The percentages of incoming students in the College identifying as Black and Hispanic decreased slightly between the 2023–24 and 2024–25 academic years, while the percentages of white and Asian students increased, according to the first detailed enrollment data since the Supreme Court ruled affirmative action in college admissions unconstitutional in 2023.
The University reports data on newly enrolled students annually in the Common Data Set (CDS), a comprehensive set of statistics that includes demographic data, high school academic performance, and financial aid that institutions across the country disclose. The CDS for the 2024–25 school year, which included detailed data for the Class of 2028, was released last month.
Roughly 18 percent of domestic students in the Class of 2028 who reported their race and ethnicity were Hispanic—a drop of about four percentage points from the Class of 2027, the largest demographic shift reported in the data. Black enrollment decreased by about one percentage point, while white and Asian enrollment increased by about two and three percentage points, respectively.
The Black and Hispanic shares of domestic students in the Class of 2028 were the smallest since the University began releasing the CDS after the 2021–22 school year, while the white and Asian shares were the largest.
The proportion of last year’s incoming students who were awarded financial aid—33 percent—was also the lowest since the University has released the CDS; the share was 37 percent for the Class of 2027.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that college admissions practices explicitly factoring in applicants’ race—typically affirmative action policies that favor historically disadvantaged groups—were unconstitutional. The University had submitted a brief in the case supporting Harvard’s arguments against an affirmative action ban.
However, the court left the door open for universities to continue considering how students’ experiences have been affected by their race. “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
A University spokesperson told the Maroon after the Supreme Court decision that “the University will comply with all applicable laws while continuing efforts to engage with applicants of high ability from all backgrounds in order to foster a diverse and welcoming environment.”
Unlike some other selective universities, UChicago did not change or modify its supplemental essay prompts in response to the ruling to offer applicants a chance to expand on their backgrounds.
On August 7, President Donald Trump directed the Department of Education to require that universities disclose race, gender, test score, and grade point average (GPA) data to the federal government to ensure compliance with the Supreme Court decision. Previous Trump administration directives have also claimed that diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are in violation of Students for Fair Admissions.
The impacts of the ban have varied across institutions. Columbia University saw its freshman-year Black population drop by nearly half, for example, while Yale’s Black and Hispanic enrollment shares remained constant.
The University initially did not report any data on admitted students’ SAT and ACT scores or GPAs in the latest CDS, nor did it disclose the share of incoming first-years who chose to submit their test scores in their applications. Those figures—which were largely unchanged from last year—were posted online only after the Maroon sent the Office of Institutional Analysis questions about the omission.
The admission rate for male applicants—5.6 percent—was nearly 50 percent higher than the rate for female applicants, at less than 4 percent. That gender gap has widened every year since the University began releasing the CDS.
The number of transfer students that came to UChicago in the 2024–25 academic year nearly doubled compared to 2023–24, from 124 to 231 enrolled students, the largest ever reported in the CDS. The share of international students also grew slightly to a high of over 18 percent.
The Office of Undergraduate Admissions did not respond to questions about admissions policy changes’ effects on student demographics and other trends in the 2024–25 CDS.
Sincerely, a disillusioned DEI beneficiary / Aug 19, 2025 at 12:59 pm
Exactly as anyone with a functioning brain knew it would.
For decades, the university cowered behind the fig leaf of “holistic review” to launder racial gerrymandering into respectability. The Court forced their hand, and poof! Overnight the illusion collapsed.
Here’s the cruel irony: the very groups who claimed to be uplifted are now revealed as dependent on favoritism. That stigma—the question of whether we could have made it without DEI welfare—will linger over us long after the DEI bureaucracy dies. That is the real legacy of race-based admissions: to brand its supposed beneficiaries as less capable.
Make no mistake: This system was not built out of generosity. No, it was a self-indulgent project of mostly-white elites desperate to atone for ancestral sins they never personally suffered. They fetishized race as a moral theater, exploiting minorities as props to soothe their own guilt. In the process, they infantilized entire groups, teaching them that their worth came not from ability, but from being someone else’s instrument of penance.
It may pain many to root against their own alma mater or to welcome federal scrutiny. Yet those who built and defended the DEI regime deserve the collapse that follows; they bartered away merit, mocked standards, and sneered at dissent.
A final point: Minorities should not be lectured by the very people who advanced this system while parading it as virtue. By that regime’s logic, they were the “beneficiaries,” yet the architects never regarded them as equals. They treated them as less capable—subjects for patronage dressed up as uplift. That is the real racism: the quiet contempt beneath the benevolence.
At last, The mask is off. Their era is finished.
Desi / Aug 28, 2025 at 9:53 pm
The stats show insignificant changes percentage-wise. The same whites and Asians who were admitted under DEI by pretending to be Black and Hispanic are now admitted as White and Asian. Simple. No difference. The losers who couldn’t get admitted under DEI still can’t get admitted under anti-DEI.