PHILADELPHIA — Colleges were bracing for a decline in Black and Latino freshmen at many of the nation's elite institutions following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year to ban race-conscious decisions.

Nationally, so far, that appears to be the case at some schools: Amherst College, a small liberal arts school in Massachusetts, reported an 8 percentage point drop in Black students, while the decline at Massachusetts Institute of Technology among Black, Latino, American Indian and Pacific Islander students was 9 percentage points. Other colleges, including Tufts and the University of Virginia have experienced declines, too.

Though the dips appear to be smaller, the same is true for Philadelphia-area schools.

The University of Pennsylvania, which published its statistics Friday, said 23% of its incoming class were U.S. citizens and permanent residents from underrepresented minorities, including Black, Latino and American Indian and Pacific Islander. That's down 2 percentage points from last year. Penn did not provide a breakdown of Black and Latino students specifically.

"We typically do not post details about the racial subcategories represented among our first-year students," said Whitney Soule, Penn's dean of admissions. "Rather, we hope that the information we do provide demonstrates our commitment to the breadth of diversity, including first generation to college, Pell eligibility, broader categories of race/ethnicity, international, etc. in Penn's first-year enrollment." Pell grants are geared toward lower-income students.

While acknowledging the decline in students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, Soule said: "Our class continues to represent similar proportions of students who are first generation to college, Pell eligible, and students of color."

Overall, the class includes 57% students of color, the same as last year. Asian students also are in that category.

Sean Vereen, co-president of Heights Philadelphia, an organization that helps Philadelphia school students get to and through college, acknowledged Penn's efforts in considering socioeconomic factors and geography to help ensure diversity in the wake of the court's decision.

"We don't know how all of this will play out over time," he said. "We are really in the beginning stages of understanding what the impact of the decision is... There are ways for us to address racial diversity when we think about this in a more broad term around socioeconomic equality and inclusion at schools."

At Haverford College, 7.2% of U.S.-based students in the first-year class identified as Black, compared to 8.3% last fall. The percentage of Hispanic students declined from 11.5% to 10.2%. Overall, Haverford's domestic students of color declined by 1.6 percentage points; that also includes a 0.8 percentage point drop in Asian students.

Swarthmore College, another small, private, highly selective school, did not provide a breakdown of its first-year students by race, saying that was not yet available. But college spokesperson Alisa Giardinelli said 52% of Swarthmore's first-year class are domestic students of color, compared to 56% last year, though she cautioned that numbers are preliminary and wouldn't be confirmed until October.

At Princeton, the number of Hispanic students declined by one percentage point to 9%, and Black students by just 0.1% to 8.9%.

The largest drop there actually came in Asian American students, which fell from 26% to 23.8%. The Ivy League institution did not respond to questions about its numbers. Neither did Haverford.

Many colleges, including Villanova and Bryn Mawr, have not yet released a racial breakdown of their classes.

The reasons for the dip

Some college officials blamed the court decision for their decline.

"Following the SFFA decision, we are unable to use race in the same way, and that change is reflected in the outcome for the Class of 2028," Stu Schmill, dean of admissions at MIT, told MIT News last month. "Indeed, we did not solicit race or ethnicity information from applicants this year, so we don't have data on the applicant pool. But I have no doubt that we left out many well-qualified, well-matched applicants from historically underrepresented backgrounds who, in the past, we would have admitted — and who would have excelled."

The declines around the country were not a surprise to Adam Nguyen, whose company Ivy Link advises students on getting into the most elite colleges. He predicted numbers would fall over the next three to five years, and he sees the declines reported so far as an indication of what likely will become a larger trend.

"Schools don't want to run afoul of the law," he said.

After the court decision, colleges were looking at ways of broadening their applicant pools, targeting certain zip codes to ensure greater diversity, opening access more broadly to students from lower socioeconomic groups, and reconsidering policies, such as giving preferences to children of alumni, known as legacies.

But Nguyen said those efforts likely will take time.

"Whether those will achieve racial diversity remains to be seen," he said.

He said among his clients, he has seen a drop in Black and Latino students applying to Penn and Swarthmore, more notably at Swarthmore and other small, private colleges. Fewer of those accepted also are choosing to enroll, he said.

The court decision

The court ruled in June 2023 that colleges could not consider the race of applicants as a factor in deciding whether students should be admitted with the exception of it being raised, for example, in a college essay, on how race affected an applicant's life.

That overturned more than 40 years of admissions policy at many of the nation's campuses, raising concern that it would reduce the number of often marginalized Black and Latino students at many elite colleges and harm schools' efforts to create diverse classes.

The lawsuits were brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by Edward Blum, a conservative activist who has spent years battling affirmative action policies. Plaintiffs had accused both Harvard and the University of North Carolina of discriminating against Asian and/or white students through the use of race-conscious admissions policies.

Even before the court's decision, considering race was already barred in certain states, including California and Michigan. In those two states, some colleges have reported a decline in Black and Latino students as a result.

In its announcement, Penn also provided other statistics about its incoming class of 2,396 students, including that overall, 19% are first-generation college students and 21% are estimated to be eligible for Pell grants.

Nearly 150 come from Philadelphia, and overall, students represent 47 states and 92 nations.

Penn admitted 5.4% of its 65,236 applicants, representing the university's most selective year on record.

Penn, in Friday's note to future applicants, addressed diversity.

"It's impossible to truly quantify the diversity and vibrancy of our community in numbers," Penn said, "The below percentages in no way translate into your individual 'chances' of being admitted to Penn. We are, above all, interested in who you are, and the many things that make you unique..."

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