Overview of Code Switch: In college admission, trauma is shorthand for Blackness
This Code Switch episode examines how the college admissions essay became a tool for elite universities to shape their student bodies—and how, today, Black applicants are often implicitly steered toward writing about trauma, hardship, and resilience in order to be seen as “interesting” or “legible” to admissions officers. Through the research of sociologist Aya Waller-Bey, the episode argues that admissions essays often reward narratives of pain in ways that flatten Black identity and turn trauma into a kind of currency.
How the College Essay Became an Admissions Tool
The anti-Semitic roots of “holistic review”
- The episode traces the modern admissions essay back to the 1920s, when Harvard, Yale, and Princeton tried to limit the number of Jewish students.
- Jewish applicants were scoring well on standardized exams, so elite schools shifted away from purely test-based admissions.
- They began requesting photos, essays, extracurriculars, and interviews under the guise of evaluating “character.”
- This new system helped universities quietly maintain racial and religious exclusion without explicit quotas.
Why elite schools still care so much about essays
- Top universities don’t just want “the best students” by grades or test scores.
- They want to build a class: athletes, future leaders, artists, debaters, student politicians, and students who will later shape major fields.
- Essays help them identify who will contribute to the campus community and fit institutional priorities.
What Aya Waller-Bey Found in Black Students’ Essays
Trauma is often treated as the most “compelling” story
Waller-Bey, who studied the college application process, found that Black students often receive direct or indirect messages that they need to emphasize:
- hardship,
- poverty,
- family instability,
- racial discrimination,
- violence,
- and “overcoming trauma.”
Examples from the episode include essays about:
- homelessness,
- sleeping in a car,
- a parent’s mental health crisis,
- school racism and slurs from teachers,
- and other painful experiences.
Even affluent Black students feel this pressure
- The expectation to foreground pain doesn’t only affect low-income students.
- Even Black students from educated, middle- or upper-class families may still feel pushed to make trauma central to their application.
- Waller-Bey describes a group of students she calls “rejecters” who refuse that script and instead write about joy, interests, journalism, or meaningful experiences.
Why Black Applicants Are Read Differently
Black pain is often read as collective, not individual
- The episode highlights a key difference in how stories are interpreted.
- When a Black student writes about hardship, admissions readers may see it as representative of “the Black experience.”
- When a white student writes about hardship, it is more likely to be treated as an individual story, not a racialized one.
- That means Black applicants are less able to be seen as fully individual people, while white students retain that individuality more easily.
The effect of affirmative action changes
- After the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision restricting race-conscious admissions, colleges are even more dependent on applicants’ self-disclosures.
- Schools now place more weight on proxies like:
- first-generation status,
- low-income background,
- and personal narratives that reveal context.
- This creates more pressure for students to disclose pain in order to be noticed.
Bigger Implications Beyond College Admissions
Trauma becomes a form of currency
Waller-Bey argues that this pattern extends far beyond universities:
- in philanthropy,
- K–12 education,
- fundraising campaigns,
- and other institutions that seek support or legitimacy.
The logic is often:
- show us your pain,
- prove you’ve suffered,
- and we’ll reward you with access, resources, or opportunity.
The system rewards institutions, not necessarily students
- The people disclosing pain are often not the ones who benefit most from that disclosure.
- Institutions use these stories to justify admissions decisions, raise money, or market themselves as diverse and compassionate.
- The episode suggests this is a deeply unequal and sometimes exploitative dynamic.
Key Takeaways
- The college admissions essay originated as part of a racist and antisemitic effort to control who got into elite universities.
- Today, elite schools still use essays to shape their student body—not just to measure merit.
- Black students are often pressured to present trauma as the most valuable part of their identity.
- That pressure flattens Black identity and reinforces the idea that Blackness is most “visible” through suffering.
- More broadly, the episode argues that American institutions often commodify pain, especially Black trauma, as a way to confer value.
Final Thought
The episode’s central warning is that elite admissions systems don’t just select students—they also teach applicants what kinds of lives are considered worthy of recognition. For many Black students, the message is that pain is the price of being seen.