GEOFF BENNETT: As colleges and universities digest yesterday's Supreme Court ruling that effectively ended affirmative action, schools are left to grapple with how to revamp their admission policies to ensure diversity of their campuses.

William Brangham takes a look at these implications and how some colleges say they will ensure diversity remains a top priority.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Geoff, with admissions officers no longer able to take race into account, colleges and universities will need to adopt other approaches if they want to build a diverse student body.

For some perspective, we're joined by Jeff Selingo.

He's a writer who has covered higher education for years.

He's the author most recently of "Who Gets In and Why."

Jeff, great to have you back on the "NewsHour."

JEFFREY SELINGO, Author, "Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions": Great to be here.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, the reality of this new landscape is obviously sinking in for schools.

You spent for your last book a sort of under-the-hood look with admissions officers that how they go about their jobs.

What is your sense of how they're going to all be responding to this new challenge?

JEFFREY SELINGO: Well, I think they're going to have to figure it out over the next year, especially given applications will start arriving this fall.

And one of the interesting things is that admissions is a very data-driven operation.

And so they're constantly following how they're doing on their various -- on their various priorities, so whether that's geography, whether that's race and ethnicity, whether that's men and women.

They're always looking at these priorities through the admissions season.

That starts in November through the last acceptance or last denial that they send out in March.

And they're not going to be able to track that.

So they always knew, during the process, how well they were doing at enrolling Black students, or at least accepting Black students or accepting Hispanic students.

They're not going to be able to do that as much as they used to.

So they're going to be kind of flying blind, in terms of their enrollment, until they know those enrollment numbers later in the season.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The majority opinion written by Justice Roberts said -- implied that there were other ways that schools could try to take race into account through things like essays.

Is that how you imagine that schools are going to start to try to adapt.

JEFFREY SELINGO: I think they're going to be looking for other ways.

And he specifically said students can talk about their lived experiences in their essays.

But he also warned colleges in essentially that same opinion, don't use that as a work-around against - - around race.

So it's clear that students are going to be able to talk in different places.

And also teachers and counselors are going to be able to talk in their recommendations about students, but they're going to have to be clear.

There's going to be clear line.

And for I think, a lot of these admissions readers, it's going to be a little difficult, at least this first year around, in terms of determining, how can we use race in this in this way?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Prior to yesterday, there were several schools in the country that, because of local laws, were not allowed to take race into consideration, California and Michigan in particular.

What has their experience been like?

And are they a way to sort of look into the future or how other schools might do this?

JEFFREY SELINGO: Oh, definitely.

And I think what the experience is in there -- and I also was at University of Washington for my book, which was also -- could not use race ended in admissions -- it was really around the recruitment process.

They had to get that funnel very big at the top in order to enroll the number of students that they wanted.

And this requires working with high schools, working with high school counselors, because there's 25,000 high schools in this country, but the reality is that, at most of these selective colleges, you might only get applications from 6,000 or 7,000 of them.

And most of the students that they want are in those schools that never apply.

So they're going to have to do a lot more outreach than they ever have before.

And for most of these schools, they didn't do that in the past.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Right.

I understand California spent a half-a-billion dollars trying to reach out to... (CROSSTALK) JEFFREY SELINGO: Right.

And, remember, and they were focused mostly on California.

So now most of these other colleges are going to have to look beyond their own states.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Justice Roberts, in his majority opinion, said that diversity on campus is a commendable goal, but not if it comes at the expense of others, was the implication.

How do the universities respond to this allegation that was made by Asian American students here that they were being discriminated against in the admissions process?

JEFFREY SELINGO: You know, we tend to think of admissions as this meritocracy that it is based on merit.

But it never has been one, and it probably never will be.

The reality is, is that nine out of 10 students who apply to these most selective colleges are denied admission.

And the students who are accepted are accepted for a variety of reasons.

We have athletes.

We have legacies, of course, that are accepted to many of these places.

We need to - - we need to have balance among gender at these places.

We need to have balance among geography.

So, sometimes, students are accepted because they're from the right state in many cases, or they might be a full-pay student, or they might be the third baseman for the baseball team.

So we shouldn't think of the meritocracy of admissions as this pure thing.

And I think that's the thing that was missing in the Supreme Court decision.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Lastly, the issue of standardized testing has been -- we know that they have been fading somewhat in what schools are requiring of students.

Does this have an impact on that?

JEFFREY SELINGO: Yes, I don't think it's coming back as a result.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Testing is done?

JEFFREY SELINGO: No, testing is done as a requirement, especially at these selective colleges, and for two reasons.

One is that they have seen, because they went test-optional during the pandemic, they have gotten a more diverse applicant pool as a result.

And so now they want to keep that diverse applicant pool.

The other thing is that all the plaintiffs in these affirmative action cases over the years, going back 20 years to the Michigan cases, have used test scores as one set -- one proof point in terms of that they were discriminated against that, students who were denied admission with a 1500 SAT and other students with a 1200.

Well, when you don't have scores from everybody, it's a lot more difficult to make that case.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Jeffrey Selingo, always good to see you.

Thank you so much.

JEFFREY SELINGO: It was great to be here.

Thank you.