Aya Waller-Bey, a U-M Sociology Ph.D. candidate appeared as a guest speaker in NPR’s Code Switch podcast in an episode titled “In college admission, trauma is shorthand for Blackness” on April 25, 2026. In the episode, she speaks about her first-hand experiences working in college admissions and her dissertation research that investigates the root causes of trauma narratives in college essays, particularly in Black students’ personal statements. Her research also examines the ways that the continued expectation and use of trauma narratives in Black students’ college essays impacts the perception of the Black experience as a whole.
