- đź“Ś The DOJ found UC San Diego School of Medicine used race in admissions, violating Title VI and the 2023 Supreme Court ban on race-conscious admissions.
- 📌 Investigators say the school used “hardship” questions as a proxy for race to boost Black and Hispanic applicant interviews.
- đź“Ś The DOJ claims white and Asian applicants with higher MCAT scores and GPAs were denied admission in favor of lower-credentialed minority applicants.
- đź“Ś UC San Diego denies the allegations, stating all applicants must meet strict academic thresholds uniformly.
- đź“Ś The DOJ is seeking a voluntary resolution agreement; if negotiations fail, it will file a lawsuit.
Federal Investigation Finds Systemic Bias
The U.S. Department of Justice has formally accused the University of California San Diego School of Medicine of intentionally discriminating against applicants based on race. The finding, announced July 20, 2026, follows a four-month investigation that began in March 2026 as part of a broader Trump administration crackdown on race-conscious admissions in higher education. The investigation reviewed admissions data from 2019 to 2025. The allegations are outlined in an eight-page letter sent to the university Monday.
According to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, the medical school manipulated its admissions process to favor “underrepresented minorities in medicine” (URM), specifically Black and Hispanic applicants, at the expense of white and Asian students. The investigation reviewed seven years of admissions data, including MCAT scores, GPAs, and applicant demographics. The department concluded that Black and Hispanic applicants were admitted at significantly higher rates than equally qualified white and Asian applicants, saying the disparities were too consistent to be explained by chance and that the university failed to provide evidence accounting for them. The DOJ's findings echo allegations at the center of the Harvard affirmative action case, where plaintiffs argued that Asian American applicants with stronger academic credentials were admitted at lower rates than similarly qualified applicants from other racial groups.
How the Alleged Scheme Worked
The DOJ’s findings letter details a multi-step process that admissions staff used to circumvent the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned race-conscious admissions nationwide.
Applicants were sorted into six categories (Groups A through C, each with a “hardship” subgroup) based on MCAT scores and GPA. According to the DOJ’s findings, each category and its hardship subgroup were then combined and further sorted into 'batches' of 30 applicants for rating in the interview stage. The “hardship” subgroup was derived from answers to application questions about overcoming disadvantages. Investigators say this label served as a racial proxy: admissions staff deliberately placed more URM applicants into the hardship subgroups, then gave those subgroups preferential treatment during the interview stage. The Justice Department alleges the school used the term 'hardship' as a proxy for race after replacing its previous label, 'Underrepresented Minority in Medicine.'
The DOJ’s letter specifically cited the use of terms such as 'hardship,' 'disadvantage,' and 'distance traveled' as proxies for race, alleging that these labels were applied in a discriminatory manner to boost minority admissions.
“Rather than rely on MCAT scores or GPA, San Diego Med’s shadow application process unlawfully judged applicants for admission based on their race,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon. “San Diego Med’s blatant efforts to prioritize race are illegal, and we will end these practices.”
The DOJ also noted that during certain post-2023 admissions cycles, screeners had access to applicants’ race, further enabling racial sorting. Internal correspondence from 2023 recommended giving more weight to hardship applicants in lower-scoring tiers specifically to boost interviews with Black and Hispanic students. In one June 2023 email cited in the letter, the admissions director, Brian Zeglen, wrote that he would “recommend that we purposely select some students from Group C,” a lower-scoring tier, the Justice Department said. The email further detailed that “there are roughly 550 URM students that fall out of Group B and into Group C.” Zeglen proposed moving up to 62 applicants with lower MCAT scores and GPAs into the interview pool through what he called a “bump up Group C.” At this point, the admissions board would have access to the applicants’ race.
The UC San Diego medical school added the hardship question after the Supreme Court struck down the use of race-conscious admissions policies in 2023. Before that decision, the university would sort students into three groups based on their MCAT scores and GPAs, the DOJ letter said. Students could end up in Group B if they had MCAT scores in the 83rd percentile or were from underrepresented backgrounds and scored in the 50th percentile. The GPA cutoffs also varied.
By giving reviewers access to the applicant’s race during this stage for certain admissions cycles post-SFFA, San Diego Med ensured that more URM applicants would be invited to interview. Thus, San Diego Med deliberately used the “hardship” categorization to skirt SFFA, by putting more URMs into the subgroups, which ensured that more URMs received interviews.
In its announcement, the DOJ stated that “San Diego Med manipulated applicant data to achieve greater racial diversity in student admissions,” characterizing the use of hardship questions as a ploy to identify underrepresented minorities.
Data Shows Racial Disparities
The investigation found that a Black or Hispanic applicant had a “substantially higher likelihood” of being admitted than a white or Asian applicant with identical academic credentials. The DOJ’s letter states: “As a result, more qualified white and Asian students were denied admission.”
