Affirmative Action for Whom?

The recent announcement that the Supreme Court will likely overturn the remnants of affirmative action for students of color applying to universities has prompted me to do some research on the subject.  The last big court case in 2003 allowed public colleges to take race into account.  What is less known is that public and private colleges routinely take many other variables into account.  Scholars estimate that a gender-blind admissions system would produce a student body that would be roughly 80 percent female at elite institutions.  Such colleges routinely privilege male applicants to keep that from happening.  They also privilege legacy students, children of alumni.  Of these three groups (people of color, males, and legacy applicants), people of color are both the most disadvantaged (are more likely to have gone to poorer schools and to have parents who cannot afford to high private tutors who will boost their SAT scores and help them to write their entrance essays) and the most likely to perform well at an elite college (male college students, like their high school counterparts, spend more time playing and less time studying than do their female counterparts, and if legacy students from privileged backgrounds have not taken full advantage of their privileged background in high school, they are not likely to do so in college).  But despite occasional grumbling about the advantages offered to male and legacy applicants, public opinion and the Supreme Court focus on the modest and largely successful attempts to improve access to top colleges for black and Latino applicants where they constitute just 10 percent of the student body.  That percentage is likely to fall in the coming years, even as access to elite colleges becomes the gateway to the top jobs in law, medicine, and finance.