The start of July saw the American Supreme Court rule that race could no longer be considered in admissions decisions. We'll leave it to experienced education journalists like Jeff Selingo to attempt to parse out all the ramifications. The next policy to likely get legally challenged is the use of legacy preference, which is much less divisive.
The big question for families is whether this change will have any material impact on the admissions rates of the most rejective schools? These rates have plummeted overall in the last three years or so and the admit rate for students in Singapore is much, much lower than the headline rate. This number is known by the universities, but good luck getting them to reveal it.
The short answer is NO. There will be no discernible change to the single digit admit rates that international students are currently facing. While universities are now technically barred from directly considering race and ethnicity, this ruling was intended for the domestic American population. There is nothing barring universities to continue to consider nationality and geographic location to "build their class". Singapore has many excellent students applying to a very small list of popular universities, and these universities can only take so many per country or high school.
So, what to do? For years we've been advocating away from chasing a brand name school that is popular in favor of universities that have programs that interest you and are located in a place you'd love to live for 4 years. Here is an article we published back in 2010 on why rankings are garbage, they even worse now and schools are finally walking away. Work with your school university counselor to come up with a viable list of universities that will be a good fit for you. You should have a great reason to apply to each of them, not "XXX U is highly ranked/renowned/respected."
