The Real Story Behind the Demographic Swings in MIT Admissions

This article first appeared on The Federalist Society

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) became the first highly selective college to release data on the racial composition of the class of 2028. Significantly, this is the first opportunity the public has had to examine the impact of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to prohibit race-based affirmative action in admissions at elite universities. The MIT report shows stark demographic changes for incoming first-year students from the previous year.

While the percentage of white matriculants remained largely unchanged—a drop of just one percentage point from the class of 2027—the percentage of Asian American students skyrocketed from forty percent to forty-seven percent. Hispanic student representation dropped from sixteen to eleven percent, and black student enrollment cratered from fifteen to five percent.

This initial dataset seems to confirm predictions that, in the absence of affirmative action, certain racial and ethnic diversity will decrease at the most elite schools.

Other top colleges will soon release their own data on the demographic make-up of recently admitted students. If similar results are announced, it could suggest that there is essentially no legal daylight between the racial preferences outlawed by SFFA and other intentional efforts to manipulate racial diversity. Indeed, less severe numerical shifts will invite scrutiny regarding admissions procedures at top colleges.

Another demographic swing evident in the MIT report is the increase in the percentage of first-generation and economically disadvantaged students. Economics professors Peter Arcidiacono and Tyler Ransom report:

Compared with the classes of 2024 through 2027, the number of first-generation college students rose from 18 percent to 20 percent, and the number of students eligible for Pell grants increased from 20 percent to 24 percent. MIT actually became more diverse based on socioeconomic measures.

Arcidiacono and Ransom’s observations illustrate the complexity of assessing the full impact of SFFA on diversity at MIT. Taken together, the MIT numbers indicate that more socioeconomically disadvantaged, first-generation Asian American college students were admitted over wealthier black and Hispanic applicants from highly educated families.

That interpretation of the MIT data comports with objections critics have made for years regarding the effect of affirmative action: that it disadvantages poor students of disfavored races, such as Asian Americans, in favor of well-to-do applicants of favored races. The late Althea Nagai, longtime Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Equal Opportunity, explained this phenomenon in her study, Too Many Asian Americans.

Moreover, it’s anyone’s guess precisely what the Asian American breakdown is since, as Scalia Law Professor David Bernstein notes, people of Asian descent make up approximately 65% of the world’s population. The MIT class of 2028 may well include students who are Filipino, Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, Burmese, Malaysian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean (North and South), Pakistani, Mongolian, Vietnamese, Laotian, Hmong—just to name a few. These students would have wildly different cultures, religions, appearances, and many other traits. Contrary to MIT administrators’ assertions, the demographic changes might instead indicate an unprecedented level of diversity among individuals across the incoming class.

In an interview released as a companion to the report, MIT Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill expressed his thoughts on the composition of the class of 2028. Schmill expressed grief that MIT “left out many well-qualified, well-matched applicants from historically under-represented backgrounds.” Indeed, the MIT report indicates that 95.5% of applicants were rejected. But this is a feature of elite admissions, not a bug. Instead of lamenting those who will no doubt go on to greatness elsewhere, we might be better off celebrating the extraordinarily diverse 4.5% of applicants who proved to be truly the best qualified—whatever their race.

Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public policy matters. Any expressions of opinion are those of the author. We welcome responses to the views presented here. To join the debate, please email us at info@fedsoc.org.

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