As reported on Instagram
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division announced on Wednesday that its investigation found the Ohio State University College of Medicine discriminated against white and Asian students in admissions to its 2023, 2024 and 2025 incoming classes. The department said the practices violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned race discrimination in college admissions. In its findings letter to the university, the department alleged the practices aimed "to benefit preferred race classes of Black and Hispanic" and said the school's diversity commitments showed discriminatory intent.
According to the department, the medical school uses what it calls a "Holistic Approach" to admit more students it describes as underrepresented minorities. Under that system, screeners score each applicant on three measures — Attributes, worth up to 12 points; Experiences, up to 16 points; and Metrics, up to 8 points — and the process also includes an interview stage before final decisions are made. The findings also fault "super screeners" who are able to view an applicant's race, and the school's use of a socioeconomic scale developed at UC Davis, which investigators treated as a proxy for race. Median MCAT scores for the school's 2025 class, as set out in the findings, were 514 for Black students, 515 for Hispanic students and 517 for Asian students.
The investigation's central finding concerns what happened to applicants with equal credentials. The department found that Black applicants who went through screening and interviews were about 2.8 times as likely to be admitted as Asian applicants with equal credentials.
The department also found that the school operates what it called a "side door," a separate pathway that allowed some applicants to receive admission without receiving a screener score and without sitting for an interview. Using that pathway in 2024 and 2025 combined, the department said, Black applicants were four times as likely to be admitted as white applicants, and no Asian applicants were admitted at all.
“Despite SFFA, OSU Med allows some applicants to bypass its own screening process and skip interviews solely because of the color of their skin,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division. “A university's admissions process, and all its stages, should apply equally to all applicants regardless of race. The use of a separate admissions process based on race is plainly illegal under federal law, and this Department will not allow these appalling practices to continue at OSU Med or any other federally funded higher ed institution.”
Ohio State rejected the findings. “Ohio State strongly disagrees with the findings,” the university said, stating that it is in full compliance with the Supreme Court ruling and all federal and state admissions laws, and that the College of Medicine does not consider race, ethnicity or any protected class during the admissions process. “Ohio State follows the law and will contest these findings,” it said.
The announcement is the department's investigative findings, not a court judgment. The department said it will now enter settlement negotiations to bring the school's admissions into compliance with federal law, and that it will file suit if those efforts fail. Ohio State is the tenth institution this year that the Justice Department has said discriminated in medical or law school admissions; the investigation was one of the first three the department announced in March, and 20 similar investigations remain open.