The U.S. Department of Justice has opened investigations into possible racial discrimination in admissions at three top medical schools — UC San Diego, Stanford University, and Ohio State University — giving each school less than a month to hand over years of sensitive applicant data or risk losing federal funding.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Justice Department sent letters to the three schools on Wednesday, demanding seven years of admissions records by April 24. The letters were signed by Harmeet K. Dhillon, the department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights.
“At this time, our investigation will focus on possible race discrimination in medical school admissions,” Dhillon wrote in each of the letters.
The data the schools must turn over includes students’ Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) scores, home addresses and ZIP codes, racial and ethnic information, admissions decisions going back to the incoming class of 2019, and records tied to applicants’ connections to alumni or donors. The Justice Department also asked for internal communications about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and messages between school officials and pharmaceutical companies about admissions matters.
The stakes are enormous. As reported by the Associated Press, all three schools are major recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In 2025, the NIH distributed $575 million to Stanford, $427 million to UC San Diego, and $210 million to Ohio State — hundreds of millions of dollars in research grant money that is now potentially at risk.
Each of the three schools confirmed they received the government’s notice and pledged to cooperate.
Laura Margoni, a UC San Diego spokesperson, said the school is “committed to fair processes in all of our programs and activities, including admissions, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws.”
Stanford School of Medicine spokesperson Cecilia Arradaza said the school “prohibits unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.”
Ohio State spokesperson Ben Johnson said the university is “fully compliant with all state and federal regulations and legal rulings regarding admissions. We’ve received the letter and will respond appropriately.”
As Notus reported, the new investigations are the latest move in President Trump’s ongoing effort to reshape higher education. His administration has been cracking down on alleged antisemitism on campuses, restricting federal research funding, and scrutinizing whether universities are complying with a landmark 2023 Supreme Court ruling that banned the use of race in college admissions.
The probes also mirror a similar case involving UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. The Trump administration recently moved to join a federal lawsuit alleging that UCLA uses a “systemically racist approach to admissions” that favors Black and Latino applicants over white and Asian American ones. The Justice Department said its review of four years of median MCAT scores showed lower scores among Black and Latino students admitted to UCLA compared to white and Asian American students. UCLA has said it uses a holistic review process and follows all anti-discrimination laws.
The UC San Diego and Stanford investigations are part of a broader conflict between President Donald Trump’s administration and California’s higher education institutions. A coalition of 17 Democratic state attorneys general — including California’s — has already filed a lawsuit challenging a separate Trump administration policy requiring colleges to collect and submit detailed admissions data. A federal judge in Massachusetts is currently weighing whether to block that requirement, with a decision expected by April 3.
The three schools under the latest investigation have until April 24 to comply with the Justice Department’s data demands.
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