The U.S. Justice Department announced it has concluded that the Yale School of Medicine illegally considered race when admitting students to its incoming classes of 2023, 2024 and 2025.
In a six-page letter of findings issued Thursday, the department’s Civil Rights Division said Yale violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by continuing to weigh race in admissions after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which barred race-conscious college admissions.
“Yale has continued its race-based admissions program despite the Supreme Court and the public’s clear mandate for reform,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement.
The letter centers on what investigators describe as a deliberate effort to use “racial proxies” to work around the Harvard ruling.
According to data Yale provided to investigators, the median MCAT score among admitted Black students entering in 2025 was at the 94th percentile, while the median for admitted White and Asian students was at the 100th. The department’s preliminary analysis concluded that a Black applicant had up to 29 times higher odds of receiving an admissions interview than an Asian applicant with comparable academic credentials.
Yale receives direct federal financial assistance, including more than $842,000 in active Justice Department grants. The medical school separately receives hundreds of millions in research support from the National Institutes of Health.
The department said it is seeking a voluntary resolution agreement to bring Yale’s admissions into compliance. If that fails, federal regulations allow enforcement actions including loss of federal funding.
The finding comes one week after a nearly identical determination against the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. Federal investigations are also underway at medical schools at Ohio State, Stanford and UC San Diego.
In a statement, Yale spokesperson Karen Peart said the university “will carefully review the Department of Justice’s letter” and is “confident in the rigorous admissions process we follow.”
Peart said students admitted to Yale School of Medicine demonstrate “exceptional academic achievement and personal commitment,” and that the school’s program encourages curiosity and critical thinking. Its graduates, she said, go on to become leaders in clinical care, research and public service.
