The Trump administration is investigating whether two prominent California medical schools — at UC San Diego and Stanford — engaged in racial discrimination in admissions and has demanded they submit personal and academic data about their students in less than a month or potentially face damaging federal funding cuts.

In letters sent Wednesday to the schools and as well as Ohio State University, Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said investigations “will focus on possible race discrimination in medical school admissions” and said officials have until April 24 to turn over seven years of admissions data.

The information requested includes information about students’ race, their Medical College Admission Test scores, home addresses and ZIP codes. The DOJ also asked for information about campus diversity, equity and inclusion policies or programs and messages between the schools and drug companies that touch on admissions matters. A UC San Diego official, who was not authorized to speak to media about the investigation, shared the text of letter with the data requests with The Times.

Officials at Stanford and Ohio State said they had received similar notices. On Thursday, Dhillon — the DOJ’s top civil rights chief — posted to X about the probes: “We did this yesterday. Among other things!” Dhillon wrote above a link to media coverage.

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 spokesperson Cecilia Arradaza 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.”

Ben Johnson, an Ohio State University spokesperson, said that OSU “fully compliant” with state and federal laws on admissions. “We’ve received the letter and will respond appropriately,” Johnson said.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in research grant funding from the National Institutes of Health is potentially at risk. In 2025, the NIH doled out about $36 billion to universities, much of it to medical school researchers. The institute distributed $575 million to Stanford, $427 million to UC San Diego and $210 million to Ohio State University.

The data requests are similar to those the DOJ referenced last month in a court filing against the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, which the government alleged uses a “systemically racist approach to admissions” that favors Black and Latino applicants over white and Asian American ones.

The organizations Do No Harm and Students for Fair Admissions, as well as a white applicant who claims she was rejected from the school because of her race, originally brought the suit forward in 2025 before the Trump administration joined the case.

In its filings, the DOJ said it reviewed median Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT, scores obtained from UCLA for four consecutive years beginning with the incoming class of 2021. Those scores, the government said, show lower medians for Black and Latino matriculants (506 to 509) compared with those for white and Asian American ones (513 to 516).

UCLA’s medical does not have a published minimum MCAT score requirement and uses a holistic evaluation process that considers areas outside test scores and grades, similar to practices at UC San Diego, Stanford and Ohio State University.

A UCLA medical school spokesperson has said it is committed to ‘fair processes” in admissions and follows state and federal anti-discrimination laws.

The latest investigations add to a growing list of Trump administration conflicts with California higher education institutions that have focused on allegations of admissions discrimination or antisemitism.

In one ongoing case, California and 16 Democratic state attorneys general are fighting a Department of Education mandate 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 if there are legal violations in admissions, which would lead to schools facing fines.

Those data submissions were due Wednesday. But on Tuesday, a Boston-based federal district judge overseeing the case gave public colleges in the states an extension on the filings while he weighs arguments on whether to further prohibit the data collection while the case proceeds. U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV said he will make a decision by April 3.

Universities said the data requests are too cumbersome to produce quickly with accuracy, could violate student privacy and said they have concerns that the Department of Education has followed a hasty process — months instead of the typical years — to expand its data collection efforts.

In another 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 by the decisive actions we have taken to combat antisemitism.”

Since August, UCLA has grappled with a $1.2-billion settlement demand from the government to close out DOJ investigations that alleged the university violated federal law by using race in admissions, recognizing transgender women by their gender identity and not responding adequately to complaints of alleged anti-Jewish incidents during a 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment.

A federal court case has largely put the fine and demands for ideological campus change on hold, although UC is said it is open talks with the federal government and has not publicly foreclosed the possibility of a smaller settlement.

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