The announcement comes just a week after Ohio State University declared that they would be altering their admissions policy for the same reasons. UMass is only one of a handful of schools to admit to using this policy. "Bryan C. Harvey, the campus's associate provost for planning and assessment, said that a 10-point scale had been used in evaluating the middle third of the applicant pool-essentially, those students who had not been automatically accepted or rejected based on their grade-point averages and SAT scores," according to The Chronicle.
Extra points were awarded to these applicants based on their grade-point averages, race, whether they were graduates of low-income schools or the first person in their family to attend college.
The University says it instituted the policy in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that prohibited the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor from practicing a similar policy. "Administrators [at UMass] said that the Supreme Court's ruling in the Michigan undergraduate case left them worried that their system was still legally vulnerable," according to The Chronicle.
Instead of automatically awarding points, UMass will use applicants' essays to determine whether or not an applicant will contribute to diversity.
Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in the majority opinion of the court (a vote of 6-3) that, although race may be a consideration for admission, it cannot be the deciding factor. He wrote, "The university's policy, which automatically distributes 20 points, or one-fifth of the points needed to guarantee admission, to every single 'underrepresented minority' applicant solely because of race, is not narrowly tailored to achieve the interest in educational diversity that respondents claim justifies their program."
Though the undergraduate school has planned to change its policy, no announcement was made as to future changes in graduate admissions policy.
It remains to be seen whether any other schools will follow suit in altering their admissions policies in light of the Supreme Court's decision.