Following the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the University of Michigan's point-based affirmative action policy, many universities, including Ohio State University, have changed their policies to resemble that of UW-Madison.
According to a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, OSU might see a drop of more than 18 percent in black applicants this spring as a result of this policy change. As of OSU's Feb. 7 application deadline, the number of black applicants dropped from 1,626 to 1,330.
According to Mabel G. Freeman, the university's assistant vice president for undergraduate admissions, these numbers are only preliminary, but she said they will likely reflect the final percentages.
While race is an issue in UW-Madison's admissions policy, it does not use a point-based system.
Despite the findings at OSU, UW-Madison Associate Director of Admissions Keith White said he is pleased other universities have adopted portions of the model UW-Madison has used for years, and says the university will continue its policy, at least for now.
\UW will keep doing things the way we were because it's legal according to the Supreme Court decision,"" he said.
However, UW-Madison's process has met criticism. W. Lee Hansen, professor emeritus of economics, has studied race and university applications, and questioned whether admitting students based on race is beneficial for the university in the long run.
""If we want students to graduate, we should find out why some students drop out and why some minorities succeed and this is something the university should probably know by now,"" he said.
Hansen said those students admitted based on their race are not usually competitive with others in their class because of usually lower retention rates.
Associate Professor of Counsel Psychology Hardin Coleman said a major flaw in the admissions processes like those of UW-Madison lies in attaching a quantitative measure to characteristics of the applicants.
""Doing admissions by something that looks like a quota system may not be the best way to go about it,"" Coleman said.
He added evaluating students by broader qualifications could attract more applications by giving advantages to a diverse pool in different ways.
