When President Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson for the U.S. Supreme Court, it seemed like a major civil rights victory. But that victory could feel like a bitter irony this fall, when the high court hears two cases that will likely obliterate affirmative action. If Jackson gets approved by the Senate, she will probably be making two…

I study student characteristics and academic performance at the University of California, where consideration of an applicant's ethnicity has been banned since 1996 and SAT scores were used in admitting students to the university until fall 2021. I show the following: (1) SAT scores were more important than high school grades in predicting…

There is considerable interest in the impact of policy alternatives to race-based affirmative action (AA) on under-represented minority (URM) university enrollment. Widely-implemented alternatives include percent plans, which guarantee admission to top high school students, and holistic review, in which applications are evaluated on a…

This dissertation studies college admissions in Brazil in the past two decades, a period characterized by a decline in the socioeconomic inequality in demand for higher education. The first chapter studies an affirmative action policy enacted at a flagship university in Brazil to lower the socioeconomic inequality in college access. I find…

The value of a college degree continues to rise. A bachelor's degree in particular provides unrivaled economic and health benefits not just for the individual earning the degree, but for the entire state. Therefore, it is not surprising to see growing demand for a college education coupled with growing eligibility for California's public…

The challenges for increasing opportunities and college access for black students typically focus on the traditional barriers related to academic preparation, the racial gap in standardized test scores, and dropping out of high school. While these challenges remain, new and emerging challenges to college access are also important to discuss. They…

Selective colleges and universities purport to consider students' achievement in the context of the academic opportunities available in their high schools. Thus, students who "maximize" their curricular opportunities should be more likely to gain admission. Using nationally representative data, we examine the effect of "maximizing…

We investigate the efficacy and equity of college admissions criteria by estimating the effect of multiple measures of college readiness on college performance in the context of race-blind automatic admissions policies. We take advantage of a unique institutional feature of the Texas higher education system to control for selection into…

Using a critical race theory framework, this study examines the ways in which race and racialized ideologies are manifested in high-stakes college admissions, the debate over affirmative action, and the college choice behavior of Black high school students. This study allows for the voices of Black high school students in California to describe…

Advocates of racial preferences from the Harvard Civil Rights Project have criticized an initiative designed to provide race-neutral admissions to universities in Florida. George La Noue rejects their criticism, which, he says, confuses the definitions of affirmative action, establishes nonexistent criteria, and ignores crucial elements that…