Black and Hispanic Enrollment Drops, Asian Enrollment Rises for Harvard’s Class of 2029

The proportion of Black and Hispanic students enrolled in Harvard College’s freshman class dropped in the second year after the Supreme Court overturned race-conscious undergraduate admissions, according to data released by Harvard on Thursday.

Hispanic enrollment in the Class of 2029 experienced the largest decline, falling from 16 percent of the Class of 2028 to 11 percent this year — a reversal from a slight rise in the year following the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision. Black enrollment fell 2.5 percentage points to 11.5 percent of the class, a smaller decrease than last year’s 4 percentage point drop.

The enrollment of Asian American freshmen rose four percentage points, increasing from 37 percent to 41 percent, after staying roughly constant between the Classes of 2027 and 2028. Harvard did not state what proportion of its freshman class identified as white or reported multiple racial backgrounds, and eight percent of students chose not to report their race.

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The latest numbers also reflect the first admissions cycle since President Donald Trump was elected for his second term and the first since Harvard reinstated its standardized test requirement, which had been waived for five years following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Application numbers substantially decreased, increasing the College’s acceptance rate on paper and suggesting that requiring test scores may have deterred thousands of prospective applicants.

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{snip} Students who self-identified with multiple racial backgrounds are reflected in the percentages for each race.

The moderate decline in Harvard’s enrollment of Black and Hispanic students comes after peer institutions — such as Yale and Princeton — also reported drops in underrepresented minority enrollment, with Princeton’s Black freshman enrollment hitting its lowest proportion since 1968.

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