Time Magazine
Rafael Figueroa, dean of college guidance at Albuquerque Academy, was in the middle of tutoring Native American and Native Hawaiian students on how to write college application essays when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the race-conscious college admissions processes at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional.
Earlier in the week, he told the students that they shouldn’t feel like they need to talk about their ethnicity in their essays. But after the June 29 Supreme Court ruling, he backtracked. “If I told you that you didn’t have to write about your native or cultural identity, you need to get ready to do another supplemental essay” on it or prepare a story that can fit into short answer questions, he says he told them. Read more here.
The Boston Globe
“Tell your story,” is what Rafael Figueroa, dean of College Guidance at Albuquerque Academy, a private high school in Albuquerque, N.M., said in an interview that he will be advising his high school seniors to do this fall, as he always does. “And if your race and cultural background are an important part of the story you want to tell, be who you are.”
“For some of our students of color,” he quickly added, “that’s not the story they tell, and that’s fine.”
In providing counsel tailored to each applicant’s gifts and talents, and hopes and dreams, Figueroa will draw on his experience as a former admissions officer — including at Wesleyan, where I shadowed him — and as a graduate of UCLA Law School, which could come in handy.
Nonetheless, for Figueroa and the tens of thousands of other college counselors working in the nation’s high schools — to say nothing of students and parents, and admissions officers themselves — this fall’s application season promises to be disorienting. Read more here.
In addressing the Albuquerque Academy community after the ruling was announced, Mr. Figueroa said that the College Guidance Office would await clarity on the next steps colleges will take, and “we want to emphasize that the college application process for Albuquerque Academy students will remain unchanged. We want to reassure all rising seniors that you can and should tell your story in the application process exactly as you want to be represented. Many of you have been shaped by your cultural, ethnic, and religious identities, and we encourage you to share these stories in your college admission process if you feel they provide an important perspective on who you are as a student and applicant.” Figueroa continued by affirming Albuquerque Academy’s school mission, which says, in part, “We commit to creating a caring, inclusive, and just community.” In keeping with that mission, “the College Guidance Office and I want to re-state our commitment to seeing, supporting, and championing each student’s talent, achievement, identity, and personal story.”
