By: Yuelan Yuan

How did the University of California, Davis become one of the most diverse medical schools in the country?

A huge part of that change is the work of the school’s head of admissions, Dr. Mark Henderson. In an attempt to diversify the student body, Henderson developed a scale to evaluate applicants. His socioeconomic disadvantage scale, or S.E.D., measures every applicant on a scale from zero to 99 based on their life circumstances, such as family income and parental education.

Last week, the Supreme Court ended affirmative action, the process by which college admissions departments grant special consideration to historically excluded groups. In the wake of that decision, President Biden said that adversity scores are a “new standard” for achieving diversity.

More schools are slowly adopting the S.E.D. scale and other socioeconomic measurements such as Landscape, where undergraduate admissions offices can assess the socioeconomic backgrounds of individual students. But there are still concerns about whether these tools will be enough to replace race-conscious affirmative action.

American Medical Association president Jesse Ehrenfeld, says that “Those tools certainly have utility, but they fall short of accomplishing what a race-conscious admission practice does.”

This problem can be seen at schools such as the University of Michigan, where admission officials have complained that the share of students of color has not increased despite efforts to enroll more socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

Although these tools are not perfect, they are one of the best remaining ways to further diversify student bodies.