The final deadline to apply to many colleges for next fall is just a few days away.

And this year, the application process for high school seniors has been different

because of a landmark Supreme Court decision that came down over the summer.

The court ruled to ban race-based affirmative action in college admissions.

Basically, colleges can no longer consider students race in weighing their applications.

But the guidance about what that means in practice wasn't straightforward.

There was some confusing guidance about whether students can still mention their

race in college essays that immediately sent colleges consulting lawyers to try to figure

it out, but as the adults are sort of scrambling, the teenagers who are trying

to apply to college of all different kinds of races are totally re-evaluating where they

have a shot, where they're willing to apply, where they think they're

going to automatically get rejected from, if they're going to write about who they are

in terms of race in their essays, and they are sort of entering this weird crazy

wonderland where there aren't really guidelines because this is also new.

That's Education reporter Hannah Mees, who has been following the fallout of the decision

and what it means for the admissions process. Immediately after affirmative action fell this

past summer, Hannah reached out to high school seniors.

She wanted to understand how they were grappling

with this new reality and how it should or shouldn't change

where they apply.

Two students were willing to let her follow them through the admissions process.

Cole Clemens, a senior in Tennessee, and DeMar Goodman, who lives in Georgia.

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