BUZZ
School favored black applicants over whites, Asians
The Ohio State University College of Medicine has discriminated against white and Asian students in admissions over the last three years, the Department of Justice alleged Wednesday.
The school violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision, both of which ban race discrimination, a news release from the department states.
The department found that the school uses a “holistic” approach to admissions to increase the number of “underrepresented minorities.”
“As part of the Holistic Approach, ‘screeners’ score applicants across three scoring categories that have different maximum point values: Attributes (12 max), Experiences (16 max), and Metrics (8 max). OSU Med’s admissions process also includes an interview stage,” the news release states.
As a result, black applicants who reached the screening stage were roughly 2.8 times as likely to be admitted as their Asian peers with matching qualifications.
What’s more, the school also admitted some students without giving them a screener score or conducting an interview.
Through this “side door,” black candidates were four times as likely to gain admission as white applicants with the same credentials in 2024 and 2025. The school admitted zero Asian applicants this way.
“Despite SFFA, OSU Med allows some applicants to bypass its own screening process and skip interviews solely because of the color of their skin,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said.
“The use of a separate admissions process based on race is plainly illegal under federal law, and this Department will not allow these appalling practices to continue at OSU Med or any other federally funded higher ed institution,” she said.
The DOJ also recently found that several other schools are similarly discriminating based on race in admissions.
Earlier this month, the department announced that UCLA School of Law “discriminated against white and Asian students” in its admissions practices from 2023 to 2025.
However, the law school told the Daily Bruin that students are admitted based on merit, and its admissions office is committed to adhering to the law.
The department has also found that George Washington University, UCLA‘s medical school, Yale School of Medicine, and the UC San Diego School of Medicine, among others, discriminated against students based on their race.
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