What future is being shaped when efforts to reduce inequality are viewed as problematic and unfair?
In September, CollegeBoard canceled Landscape, a vital tool providing colleges with geographical data to identify promising students students from underserved communities. This data included neighborhoods, high-poverty backgrounds and attendance at underfunded high schools that lack programs like Advanced Placement classes.
CollegeBoard’s decision to ban this tool came after the Trump White House increased scrutiny of affirmative action, describing it as unfair and a threat to national security. Although the makers of Landscape claimed it avoided collecting race or ethnicity data, CollegeBoard discontinued the tool due to worries that this tool could be seen as against the law.
This move neglects to consider how deeply socioeconomic factors shape opportunity. Ending meaningful consideration of a student’s circumstances will backfire because it weakens efforts to promote real equity in college admissions.
CollegeBoard, an educational organization known for running the SAT and AP exams, introduced Landscape in 2016 to provide colleges with crucial data — crime rates, median family income, education level and other factors — to put student achievements in the context of their upbringing, using publicly available datasets and institutional reporting.
In 2023, the Supreme Court case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard set the basis for Landscape’s discontinuation. Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion siding with those in favor of banning affirmative action, argued that colleges should assess applicants based on their individual qualities rather than their race.
Two years later, CollegeBoard discontinued its Landscape tool under pressure from a combination of factors, including the SCOTUS ruling, evolving federal and state policies and increasing criticism about affirmative action. The choice was largely influenced by increasing pressure from the Trump administration against diversity initiatives, warning schools not to use race-related factors such as geography.
Yet, Landscape never violated the law. Rather, it was effectively a workaround to the limitations on considering race by using socioeconomic information as a way to find talented young people regardless of where they live or where they go to school. Under-resourced, high poverty communities are often home to minority students, with the majority of them being Black and Hispanic, and the tool helped identify skilled students who faced economic disadvantages.
Instead of defending the tools’ legality and usefulness, CollegeBoard leaders chose caution over commitment to important ideals.
While Landscape was one of the more prominent tools in considering geographical context, it is not the only one. The College and Geographic Context Explorer — created by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) — is a newer tool that also uses institutional datasets to map the region and undergraduate university of each applicant. The AAMC argues that adapting to a legal framework allows diversity in important medical professions, overall enriching educational experiences.
Anabel Kinsey, an undergraduate from Hawaii who participated in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Ocean Exploration program, is an example of a student who demonstrates the significance of geographical context. G
rowing up in an underrepresented area in O‘ahu with limited access to STEM programs, Anabel might have been easily overlooked. The NOAA program uses geographic and demographic mapping to identify students from underrepresented areas, connecting Kinsey with mentorship and hands-on opportunities opening her pathway to higher education. Similar to Landscape, this approach relied on understanding the connection between geography and potential talent, showing that tools that collect socioeconomic data help capable students whose skills would otherwise go unnoticed.
Ultimately, the discontinuation of Landscape has come to represent one battle in the broader conflict over the role of affirmative action in modern America. Organizations like College Board, which have the power to resist threats against fairer admissions, shouldn’t cave so easily to governmental pressure. Real equity requires recognizing and embracing differences, not ignoring them. No capable and deserving student should be denied resources that help them achieve their goals in accessing higher education, which affirmative action does by creating a clearer path for those who face steeper obstacles.
