The Supreme Court limited colleges' ability to consider race. Why are schools still asking about it?

College applications this fall still include questions asking about students' race — even after the U.S. Supreme Court said race shouldn't be considered in admissions.

Why are schools still asking about it? They need the information for other reasons.

Federal regulations require colleges to report aggregate information about the racial demographics of their students to the U.S. Department of Education, which tracks their graduation rates, salaries and other factors. And some colleges use the information to provide admitted students with information about clubs and other resources that might interest them.

So some college leaders say they're finding ways to shield that race information from the people who review applications.

"We remain committed to our principles of access and equity and to enrolling and graduating a diverse student body," University of Minnesota Provost Rachel Croson told regents in a meeting this fall.

But she said leaders will have to think more creatively about how to do that, because "the demographic checkbox will not be shared with application reviewers for any of our educational programs."

Here are some things applicants should know about race and admissions this year:

How did the court ruling change admissions?

Affirmative action programs, which trace back to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, were designed to improve educational and employment prospects for women and people of color. For decades, courts held that colleges could consider race as one of many factors in their admissions decisions. That meant that some schools — often the most selective ones — used it to decide between students who otherwise had similar credentials, such as grades, test scores and extracurricular activities.

But the Supreme Court, in a split decision, upended that this summer when it ruled that practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the law because they "lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points."

The decision has been widely interpreted as barring colleges from considering race itself as a factor in their admissions decisions. But it left open the possibility that admissions officers could consider race information that applicants disclose in their essays, if they tie it to another attribute.

For schools that didn't consider race, such as those in the Minnesota State system of colleges and universities, the ruling had little impact. Other schools are now trying to adjust their practices.

What information will admissions officers see?

The majority of students apply to college online, and the information is kept in the school's database. Many schools have technology that allows them to export that information to another document for application reviewers to examine. And while the precise programs might vary, many schools have the technology to decide which fields of information should and shouldn't be included on those sheets.

"It's not that difficult," said Susan Rundell Singer, president of St. Olaf College in Northfield. "There is a single cell where one introduces that [race] information, and you can simply block that cell from the view of the decision-makers."

But if the college needs the students' racial demographics for other reasons, they can reference the main database.

What about the essays?

Many colleges are updating admissions officers' training to ensure they know how to interpret the Supreme Court ruling. Some offer implicit bias training to help reviewers reduce the chances they might accidentally favor one group over another.

Leaders in the University of Minnesota's admissions office said they plan to hold weekly quality checks "focused on ensuring fair and consistent practices" as they review the answers to students' short-answer questions, essays and other elements of their applications.

"In these conversations, readers cite examples of academics, experiences, leadership examples, situations or circumstances they are seeing in an application," the U said in a statement.