Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/115

Rh award a “tip” or a “plus” to applicants from certain racial groups but not others. These tips or plusses are just what they sound like—“factors that might tip an applicant into [an] admitted class.” 980 F. 3d 157, 170 (CA1 2020). And in a process where applicants compete for a limited pool of spots, “[a] tip for one race” necessarily works as “a penalty against other races.” Brief for Economists as Amici Curiae 20. As the trial court in the Harvard case put it: “Race conscious admissions will always penalize to some extent the groups that are not being advantaged by the process.” 397 F. Supp. 3d, at 202–203.

Consider how this plays out at Harvard. In a given year, the university’s undergraduate program may receive 60,000 applications for roughly 1,600 spots. Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 20–1199, p. 60. Admissions officers read each application and rate students across several categories: academic, extracurricular, athletic, school support, personal, and overall. 980 F. 3d, at 167. Harvard says its admissions officers “should not” consider race or ethnicity when assigning the “personal” rating. Id., at 169 (internal quotation marks omitted). But Harvard did not make this instruction explicit until after SFFA filed this suit. Ibid. And, in any event, Harvard concedes that its admissions officers “can and do take an applicant’s race into account when assigning an overall rating.” Ibid. (emphasis added). At that stage, the lower courts found, applicants of certain races may receive a “tip” in their favor. Ibid.

The next step in the process is committee review. Regional subcommittees may consider an applicant’s race when deciding whether to recommend admission. Id., at 169–170. So, too, may the full admissions committee. Ibid. As the Court explains, that latter committee “discusses the relative breakdown of applicants by race.” And “if at some point in the admissions process it appears that a group is notably underrepresented or has suffered a dramatic drop off relative to the prior year, the [committee]