Espenshade, Thomas J., Chang Y. Chung, and Joan L. Walling. 2004.
"Admission Preferences for Minority Students, Athletes, and Legacies at Elite
Universities."Social Science Quarterly 85(5): 1422 [-] 46.
[Synergy Abstract] [ISI Abstract]
• Fryer Jr., Roland G., Glenn C. Loury, and Tolga Yuret. 2003. Color-Blind
Affirmative Action. Unpublished manuscript, Harvard Society of Fellows and
NBER.
• Gratz v. Bollinger (decided June 23, 2003). 123 S. Ct. 2411.
• Grutterv. Bollinger (decided June 23, 2003). 123 S. Ct. 2325.
• Guerrero, Andrea. 2002. Silence at Boalt Hall: The Dismantling of
Affirmative Action. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Kane, Thomas J. 1998. "Racial and Ethnic Preferences in College
Admissions."Pp. 431 [-] 56 in Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, eds.,
The Black-White Test Score Gap. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
• Kane, Thomas J.. 2003. "The Long Road to Race-Blindness."Science 302: 571
[-] 73.
[CrossRef Abstract] [ISI Abstract]
• Klitgaard, Robert E. 1985. Choosing Elites. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
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Investigation of Factors Which Influence College-Going Behavior."Annals of
Economic and Social Measurement 5(4): 391 [-] 419.
• Long, Mark C. 2004a. "College Applications and the Effect of Affirmative
Action."Journal of Econometrics 121(1 [-] 2): 319 [-] 42.
[CrossRef Abstract] [ISI Abstract]
• Long, Mark C.. 2004b. "Race and College Admissions: An Alternative to
Affirmative Action?"Review of Economics and Statistics 86(4): 1020 [-] 33.
[CrossRef Abstract] [ISI Abstract]
• Shulman, James L., and William G. Bowen. 2001. The Game of Life: College
Sports and Educational Values. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Sullivan, John. 2003. "At Rutgers, Weathering an Ordeal."New York Times
November 30: Section 14, p. 1.
• University of Michigan. 2002. Description of University of Michigan
Undergraduate Admissions Policy. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.
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Empirical Analysis of the Consequences of Abandoning Race as a Factor in Law
School Admission Decisions."New York University Law Review 72(1): 1 [-] 53.
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Footnotes
* Support for this research has been provided by grants from the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development Center Core Grant P30 HD32030. We are grateful to Elana Broch,
James Snow, Kristen Turner, and Chengzhi Wang for bibliographic assistance.
Kalena Cortes, Sara Curran, Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar, Lauren Hale, Stephen
LeMenager, Germán Rodríguez, Christopher Weiss, Charles Westoff, and,
especially, Joyce Jacobsen and Mark Long contributed many useful suggestions.
1The interdependent nature of the decision-making process was observed by
economist Robert Klitgaard (1985:78) nearly two decades ago: "The existence of
incentive effects transforms the selection problem from a static to a dynamic
framework. The classic selection problem is static [-] given an applicant pool
with certain characteristics, choose those most likely to succeed along certain
criteria of later performance. The dynamic problem is richer. The choice of
this particular class of students must take account of the effects of the
choice on applicant pools in the future [...] ." Further evidence that today's
students respond quickly to altered incentives is provided by the effect of
changes in admission policies at several elite universities. Yale and Stanford,
both of which changed last year from a binding early decision admission program
to nonbinding "single-choice" early action, saw applications for the 2004
entering class increase by 42 and 62 percent, respectively. Early applications
to Harvard fell 47 percent in response to a switch from nonbinding early
action, where students could apply early to several institutions, to
single-choice early action [-] a plan that prohibits students from applying
early to any other institution. Princeton, which made no changes in its
admission policies, saw a 23 percent decline in its early applications
(Arenson, 2003).
2The magnitude of this effect has been estimated separately by Long (2004a) and
Card and Krueger (2004) , with somewhat different results. Long finds that
underrepresented minority students in California and Texas are predicted to
send fewer SAT-score reports to top-tier in-state public colleges and
universities after the elimination of affirmative action, while white and
Asian-American students are predicted to send more. Card and Krueger find no
change in the propensity of highly qualified African-American and Hispanic
students to send their SAT scores to the most selective public institutions in
either California or Texas. Eliminating affirmative action also left other
features of the application process unaffected, including the number of schools
to which scores were sent and the lower bound on the quality of such
institutions.
3Long (2004b) uses a comparable micro simulation to evaluate the effect of
eliminating affirmative action.
4In the simulation reported in Table 1 , the average of the predicted admission
probabilities for the 45,549 applicants was 0.219280, exactly the same as the
actual proportion of applicants accepted (9,988/45,549). In the simulations
described in Table 2, removing preferences for particular student groups has
the effect of lowering the average predicted admission probability below
0.219280. In these cases, the intercept of the logistic regression for the 1997
cohort in Table 7 in Espenshade, Chung, and Walling (2004) was adjusted upward
by enough in each simulation so that the average of the predicted admission
probabilities equaled 0.219280.
5 We prepared an alternate simulation by ranking applicants on the basis of
their SAT scores and admitting students having the top 9,988 scores (the actual
number of students accepted). This is the closest that any of our simulations
comes to choosing a class solely on the basis of academic merit. Applicants in
this simulation average 1512 on their SATs. Compared to students who were
actually admitted, the shares of most student groups decline in the simulation
[-] from 51.4 percent to 47.7 for whites, from 9.0 to 0.9 for African
Americans, from 7.9 to 2.2 for Hispanics, from 10.2 to 1.9 for athletes, and
from 6.5 to 3.2 for legacies. Only the share of Asians increases when SAT
scores dominate [-] from 23.7 to 38.7 percent. These results are qualitatively
similar to effects reported by Klitgaard (1985:29) had Harvard's Class of 1975
been chosen on the basis of SAT verbal scores alone. The percentage of admitted
students who were alumni sons would have declined from 13.6 to 6.1, of athletes
from 23.6 to 4.5, and of African Americans from 7.1 to 1.1. The proportion of
scholarship students would have remained unchanged at 55 percent.
6The effects of rescinding affirmative action were not limited to California.
Voters in the State of Washington passed a referendum forbidding affirmative
action at the state university. In 1998 at the University of Washington, 1 in
11 students in the first-year class was a member of a minority group. By the
fall of 1999, when the new law had taken effect, the ratio fell to 1 out of 18
students (Sullivan, 2003).
Social Science Quarterly
Volume 86 Issue 2 Page 293 - June 2005
Affiliations
1Princeton University
Correspondence
Direct correspondence to Thomas J. Espenshade, Office of Population Research,
249 Wallace Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
08544-2091tje at Princeton.Edu [>] .
* Support for this research has been provided by grants from the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development Center Core Grant P30 HD32030. We are grateful to Elana Broch,
James Snow, Kristen Turner, and Chengzhi Wang for bibliographic assistance.
Kalena Cortes, Sara Curran, Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar, Lauren Hale, Stephen
LeMenager, Germán Rodríguez, Christopher Weiss, Charles Westoff, and,
especially, Joyce Jacobsen and Mark Long contributed many useful suggestions.
Image Previews
TABLE 1
Number of Applicants in the 1997 Entering Cohort, Number Admitted, and
Simulated Number Admit...
TABLE 2
Number and Characteristics of Admitted Students Simulated Under Alternative
Preference Scenar...
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