In the first college admissions process since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action last year, Asian American enrollment at America’s top schools presents a complex and uneven picture.
Some Ivy League schools, including Columbia and Brown, saw increases in Asian American enrollment for the Class of 2028, while others, including Yale and Princeton, saw declines. Harvard, the most selective of the group, saw no change at all, according to admissions figures released by the school on Wednesday.
Experts said the definitive impact of the decision to limit race considerations in college admissions may take years to play out, but it hasn’t had the impact many of the policy’s opponents had hoped for.
“The big point that those who support the lawsuit made is that this is a big win for Asian Americans, and that race-based admissions is some kind of barrier to our advancement,” said Oiyan Poon, a faculty member in the Community College Research and Leadership department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “What we’re seeing is that that’s not borne out in reality,” Poon added.
Columbia University, which has separate groups for Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans unlike the other Ivy League schools, saw its enrollment of Asian American applicants increase by 9 percentage points, while Brown University saw an increase of 4 percentage points. Yale University saw a 6 percentage point decline in the racial group. Princeton University saw a 2.2 percentage point decline. Dartmouth College also saw a 1.5 percentage point decline. Asian Americans remained at 37 percent of Harvard’s freshman class.
Meanwhile, some universities, such as Brown and Harvard, as well as other prominent schools such as MIT, Amherst College, and Washington University in St. Louis, saw declines in black student enrollment. Latino enrollment also declined at Brown, but increased at Harvard.
Edward Blum, a conservative activist who led the group Students for Fair Admissions, which filed a lawsuit against affirmative action in the Supreme Court, told NBC News that Harvard and other universities’ results are “almost impossible to decipher without detailed racial data on standardized test scores, admissions policies, Advanced Placement tests, tradition preferences and other factors.”
Harvard University declined to comment on Blum’s statement but pointed to a letter from Hopi Hoekstra, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
“This is the first undergraduate class whose admissions have been affected by the Supreme Court’s decision that invalidated the university’s ability to consider race and ethnicity as one of many factors in the admissions process,” Hoekstra said in the letter. “That decision meant that data on applicants’ race and ethnicity was not available to admissions offices until the admissions process had been completed for all students, including those on the waitlist.”
Additionally, Harvard changed its methodology from the previous year, calculating racial breakdown from the 92% of students who chose to report their race, rather than from all admitted freshmen. The university’s admissions office also released new figures for the Class of 2027 using the new methodology, showing that 96% of students chose to report their race, the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, reported. However, the Crimson also noted some inconsistencies in the university’s previously reported figures.
“We only report data from students who report their race,” university spokesman Jonathan Palumbo said in a statement. He did not elaborate on the discrepancies. “This approach provides a clearer picture of who students are at Harvard.”
The University of Pennsylvania, which has not previously released racial demographics, said on its website that 57% of its admitted class of 2028 are people of color. Whitney Soule, the university’s vice president and dean of admissions, said in a statement that “the proportion of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds decreased by 2 percentage points compared to last year’s freshman class.”
The school defines students from underrepresented racial or ethnic backgrounds as those who are black, Hispanic, Native American, Native Hawaiian or of other Pacific Islander ancestry.
The remaining Ivy League schools, Cornell University and Dartmouth College, did not share the racial makeup of their freshman class.
The new semester began after the Supreme Court ruled against the affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard University, finding the policies violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. But that doesn’t mean race won’t be considered at all in admissions. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, “Nothing prohibits an institution from considering an applicant’s story about how race has affected his or her life so long as it is specifically tied to the character and unique abilities that the applicant can contribute to the institution.”
Julie J. Park, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Education, said a lot is still “in flux” at schools, as the Class of 2028 will be the first to begin their new semester following the decision. As universities adjust to the new regulations, some key factors, such as testing, may also affect admissions for years to come. Park noted that most Ivy League schools have shifted course amid the pandemic to make standardized tests optional on applications. Earlier this year, schools including Yale, Brown and Dartmouth announced their shifts.
“We can’t predict what it means for Asian Americans,” Park said. “Some might say it favors certain groups, but we don’t really know.”
Park also noted that the chaotic rollout of the revised Free Application for Federal Student Aid, including issues with the new form and delays in notifying students of scholarship awards, may have also affected enrollment. In a survey conducted in March, 76% of students said the amount of scholarship money they were awarded and the overall scholarship process influenced their college choice.
Poon, author of “Asian American Is Not a Color: Conversations About Race, Affirmative Action, and Family,” said concerns about bias are actually more prevalent because race is hidden in the admissions process. It also will be harder to pinpoint why, for example, Asian American enrollment has declined at some schools.
“Racially conscious admissions really allowed universities to check their own process for bias during the screening process, and I worry now that without racially conscious admissions — a big part of the screening process is checking ourselves — we’re biased,” Poon said. “If we’re not race-conscious, how are we going to check for racial bias?”
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