The Trump administration is investigating whether two major California medical schools — UC San Diego and Stanford — engaged in racial discrimination in admissions and has demanded that they submit personal and academic data about their students in less than a month or face potentially damaging federal funding cuts.
In letters sent Wednesday to the schools as well as Ohio State University, Justice Department Assistant Atty. General Harmeet K. Dhillon said the investigation “will focus on potential race discrimination in medical school admissions” and said officials have until April 24 to submit seven years of admissions data.
Information requested includes information about students’ race, their medical college entrance examination scores, home addresses and zip codes. The DOJ also sought information about campus diversity, equity and inclusion policies or programs and messages between schools and pharmaceutical companies that relate to admissions matters. A UC San Diego official, who was not authorized to speak to the media about the investigation, shared the text of the letter with The Times following data requests.
Stanford and Ohio State officials said they had received similar notices. On Thursday, Dhillon — the DOJ’s top civil rights chief — posted to X about the investigation: “We did this yesterday. Among other things!” Dhillon wrote Above is the link to the media coverage.
UC San Diego spokeswoman Laura Margoni 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 spokeswoman Cecilia Arradza said the medical school “prohibits unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.”
Ohio State University spokesman Ben Johnson said OSU is “fully in compliance” with state and federal laws on admissions. “We have received the letter and will respond appropriately,” Johnson said.
Millions of dollars in research grant funding from the National Institutes of Health are potentially at risk. In 2025, NIH will give approximately $36 billion to universities, most of it to medical school researchers. The institute distributed $575 million to Stanford, $427 million to UC San Diego, and $210 million to The Ohio State University.
The data requests are similar to those the DOJ referenced in a court filing last month against the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, which the government accused of using a “systemically racist approach to admissions” that favors black and Latino applicants over white and Asian American applicants.
The organizations Do No Harm and Students for Fair Admissions, as well as white applicants who claim they were rejected from the school because of their race, originally put forward the lawsuit in 2025 before the Trump administration joined the case.
In its filing, the DOJ said it reviewed the mean Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT, scores obtained from UCLA for four consecutive years starting with the incoming class of 2021. The government said those scores show a lower average for black and Latino matriculants (506 to 509) than white and Asian American (513 to 516).
UCLA Medical does not have a published minimum MCAT score requirement and uses a holistic evaluation process that considers areas outside of test scores and grades, similar to the practices at UC San Diego, Stanford, and The Ohio State University.
A spokesperson for the UCLA Medical School said it is committed to ‘fair processes’ in admissions and follows state and federal anti-discrimination laws.
The latest investigation joins a growing list of Trump administration confrontations with California higher education institutions, focused on allegations of admissions discrimination or anti-Semitism.
In an ongoing case, California and 16 Democratic state attorneys general are fighting a Department of Education order that UC, California State University and other campuses submit seven years of detailed admissions data, including race, gender and GPA information. The Trump administration has said it could use the data to determine whether there are legal violations in admissions, which could lead to schools paying fines.
Those data presentations were due on Wednesday. But on Tuesday, a Boston-based federal district judge overseeing the case granted public colleges in the states an extension on the filing while he argues whether to impose further restrictions on data collection while the case proceeds. US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV said he would render a decision by April 3.
Universities said data requests are too cumbersome to prepare quickly with accuracy, could violate student privacy, and are concerned that the Education Department has followed a rushed process — months instead of the usual years — to expand its data collection efforts.
In a more recent action last month, the federal government sued UC for alleged “severe and pervasive” employment discrimination against Jewish and Israeli workers at UCLA. A UCLA spokesperson responded that it “stands firmly behind the decisive steps we have taken to combat anti-Semitism.”
Since August, UCLA has been battling a $1.2 billion settlement demand from the government to close the DOJ investigation, which alleges the university violated federal law by using race in admissions, identifying transgender women based on their gender identity and not adequately responding to complaints of alleged anti-Semitic incidents during the 2024 pro-Palestinian camp.
A federal court case has largely stopped short of demanding fines and ideological campus changes, though UC says it is in open talks with the federal government and has not publicly shut down the possibility of a smaller settlement.
