In the first college admissions process since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action last year, Asian American enrollment at the most prestigious U.S. schools paints a mixed, uneven picture.
Some Ivy League schools, including Columbia and Brown universities, showed an increase in Asian Americans for the class of 2028, while others, like Yale and Princeton, showed a decrease. Harvard, the most selective of the group, didn’t see a change at all, according to enrollment numbers released on Wednesday by the school.
Experts said that it may take years to see the definitive impact of the decision, which restricted the consideration of race in college admissions. But it didn’t have the effect that many who opposed the policy had expected, they said.
“The big takeaway is that folks who supported the lawsuit were saying, this would be such a big win for Asian Americans, that race-based admissions was some type of barrier to our upward mobility,” said OiYan Poon, faculty affiliate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign office of community college research and leadership. “What we’re seeing is that that’s not really bearing out,” Poon added.
Columbia University — which, unlike the other Ivies, groups Pacific Islanders with Asian Americans — saw an increase of nine percentage points in its enrollment of Asian American applicants, while Brown saw an increase of four percentage points. At Yale, the racial group dropped by six points. And at Princeton, it decreased by 2.2 percentage points. It also decreased at Dartmouth by 1.5 percentage points. Asian Americans remained 37% of Harvard’s freshman class.
Meanwhile, Black student enrollment dipped at some schools including Brown and Harvard, in addition to several other high-profile schools like MIT, Amherst College and Washington University in St. Louis. Latino student enrollment also dropped at Brown, but increased at Harvard.
Conservative activist Edward Blum, who led Students For Fair Admissions, the group that brought the cases against affirmative action to the Supreme Court, told NBC News he thought the results from Harvard and other institutions were “mostly indecipherable without detailed racial data about standardized test scores, recruitment policies, advanced placement tests, legacy preferences and other factors.”
Harvard declined to comment on Blum’s statement but pointed to a letter from Hopi Hoekstra, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
“This is the first undergraduate class whose admission was impacted by the Supreme Court decision striking down the ability of colleges and universities to consider race and ethnicity as one factor among many in the admissions process,” Hoekstra said in the letter. “Because of that decision, the data on applicant race and ethnicity were unavailable to the Admissions Office until the admissions process had been completed for all students, including those on the waitlist.”
In addition, Harvard has altered its methodology from previous years, calculating the racial breakdown from the 92% of students who chose to report their race, rather than all freshman students enrolled. The school’s admissions office also released new numbers for the class of 2027, using the new methodology, as well, with 96% of students choosing to share their race, the student newspaper The Harvard Crimson reported. But the Crimson also noted some inconsistencies in the figures that the school had previously reported.
“We are reporting data only for students who reported their race to us," university spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo, who did not elaborate on the inconsistencies, said in a statement. "This approach provides a clear view of the students who are studying at Harvard.”
The University of Pennsylvania, which has not historically posted racial demographics, shared on its website that 57% of the class of 2028 identifies as a student of color. Whitney Soule, vice provost and dean of admissions at the university, said in a statement that “the proportion of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds has decreased 2% points compared to last year’s first-year class.”
The school defines those of underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds as students who identify as Black, Hispanic, Native American, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander origin.
The remaining Ivies — Cornell and Dartmouth — did not share the racial demographics of their freshman classes.
The new school year kicked off after the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard, stating that the policy violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. It doesn’t mean that race is entirely ruled out of the admissions process, however. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, “Nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.”
Julie J. Park, professor of education at the University of Maryland, said that with the class of 2028 being the first to start school following the decision, much is still “in flux” at schools. Universities are adapting to their new restrictions and some major factors, like testing, can also impact admissions for years to come. Park pointed out that during the height of the pandemic, most Ivy League schools pivoted to making standardized testing optional on applications. Earlier this year, schools like Yale, Brown and Dartmouth announced that they were reversing course.
“What that’s going to mean for Asian Americans is also unpredictable,” Park said. “Some people might say that’s going to favor certain groups, but we actually don’t know.”
Park also noted that the messy rollout of a revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which included problems with a new form, and delayed financial aid award letters, could’ve impacted enrollment as well. A survey conducted in March showed that 76% of students said the amount of financial aid awarded to them and the overall financial aid process impacted their college choice.
Poon, who is the author of “Asian American is Not a Color: Conversations about Race, Affirmative Action, and Family,” said that with race masked in the admissions process, concerns around biases are actually more prevalent. And it’s going to be difficult to determine, for example, why there were drops in Asian American enrollment at some schools as well.
“Race-conscious admissions really allowed, during the review, for colleges to check their process for biases. And I worry now that without race conscious admissions — because a big part of it was checking themselves — are we being biased?” Poon said. “How do you check for racial biases if you’re unconscious of race?”
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