“It’s starting to feel like all the freshmen are Asian,” said Wu, an Asian American junior.

Last fall, 45% of Hopkins’ first-year students were Asian, the university reported in December, up from about 26% just two years ago. The massive shift came after the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision that forbade colleges from considering race in admissions, but other selective colleges did not see such a dramatic swing. It’s flummoxed experts and threatened Hopkins’ reputation as one of the most racially diverse campuses in its class.

Doug Donovan, a spokesperson for Johns Hopkins, declined requests for interviews with admissions officers. The university also did not respond to written questions. He said in a statement that Hopkins complies with federal law and does not consider race or ethnicity in admissions.

Researchers thought they would see “very marginal, minimal shifts” in Asian enrollment at elite universities like Hopkins after the U.S. banned affirmative action, said OiYan Poon, co-director at the College Admissions Future Co-Laborative.

So far, they’ve been mostly right. The share of Asian students at Columbia and Brown universities slightly increased from 2023 to 2024, the most recent year for which federal data is available, but it held steady or decreased at other Ivy League schools.

Students for Fair Admissions, the group that fought for the ban on affirmative action, was made up of white and Asian families who alleged that Harvard’s admissions process put them at an unfair disadvantage. Harvard now reports its first-year class is 41% Asian, up from 37% in 2023.

At Hopkins, the trend defies convention. From 2023 to 2024, Hopkins’ first-year class jumped from 26% to 41% Asian. The undergraduate student body as a whole rose from 23% Asian to 29% Asian in that time, while the share of Black and Hispanic students shrank.

For years, the university championed a number of initiatives to increase economic diversity, and racial diversity followed. In 2014, the campus quietly ended “legacy” admission preferences that gave an advantage to children, grandchildren and siblings of alumni, who were more likely to be white.

And in 2018, a $1.8 billion gift from alumnus Michael Bloomberg eliminated student loans from financial aid offers. In the seven years since the businessman’s gift, the percentage of Pell Grant-eligible, or limited-income, Hopkins students rose from 15.4% to 24.1%, the highest level in the university’s history.

During that time, the share of first-year students from underrepresented minority groups grew, from 22% in 2018 to 31% in 2023.

After the 2023 ban on affirmative action, the share of Black students in Hopkins’ first-year class nosedived. The year before the ban, Black students made up 10% of the first-year class. The year after, they amounted to just 3%.

Nationwide, students of color who scored high on the SAT were less likely to be enrolled at elite colleges in the first year after affirmative action ended, according Bryan Cook, director of higher education policy at the Urban Institute. This is “in part because of a perception that after affirmative action they wouldn’t be able to get in,” he said.

White and Asian students could also now, after the Supreme Court decision, feel more confident in their applications.

“There may be a shift in the applicant pool which impacts enrollment,” Cook said.

Asian culture is very visible on campus. One spring day, a group of Asian students were selling bubble tea, a popular Taiwanese drink, to fundraise for their table tennis team to get to nationals. A week later, students in the Filipino club were accepting donations in exchange for pie to the face.

Students milling around campus on a warm spring afternoon said there were stark differences in the racial makeup of Hopkins’ undergraduate classes. Half the undergraduate student body was admitted before the affirmative action ban, and half was admitted after.

Poon, who has been studying race-conscious admissions for much of her career and who is Asian, said she would need to “get under the hood” of the admissions process at Hopkins to better understand how the shift happened.

“I wonder what institutional priorities they were working with,” Poon said. “How did these priorities guide their recruitment strategies for that class, their reading and evaluation of applications, and how they ultimately selected and shaped their class?”

Hopkins now requires applicants to submit standardized test scores, which could influence who enrolls, Poon said. Like many colleges, Hopkins had stopped requiring SAT and ACT scores during the COVID-19 pandemic but recently reinstated the requirement. The U.S. Department of Education applauded that decision last month and noted the “substantial shifts” in first-year student demographics.

The “drastic spike” in Asian enrollment at Hopkins likely has to do with the university’s reputation, said Julie Park, a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park who studies race-conscious admissions. Even before affirmative action ended, about a quarter of the university’s student body was Asian, an unusually high share among elite colleges. The number has been slowly rising for over a decade.

“I think there can be a snowball-type effect,” Park said. “Like attracts like, and a school can get a reputation for being friendly to a particular group, which could encourage more students in that group to apply.”

Hopkins could also attract more Asian applicants because of its pre-med reputation, said Park. The university is known around the world for its top-tier medical school.

“The pre-professional medical track is very popular with a lot of families” in the Asian community, she said.

And while science, technology and math fields were diversifying under race-conscious admissions, some fear that trend will slow or even reverse, Park said.

Researchers only have one year of federal data for the college landscape post-affirmative action, and Park warned against making conclusions and predicting long-term trends. But universities’ self-reported demographics of their first-year classes offer some early hints at what’s ahead.

Noah Martinez, a Filipino American junior from Seattle, said one of the reasons he chose Hopkins was because of its diversity. But since affirmative action ended, he said, things have changed.

“The underclassmen are really not as diverse anymore,” he said. “It feels like everyone is Asian now.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5857016&forum_id=2#49817060)

lol imagine if the class were 45% black, Hispanic, or white instead. Would they say that’s a threat to diversity?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5857016&forum_id=2#49817071)

LOLOLOL how is this real

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5857016&forum_id=2#49817077)

LOL @ these mental gymnastics to avoid the obvious conclusion that MAYBE the niggers weren't qualified

>>>>>>>After the 2023 ban on affirmative action, the share of Black students in Hopkins’ first-year class nosedived. The year before the ban, Black students made up 10% of the first-year class. The year after, they amounted to just 3%.

Nationwide, students of color who scored high on the SAT were less likely to be enrolled at elite colleges in the first year after affirmative action ended, according Bryan Cook, director of higher education policy at the Urban Institute. This is “in part because of a perception that after affirmative action they wouldn’t be able to get in,” he said.

White and Asian students could also now, after the Supreme Court decision, feel more confident in their applications.

“There may be a shift in the applicant pool which impacts enrollment,” Cook said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5857016&forum_id=2#49817082)

This is such naked bullshit I can’t believe someone even wrote it. Why don’t they define “high?” Is “high” like 1200 or whatever the equivalent is now, which between 2014 and 2024 would get a URM into Harvard but now may not?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5857016&forum_id=2#49817085)