University Drops Race as Factor in Admissions

In response to a federal appeals court ruling, the University of Georgia announced a new admissions policy Wednesday that doesn’t consider race.

The overhaul comes after years of suits by white women who argued that they would have been admitted if they were black or male. The school has a higher percentage of female students than male students and favored male applicants for several years.

The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta threw out the policy last year. The university has now eliminated any consideration of race, gender or country of origin, as well as a tradition of favoring alumni-related applicants.

This fall’s freshman class of about 4,300 was admitted on the basis of an interim formula combining high school grades with standardized test scores.

Applicants for the 2003 freshman class will be placed into three groups: academically superior, academically competitive and not competitive. There will be no accounting for race. The former plan gave some borderline students a slight boost if they weren’t white.

Around the country, federal appeals courts have reached conflicting decisions in recent years on affirmative action in admissions.

In a case that could ultimately go to the U.S. Supreme Court, a federal appeals court in May upheld the use of race in admissions at the University of Michigan law school. In 1996, a federal appeals court ruling led the University of Texas law school to stop considering race in admissions.