Justice Department Says UC San Diego Medical School Violated Race-Neutral Admissions Rules

The department conducted a roughly four-month investigation before issuing an eight-page letter to the campus that detailed how the school had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 affirmative action ruling.

Asst. Atty. Gen. Harmeet K. Dhillon stated that rather than relying on MCAT scores or GPA, San Diego Med's shadow application process unlawfully judged applicants for admission based on their race.

The department said it wants to reach a voluntary agreement with the university to change its admissions practices and will sue if talks fail. In the 2023-24 and 2024-25 admissions cycles, UC San Diego admissions officials could see an applicant's race while deciding whom to interview.

Admissions staff first ranked applicants by test scores and grades, then created hardship subgroups that steered more Black and Latino students into interviews, the department said.

The department cited a June 2023 email in which the director of admissions wrote that he would recommend purposely selecting some students from Group C, a lower-scoring tier. The admission rate for Black applicants was more than double the rate for white applicants in three straight years.

In the class that entered in 2023, 6.18 percent of Black applicants were admitted compared with 2.45 percent of white applicants.

Admitted Black and Latino students had lower median MCAT scores and lower grades than white and Asian students. The National Institutes of Health awarded about $427 million in federal research funds to UC San Diego last year. A UC San Diego spokesperson said the university is reviewing the findings.