UC San Diego School of Medicine receives about 10,400 applications per year, interviews roughly 1,000, and admits around 140 students per fall class. The DOJ’s analysis focused on the 2020–2025 admissions cycles. The department said its analysis of the school’s data showed 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% of Black applicants were admitted, compared with 2.45% of white applicants. In 2024, the rates were 5.25% and 2.1%, respectively, and in 2025, 5.14% and 1.96%. Admitted Black and Latino students also had lower median scores on the Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT, and lower grades than white and Asian students, the department said. For the 2023 incoming class, Hispanic students had a median MCAT score in the 80th percentile and Black students in the 88th percentile, compared with the 95th percentile for white students and the 94th percentile for Asian students. In 2025, just over 5.1% of Black applicants were admitted, despite having lower average GPAs and MCAT scores than the nearly 2% of white applicants the school accepted, the federal agency said. Overall, UC San Diego accepts 2.3% of its medical school applicants, according to U.S. News and World Report.
Attorney and law professor Nora Demleitner questioned whether those figures alone provide enough context. “Well how many people applied?” Demleitner asked and said differences in applicant pool sizes can significantly affect admission rate comparisons. “If you have a hundred white students apply for let's say, a class of 20 and you have five African-American students apply for a class of 20, the percentages will come out potentially very differently in all kind of different ways.” She also said it is unfair to assume that applicants who have experienced hardship are necessarily Black or Brown and the term 'hardship' can provide important context about an applicant's achievements.
The medical school’s admissions website states that it 'does not consider race or ethnicity as criteria for selection,' in compliance with state law, and instead evaluates applicants based on academic record, MCAT score, scholarship, extracurriculars, letters of recommendation, and personal interviews. However, the school previously highlighted the diversity of its incoming classes; for the class of 2024, 32% were 'underrepresented in medicine,' a statistic that was replaced by the age range for the class of 2025.
Local California Context
California has had a statewide ban on affirmative action since 1996, when Proposition 209 was passed. That ban was reaffirmed by voters in 2020. The UC San Diego case is part of a larger DOJ crackdown on medical schools. Earlier in 2026, the DOJ announced similar findings against Yale School of Medicine and opened investigations into 15 other medical schools. UCLA and UC Davis also received scrutiny earlier this year. It follows similar actions against Stanford, UCLA and UC Davis, and escalates a legal conflict that could cost the UC system hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding if the two sides cannot reach an agreement. The investigation follows similar federal investigations into alleged race-based discrimination at Stanford, UCLA, Yale and Harvard. Yale may be moving toward a settlement with the Department of Justice, while Harvard remains in active litigation. The DOJ’s letter warns that continued violations could put nearly $1 billion in federal funding at risk.
The UC system has now been accused of illegal admissions practices at three of its six medical schools, following similar findings letters to UCLA and UC Davis. Prior to Monday’s announcement, the DOJ had not publicly confirmed the investigation into UC San Diego, though The New York Times reported on it in March along with probes at Ohio State University and Stanford University.
Pressure continues to build on medical schools nationwide; the Education Department announced Tuesday that it was investigating five more medical schools. The five new schools under investigation are Dartmouth College Geisel School of Medicine, East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine, St. Louis University School of Medicine, Western University of Health Sciences and William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Experts have criticized the Justice Department’s previous findings of discrimination and said the administration is taking an expansive view of what’s prohibited by the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision.
Background
The 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard effectively ended race-conscious admissions at all U.S. colleges and universities. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits recipients of federal funds—including medical schools—from discriminating based on race, color, or national origin. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has since prioritized enforcement actions against institutions it believes are violating these laws. In its findings letter, the DOJ quoted the Supreme Court's ruling: “The Court made clear that proxies for race also may not be used to discriminate, noting that 'universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.'”
In his Supreme Court decision banning the consideration of race in admissions, however, Chief Justice John Roberts explicitly wrote that the ruling didn’t prohibit “universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”
What Happens Next
The DOJ is seeking a voluntary resolution agreement with UC San Diego. The Justice Department also said it will continue to monitor the school to ensure students of color are not given priority for admissions. If the school does not agree to change its practices, the department will file a lawsuit. UC San Diego said in a statement that it is reviewing the DOJ’s letter and remains “committed to full compliance with federal law.” The school emphasized that all applicants must meet strict academic thresholds, a requirement it says was applied uniformly. UC San Diego School of Medicine is proud to produce some of the highest-performing physicians and researchers in the nation, with residency placement rates that consistently meet or exceed national averages. Medical schools depend heavily on federal money. The National Institutes of Health, for example, awarded about $427 million in federal research funds to UC San Diego last year. The DOJ has warned that the school risks losing nearly $1 billion in total federal funding if it does not comply.
Implications for Other Institutions
University counsel and lawyers advising other federally funded institutions will need to examine whether subjective admissions criteria operate as proxies for protected characteristics. Personal statements, hardship questions and contextual assessments may still be considered, but any advantage must be tied to an applicant’s individual experiences, qualities or achievements rather than race itself. Institutions should be able to explain why each criterion is relevant and demonstrate how it is applied consistently across candidates. The action against UC San Diego shows that federal scrutiny extends beyond written admissions policies to the way internal scoring, grouping and interview-selection procedures operate in practice. In-house teams should preserve admissions records, reviewer guidance, scoring data and internal discussions explaining how contextual criteria were designed and applied. Any proceedings involving UC San Diego could clarify how Title VI and Students for Fair Admissions apply to medical-school admissions methods presented as race-neutral.