This article addresses Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) surrounding the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) affirmative action decision and its implications for considerations of race and ethnicity in admissions processes.
In light of the evolving legal landscape, you may have questions about how to make adjustments to your admissions processes workflows and how that translates to WebAdMIT. This article aims to provide clarity by addressing how to hide race and ethnicity in your review process and insights into the ruling's impact.
Additionally, watch the recording of the "Navigating the SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling with WebAdMIT" webinar held on August 2, 2023.
Work Groups allow you to manage permissions for a group of users instead of separately managing permissions for each individual user. Using WebAdMIT’s Work Groups feature, you can decide:
You may have members of your team who will be reviewing applications as well as using data management functions like List Manager and Export Manager, in which they’ll have access to race and ethnicity data. If you don’t want your users to have any access to race and ethnicity information, you’ll have to remove:
Visit the Managing Work Groups page in the Help Center for a breakdown of permission sets.
For Work Group template examples, visit the Work Groups Guide in the Help Center.
As you create Work Groups, you add users to them. You can create as many Work Groups as necessary (each with its own unique permission sets), move users among groups as desired, and change the permissions or viewing ability for all users in any given Work Group once it’s created.
Note: an individual can only belong to one Work Group at a time per CAS and cycle. So, for example, if Bob is both a screener and an interviewer and those roles have different permission sets, you can:
Visit the Managing Work Groups page in the Help Center for more information.
Yes, the panels and subpanels access you create in the Work Group applies to the application PDF. For example, if you suppress race and ethnicity information from the Personal Information or CAS Custom Questions panel on the Applicant Details Page, that information will not appear in the Personal Information or CAS Custom Questions panel in the application PDF in WebAdMIT.
If you are downloading the application PDF from a system other than WebAdMIT, please see the API section of the FAQ.
Visit the Managing Work Groups page in the Help Center for more information.
Work Groups can remove race and ethnicity during the application review process. So when someone from your team is looking at a student’s application, it is eliminated as a factor in their admissions decision process.
However, you may have members of your team who will be reviewing applications as well as using data management functions like List Manager and Export Manager, in which they’ll have access to race and ethnicity data. If you don’t want your users to have any access to race and ethnicity information, you’ll have to remove:
If race and ethnicity are hidden from a user’s Work Group during the application review process, but they have access to lists and exports, they still will not be able to review based on race unless they build a list or export using this information, examine the results, and then return to one of the applicants to review them with that knowledge.
Additionally, if you have access to Lists, Exports, Reports, etc., you can run and duplicate lists and exports. So, if you’re an administrator and you’re concerned about a particular list, export, etc. that another admissions member or faculty has created, you can double-check it by running it to see the data and/or duplicating it to see how it was built, and handle the situation accordingly.
Having a campus policy that prohibits admissions officers from using race in admissions decisions is encouraged.
Visit the Managing Work Groups page in the Help Center for more information.
Yes, the panels and subpanels access you create in the Work Group applies to the application PDF. For example, if you suppress race and ethnicity information from the Personal Information or CAS Custom Questions panel on the Applicant Details Page, that information will not appear in the Personal Information or CAS Custom Questions panel in the application PDF in WebAdMIT.
If you are downloading the application PDF from a system other than WebAdMIT, please see the API section of this FAQ.
No, if the user is in the WebAdMIT Administrators Work Group and downloads the application PDF, it will include all of the information collected on the application, including race and ethnicity.
However, if the user had built a Work Group that suppresses race and ethnicity data, and puts themselves into that Work Group, they could then download an application PDF without race and ethnicity information. Additionally, they could use the PDF Manager to bulk download the application PDF and create a custom template of the sections and panels they want to include.
Visit the Working with the PDF Manager page in the Help Center.
The PDF Manager tool allows you to create a PDF custom template to download full applications, scanned transcripts, foreign evaluations, letters of reference, and applicant uploaded documents in bulk, making it simpler for you to work with them outside of WebAdMIT.
Visit the Working with the PDF Manager page in the Help Center.
An Application Programming Interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build or use such a connection or interface is called an API specification.
The CAS API allows clients to create automated integrations leveraging modern, event-driven API subscriptions. CAS applications (data and documents) are delivered to an SFTP, HTTPS, or AWS S3 destination as applicants take specific actions. The data is then imported into a school’s Student Information System (SIS), Customer Relationship Manager (CRM), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), where admissions staff can access the CAS data.
Visit the Integration Help Center for more information.
No, the CAS API is intended to provide all of the CAS data to the institution so it can be manipulated once it is on the school’s server.
Yes. To do so:
If you have an existing subscription, delete the subscription before creating a new subscription for the Full Application PDF, omitting race/ethnicity. To do so:
"responseOptions": "contentType=application/pdf,pdfType=reviewer"
The decision to hide race and ethnicity from reviewers should be determined by each college and university according to institutional policies and procedures.
The decision to include information about an applicant's race/ethnicity and/or underrepresented status within a scoring rubric should be determined by each college and university according to institutional policies and procedures.
The decision to provide access to applicant information to any member of your campus community should be determined by each college and university according to institutional policies and procedures.
Historically, race and ethnicity questions have been optional on most CAS applications.
If the race and ethnicity question is removed from the CAS application, each college and university would determine the method by which they would collect this information locally based on institutional policies and procedures.
For CASs that are associated with a professional association (e.g., Physician Assistant Education Association), those associations consult with their advisory boards and determine the data fields that appear on the CAS application.
For CASs that operate independently of an association (e.g., California State University), the school or school system determines the data fields that appear on the CAS application.