Northerner.

Gen Xer.

Soccer Mom.

Karen.

These words and others have been used at different times throughout my life to reduce my lived experience into a stereotype. Mine is not a unique experience, of course. Humans are reduced to generalizations for various reasons, from predicting how we will vote in elections to determining how products will be marketed to us. The perceived bias of admission offices towards stereotypes is an undercurrent of the affirmative action debate on display in Supreme Court arguments last fall in the cases against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina brought by the nonprofit organization Students for Fair Admissions. The fight against affirmative action centers on whether race should be taken into consideration in the evaluation of candidates for admission, but it is also about whether applicants are evaluated based on who they are as individuals. It is about stereotyping.

I was reminded of the Supreme Court’s consideration of this case often when traveling in Asia on behalf of Loomis Chaffee in recent months. Repeatedly I was asked variations of the question “Who am I/who is my child in your applicant pool?” In other words, “What box will you put me/my child in, and how will that impact my/my child’s chances for admission at Loomis?” The concern that applicants would be considered as a part of a group — particularly a group subject to a long history of still ongoing negative stereotyping — rather than as individuals was evident every time someone asked me whether they/their child would be considered as an international or domestic student, how many students we admit from their country each year, whether having a dual citizenship or green card would help their admission chances… the list goes on. To me, these questions and concerns come from the same place as the legal argument of Students for Fair Admissions: the anxiety that categories determine the admissions decisions of individuals.

For those outside the rooms where admission decisions happen, trying to understand why those decisions are made can be maddingly frustrating. In response, plaintiffs have tried for decades to make the case that admission decisions should be blind to one’s race, arguing that if race was removed as a consideration, a fairer admission process (hence the name of the current plaintiff) would occur. It is no secret that institutions admit students based on the institutions’ needs, and outcomes can seem unfair regardless of racial identity. It is a hard truth that institutions have many priorities when they make admission decisions, and decisions can be made that have nothing to do with race, ethnicity, gender, or other demographic categories. It’s unfair to some applicants for example, that we may need a kicker for the football team and a French horn player for our orchestra, and those candidates can’t kick a ball or play a note.

It is also unfair that the admission process already advantages students from certain backgrounds because of the disparities of wealth distribution and educational opportunities across the world, some of which are historically connected to race and/or socioeconomic status (not to mention gender or other demographic factors). Context matters when considering candidates’ potential for success, as not everyone has had equal opportunity to begin with. If schools were unable to consider these factors among others in their evaluation process, they would not meet their institutional goal of a diverse community. As Harvard and UNC attorneys have argued, educational institutions like theirs and many others believe that the lived experiences between students of different backgrounds — not limited to but including race — makes for better education of future leaders in a globally diverse society. Therefore, removing demographic information such as race or ethnic background from an admission decision is in direct conflict with the goals of the institution.

Many years ago, as a new admission officer I was required to be on the phones the day decisions were released to talk with upset applicants (or more frequently, upset parents) who called the Admission Office to ask why they or their children were not admitted. One especially unhappy mother spoke for some time about the unfairness of the decision made on her child’s application before I replied, “Ma’am, you’re right. Admission decisions are unfair.” After I hung up the phone, my supervisor wryly observed, “Amy, decisions may sometimes be unfair, but the process is not.” His words have echoed in my mind at different times over the decades. The practice of holistic admission is not an unfair one. At Loomis, we work long and hard to look beyond the categories to enroll a school that reflects the world according to our Founders’ intention. (See my blog post “Do Admission Committees Really Exist?” for more on this topic). We read and assess everything we know about the applicant, from their demographic information to their experiences as shared in their interviews and in their writing to the information we receive from of their parents, teachers, and school officials. We look for diversity in every sense of the word — extroverts and introverts, leaders and followers, etc. We want a school of different types of people who will learn to live and work together.

The hours spent reading and discussing files late into the night and every winter weekend is testament to the time we spend learning who are applicants are as individuals, not as stereotypes or students who check a demographic box.

Do we consider race? Yes. We do this because our Founders created Loomis Chaffee with the specific goal to provide a globally aware education for future generations across social class, political and religious backgrounds — and we believe as an institution that racial/ethnic diversity among our student body is crucially important to that education. Do we make decisions based solely on race? No. As the Supreme Court has upheld in both Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Fisher v. University of Texas (2016, known as Fisher II) and its predecessors, a "whole person review" admission process that considers many qualities about each candidate, including race, is legal. Do we reduce individuals to stereotypes? We do not. The hours spent reading and discussing files late into the night and every winter weekend is testament to the time we spend learning who are applicants are as individuals, not as stereotypes or students who check a demographic box.

“When Harvard assembles a class of undergraduates, it matters that they come from different social, economic, geographical, racial, and ethnic backgrounds,” Lawrence S. Bacow, the Harvard president, wrote in an email to the university community last October. “It matters that they come to our campus with varied academic interests and skill sets. Research and lived experience teach us that each student’s learning experience is enriched by encountering classmates who grew up in different circumstances. Harvard is not alone in believing that we are more than our test scores and that our unique perspectives bring a wealth of educational benefits to a high-quality educational enterprise. The legal battle we have waged, which reaches its apex today, is as important to other colleges and universities, and to society, as it is to us.” It is as important to us at Loomis Chaffee, as well, and we stand side by side with our colleagues in higher education in the fight to review candidates as individuals in every sense of the word. I may have watched my children play soccer, but I was not a “soccer mom.” (Genuine Admission: I confess, I knitted on the sidelines far more than I watched them play.) We believe that individuals are more than stereotypes, checkboxes, and categories, and we work hard at Loomis to deliver on that promise.