This year’s entering class is the first since admissions decisions were constrained by the Supreme Court’s ban on racial preferences in the SFFA case, and lots of interesting data have been coming out. Some elite universities like Yale, despite swearing in an amicus brief that there was no way to retain racial diversity without using preferences, have seen their “underrepresented minority” demographics barely change. Others, like MIT and Johns Hopkins, have seen their Asian American populations increase with a concomitant decrease in Hispanic and Black matriculants and little change in the percentage of white students.
One pitfall to watch out for is that universities are changing the way they report the data. For example, in 2023 Johns Hopkins had reported 18% white students, compared to 20% Hispanic, 14% Black, 29% Asian American, 14% international, 2% Native American, and 1% unknown.
Hopkins has just released its class of…
