STUDY FINDS PREFERENCES IN ADMISSIONS AT FIVE VIRGINIA SCHOOLS
Washington, DC, September, 2019 – A new study on the use of racial and ethnic preferences released today by the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) finds discrimination in admissions at five Virginia public universities: the University of Virginia, William & Mary, James Madison University, Virginia Tech, and George Mason University. CEO uncovered a significant amount of discrimination, particularly at the University of Virginia and William & Mary.
Since its founding in 1995, CEO has obtained data from schools through state freedom-of-information laws, analyzed what we found, and released dozens of such studies of schools all over the country. Today’s study, authored by CEO research fellow Althea Nagai, is being released today at a National Press Club event sponsored by the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project. Virginia’s public universities are perhaps the country’s most selective among those still allowed to use racial and ethnic preferences (California, for example, and a number of other states have banned such discrimination as a matter of state law).
Among the study’s findings are that the two most selective schools, the University of Virginia and William & Mary, give the heaviest admission preferences to African Americans. Thus, the odds-ratios and probabilities of admission showed significant racial preference; there was a black-white SAT gap at the two schools of 180 and 190 points, respectively; and there were 1675 white applicants to UVa, and 943 white applicants to William & Mary, who were rejected despite having higher standardized test scores and high-school grades than the black admittee medians.
But perhaps the most noteworthy finding is that, despite the ongoing and high-profile litigation against Harvard for its discrimination against Asian American applicants, all five Virginia schools we studied discriminated to one degree or another against Asian Americans in their respective admissions.
In response to the study, Linda Chavez, Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity, said: “To put it bluntly, many of America’s institutions of higher education have resisted scrutiny of admissions data that would lead to greater public understanding of the use of racial and ethnic preferences. Fortunately, there is much to learn from this study.”
The Center for Equal Opportunity has published studies of racial and ethnic discrimination in admissions to dozens of universities since it was founded in 1995 by Linda Chavez, now its chairman. Roger Clegg is general counsel, and Terry Eastland is a senior fellow. The Center for Equal Opportunity is a nonprofit research and educational organization that studies issues related to civil rights, bilingual education, and immigration and assimilation nationwide.
