Washington ? National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Friday race could be a factor in selecting colleges’ students, embracing a cornerstone of affirmative action that President Bush has avoided.

“It is appropriate to use race as one factor among others in achieving a diverse student body,” the president’s most prominent black adviser said in a written statement.

The statement distanced Rice from some of the president’s most conservative advisers — and to an extent from Bush’s own position.

In a narrowly tailored brief for a Supreme Court case, the president’s lawyers argued Thursday that the University of Michigan’s admissions system fails the constitutional test of equal protection for all and ignores race-neutral alternatives that could boost minority presence on campuses.

The Supreme Court could use the Michigan case to review a 25-year-old affirmative action ruling that said quotas were unconstitutional but left room for race being a factor in admissions.

While Bush and his lawyers did not address whether race could ever be a consideration, Rice’s statement endorsed that aspect of the landmark 1978 Bakke decision.