Sotomayor, J., dissenting
at 648. All of SFFA’s proposals are methodologically flawed because they rest on “ ‘terribly unrealistic’ ” assumptions about the applicant pools. Id., at 643–645, 647. For example, as to one set of proposals, SFFA’s expert “unrealistically assumed” that “all of the top students in the candidate pools he use[d] would apply, be admitted, and enroll.” Id., at 647. In addition, some of SFFA’s proposals force UNC to “abandon its holistic approach” to college admissions, id., at 643–645, n. 43, a result “in deep tension with the goal of educational diversity as this Court’s cases have defined it,” Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 386–387. Others are “largely impractical—not to mention unprecedented—in higher education.” 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 647. SFFA’s proposed top percentage plans,[1] for example, are based on a made-up and complicated admissions index that requires UNC to “access … real-time data for all high school students.” Ibid. UNC is then supposed to use that index, which “would change every time any student took a standardized test,” to rank students based on grades and test scores. Ibid. One of SFFA’s top percentage plans would even “nearly erase the Native American incoming class” at UNC. Id., at 646. The courts below correctly concluded that UNC is not required to adopt SFFA’s unrealistic proposals to satisfy strict scrutiny.[2]
- ↑ Generally speaking, top percentage plans seek to enroll a percentage of the graduating high school students with the highest academic credentials. See, e.g., Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 373 (describing the University of Texas’ Top Ten Percent Plan).
- ↑ SFFA and Justice Gorsuch reach beyond the factfinding below and argue that universities in States that have banned the use of race in college admissions have achieved racial diversity through efforts such as increasing socioeconomic preferences, so UNC could do the same. Brief for Petitioner 85–86; ante, at 14. Data from those States disprove that theory. Institutions in those States experienced “ ‘an immediate and precipitous decline in the rates at which underrepresented-minority students applied … were admitted … and enrolled.’ ” Schuette v. BAMN,
