Asian American enrollment up at elite colleges after affirmative action ruling, but unevenly

Asian American freshman representation has risen at the nation’s most selective colleges in the first admissions cycle following the Supreme Court’s ban on race-conscious admissions, but the gains are far from uniform across individual elite institutions, according to a new analysis of federal data.

The Manhattan Institute report, authored by fellow Robert VerBruggen, examines freshman enrollment at more than 1,000 four-year colleges from 2010 to 2024, drawing on federal data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. The fall 2024 class was the first admitted after the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which barred colleges from weighing race in admissions decisions.

Across the Ivy League, the Asian share of incoming freshmen rose from roughly 30% to 32%, while the white share climbed from 35% to 37%. The Black share fell from about 11% to 8% and the Hispanic share from 16% to 15%. Both came in well below pre-ruling predictions. During the SFFA trial, Harvard’s own expert testified that ending racial preferences alone, with no other admissions changes, would cut the school’s Black freshman share by more than half, the report said.

The picture shifts at the individual school level. Asian enrollment fell at some institutions, including Yale, where the share dropped from 29% to 24%. Meanwhile, it climbed sharply at others such as Columbia, where it rose from 24% to 32%. VerBruggen said some schools appear to have kept their racial makeup largely unchanged since the ruling, and that any shift in an unexpected direction “warrants further scrutiny.”

A separate caveat points the other way. The report said the share of freshmen who declined to report their race rose by roughly 2 percentage points after the ruling. A prior California analysis found such students were mostly white or Asian, meaning the Asian gains documented here may be understated. Still, VerBruggen said it would be unfair to assume elite schools are failing to comply with the ruling solely because Black enrollment did not collapse.

The findings matter most to Asian Americans, against whom Harvard was alleged to have discriminated in the case that ended race-conscious admissions. The report also found that at selective schools, mandatory testing correlates with lower Black and Hispanic enrollment and higher Asian enrollment. The correlation comes as elite institutions restore testing mandates that had been paused during the pandemic.

The wide school-level variance suggests that individual institutions still hold significant discretion over how the ruling reshapes their incoming classes. This means outcomes for Asian American applicants can vary widely from one school to the next. The combination of the SFFA ruling and the return of testing requirements may compound any advantages for Asian American applicants at selective schools, though the report cautions that its findings are preliminary.

The report urges continued monitoring of admissions trends and fuller disclosure of school-level data in the years ahead.