This report discusses the admissions data for forty-seven public colleges and universities throughout the nation. The average difference in academic credentials among those admitted, whether measured by test scores or by grades and high-school class rank, between blacks and whites, and to a lesser extent between Hispanics and whites, is very large. There are few such differences between whites and Asians.

By Robert Lerner, Ph.D. and
Althea K. Nagai, Ph.D.

Executive Summary

• The average difference in academic credentials among those admitted, whether measured by test scores or by grades and high-school class rank, between blacks and whites, and to a lesser extent between Hispanics and whites, is very large. There are few such differences between whites and Asians.
  
• Racial and ethnic preferences play a far more important role in admissions than has been previously acknowledged. Blacks have far greater probabilities of admission than do similarly qualified whites at a large variety of schools, Hispanics have substantially greater probabilities of admission than do whites, and Asians have similar probabilities of admissions. All of these conclusions take into account both test scores and grades. (We include both the complete logistic regression equations we used to predict admissions and new probability plots to explain further the effects of preferences on the probability of admission.)
  
• Racial and ethnic preferences in admissions are pervasive and national in scope. They are not restricted to any region of the country.
  
• The more selective colleges and universities are more likely to use preferences for black applicants than are their less selective counterparts, but few colleges and universities use no black-white preferences at all. Fewer schools have preferences for Hispanics and only a handful of schools have preferences for Asians or whites.