David Inoue
For most students, the school year is well underway, with some already preparing for their first sets of exams. For many of us, we have been watching and waiting to see what the demographics of the class would look like at many of the most highly competitive schools for admissions. Slowly, this information has been trickling out.
One of the first schools to release its demographic data for the class of 2028 admissions was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which saw a decrease of 9 percent, from 25 percent to 16 percent, of students identifying as being from underrepresented minority groups, specifically, Black, Hispanic, Native American, Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. On the other side, white students increased representation by 1 percent and Asian students by 7 percent, seemingly the beneficiaries of the change in demographics. Those who represented and supported the efforts of the Asian students who were part of the Supreme Court case immediately took a victory lap for their apparent impact on the demographics of MIT’s admissions class.
But then we began to see data from other schools. At Yale, the proportion of Black students remained the same at 14 percent, Hispanic students increased 1 percent and Asian students went down 6 percent. Tufts and Amherst, arguably very similar schools in the same region, saw very different results with very little change at Tufts but a significant drop at Amherst from 24 percent to 11 percent. Duke increased from 27 percent to 28 percent.
What was most interesting for me were the results from my own alma mater, Cornell. While Hispanic enrollment dropped from 16.7 percent to 10.5 percent and Black enrollment declined from 11.7 percent to 7.7 percent, the only increase was in Asian enrollment, but at a nearly negligible change of 0.2 percent. For me, this tells a very different story from just the changes in who is being admitted, but more who is reporting their racial and ethnic information.
While the elimination of using race as a factor in admissions is problematic, it seems the further concern is that students are now choosing not to report race, which was the case at Cornell, with an increase from 183 to 314 students not indicating their race on their application.
This is a disturbing trend in light of the Supreme Court case, which renders that question irrelevant to the admissions process. As many of these schools have financial-need blind admissions, they are also now race blind. And yet, just as it is important for students with financial need to apply for aid, schools also need the data on whom they matriculate. We cannot fully know the impact of the Supreme Court case if we don’t have accurate data.
The bigger picture on admissions though is what impact will be felt throughout the college admissions process. The pool of students impacted at the eight Ivy League schools is actually fairly minimal, and most likely with their highly selective admissions processes, will still find and cultivate a diverse student body through more-detailed scrutiny of applications through the use of essays and what is often described as the more holistic view of the student candidate.
My fear is what impact this will have on admissions at larger state schools. California is one example where the consideration of race has been banned for several years, and there has been a clear stratification of where students go to school. The most highly selective UC schools have much smaller proportions of underrepresented students than the Cal State schools.
While the California schools have attempted to institute more holistic means of selecting students, they are not able to do it at the same level most private schools with smaller enrollments are able, and the cost to do such labor-intensive screenings also challenges state school budgets.
Between the uncertainties of the admissions process and the meltdowns of the financial-aid application system and layered on top of the Covid pandemic, this year’s incoming student class has been through a lot. Just as we celebrate the diverse experiences and backgrounds of our own JACL scholarship recipients, we continue to hope that the college admissions process continues to evolve and capture the individuality of all the applicants to ensure their campuses fully represent the population of this country, not just those best positioned to apply to school.
