MIT SEEMS TO BE COMPLYING (OR AT LEAST MOVING IN THAT DIRECTION):  After the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023), people wondered whether highly selective schools would comply.  Well, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s numbers are now in.

Last year, 15% of the incoming freshman class was Black/African American and 16% was Hispanic/Latino.  This year, it will be 5% and 11% respectively.  Asian American enrollment, on the other hand, has risen from 40% to 47%.  White/Caucasian enrollment is more or less steady (38% vs. 37%).

The good news is that the minority students who weren’t admitted to MIT this year because MIT couldn’t give them preferential treatment probably stand a better chance of getting a STEM degree at their second-choice school than they would have had at MIT.

*Note that the numbers in the chart aren’t perfectly comparable.  They add to 107% in last year’s class and 101% in this year’s.  I assume that’s either because (1) more students happened to put themselves in multiple categories last year than this; or (2) MIT did not allow students to put themselves in multiple categories this year and the 101% is just a rounding error.  That means the slight change in White/Caucasian enrollment is meaningless.