In accepting an appeal from a rejected white applicant to the University of Texas at Austin yesterday, the justices signaled interest in rolling back the type of race-based admissions the high court approved in 2003.

The 2003 ruling, which upheld a policy at the University of Michigan Law School, gave public and private schools a road map for setting up valid affirmative action programs -- and suggested the high court wouldn’t revisit the issue for 25 years. Colleges, which set up their rules under the assumption that the legal issue was settled, would have to revamp their policies if the court now outlaws race-based admissions, said Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University in New York.