What Happens Now?

COLLEGE ADMISSIONS was turned on its head by the Supreme Court's decision on affirmative action and a fiery ongoing debate about legacies. Everyone including the White House-has opinions. How to apply to college during the most confusing year ever.

- NICOLE LAPORTE

In late June, when the Supreme Court banned the use of racial preference in college admissions, Anna Lisa Raya was driving in her car after dropping off her middle school son at camp. Raya is a first-generation Latina who grew up in the El Sereno neighborhood of Los Angeles and attended Columbia University, and her four years on an Ivy League campus came flooding back to her as she listened to the news on NPR. At Columbia, she recalled, "I felt like an alien. I was sitting there with all these prep school kids and legacy kids and people who knew their whole lives that this was going to be their path," she says. "There are so many of us who don't come from that, yet we still need to be in the classroom.

The same day, Christopher Rim, the founder of Command Education, a college consultancy in Manhattan, watched his inbox explode. Emails were pouring in from Asian-American families who wanted to hire him to coach their kids through the college application process. The parents sympathized with Students for Fair Admissions, the nonprofit group whose lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina led to the Supreme Court's decision. (The suits claimed that the schools discriminated against Asian-American applicants who had high test scores and grades but who scored lower on things like character and "grit.") With affirmative action now banned, the parents felt as if "they had a fair shot" in the high-stakes admissions derby, Rim says.

"Four years ago I talked to potential clients about their oldest son, but they didn't sign up, even though their child had straight A's," he says. "They didn't think they had a solid chance and that it was going to be throwing money away. But now they're setting up their second son with me. They're like, 'We have a fair shot and we can do this the right way. They're very excited and optimistic?"