The Ivy League institution continually violated federal Civil Rights laws despite a 2023 Supreme Court decision, the department’s investigation found.
A year-long federal investigation into student admissions practices at Yale School of Medicine determined that the institution intentionally selected black and Hispanic applicants over higher-achieving whites and Asians, the Department of Justice announced today.
The department stated that the Ivy League school used “racial proxies” to circumvent the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming that, in accordance with existing Civil Rights laws, colleges and universities cannot consider an applicant’s race in admissions decisions.
“Proxies” can include addresses, indicators of income or socioeconomic status, interviews, or personal essays in place of prior practices where applicants checked a box to note race or ethnicity.
The DOJ’s May 14 letter to Yale’s attorney in this matter, Peter Spivack, cited internal “Admissions post-SCOTUS” memos that indicated employees were provided verbal instructions on how to preserve racial preferences in the admissions process.
Yale officials also failed to produce documents noting changes to policies and practices to comply with the 2023 Supreme Court ruling, which determined that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina factored in race when they denied Asian applicants.
DOJ investigators also reviewed a presentation for Yale admissions personnel that indicated a strong push for increasing the number of minority physicians. That document cited a California medical school that more than doubled the percentage of minority students in its program after it factored in socioeconomic status into admissions decisions, according to the May 14 letter.
The 2025 median grade point average for black students admitted into Yale’s medical school was 3.88; for Hispanics, it was 3.91. By contrast, the GPA for white applicants admitted last year was 3.97, and for Asians it was 3.98. All applicants were above the 90th percentile for GPA.
As for the MCAT test scores for admitted students that year, black students averaged in the 94th percentile, and Hispanics were in the 95th percentile, while whites and Asians were both in the 100th percentile, the DOJ’s letter said. It did not provide a breakdown of numbers or percentages of applications versus admissions by race.
