Colleges Look for New and Legal Ways to Help Build a Diverse First-Year Class

New research looks at ways admissions offices can evaluate students after the U.S. Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling. The high court banned race-conscious admissions policies. Colleges are looking for new and legal ways to help build first-year classes that will be diverse and whose members will be successful in the long run. And that's taken on new importance after the Supreme Court banned race-conscious admissions policies. To paint a fuller picture of a prospective student, colleges could lean on things like a high school profile, the neighborhood a student grew up in and family resources. As NPR's Elissa Nadworny reports, new research shows that doing that can be a great predictor of student success when they get to campus.