Supreme Court weighs affirmative action case, but most college admissions won't be affected

College admissions experts want to let students and their families in on a little secret: It’s not really a prospective student’s fault when they are turned away from an Ivy League institution or similar college that rejects most applicants.

And race matters far less than they may think.

Most people – Black, white, Latino and Asian Americans included – who apply to Harvard, Stanford or Princeton are rejected. The story is the same at dozens of other selective schools in the country, while the remaining thousands of institutions of higher learning are likely to accept almost everyone who applies.

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Of the more than 1,000 institutions that use the Common Application, for instance, just 70 admit fewer than 25 percent of their applicants, CEO Jenny Rickard said.

At those few colleges, “it’s not about you,” Rickard said. ‘It’s not about your race. It’s not about your gender. It’s actually about the pool of applications and institutional priorities.”