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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.

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck down 45 years of precedent, the racial composition of Harvard’s student body has been watched closely. The University has anticipated legal action from critics — possibly including SFFA and a presidential administration that has taken an aggressive stance against affirmative action — if its demographics do not exhibit changes, but backlash from its student body if underrepresented minority enrollment falls.

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.

Thursday’s long-awaited data came months after Harvard has typically released demographic information on its freshman class: the most recent admissions cycle marked the first time the University delayed the release until the fall, when it is required to report the data to the federal government.

Harvard also continued to use a method adopted last year to report race data, calculating the proportion of students who report each racial background out of the pool who chose to identify their race. For the Class of 2027, Harvard instead reported the proportion of students who self-identified as a certain race out of the entire freshman class.

The new calculation method, as well as additional discrepancies which Harvard declined to explain last year, makes it difficult to know whether the reported shift in racial demographics between the Classes of 2027 and 2028 reflects the actual extent of changes to the composition of the College’s student body. 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.

Harvard’s acceptance rate rose this year to 4.18 percent from 3.65 percent, the highest since the Class of 2024 was admitted in 2020. The change was driven largely by a decrease in the number of students applying to Harvard: Harvard received 47,893 applications this year, compared to 54,008 applications to the Class of 2028, when applicants could choose not to submit their standardized test scores.

This cycle marked Harvard’s smallest applicant pool since the Class of 2024 — but still represented a 10 percent increase in applicants compared to the Class of 2023, the last year Harvard required students to send SAT or ACT scores.

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Of the 2,003 students admitted to the entering class, 1,675 students chose to enroll for this year — a yield rate of 83.6 percent, the fifth consecutive year that the College has had a yield rate greater than 83 percent.

Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 acknowledged the changes in admissions policies and lingering effects of the pandemic on the Class of 2029’s admissions process.

“Amidst several seismic shifts in higher education admissions over the past few years, as well as the effects of Covid, the Class of 2029 enters Harvard as worthy successors to the generations of students who’ve come before them,” Fitzsimmons wrote in a statement.

International students make up 15 percent of the enrolled class, a 3 percentage point decrease from last year’s freshman class but in line with previous years’ totals. The number is closely aligned with the proportion of international students — 15.8 percent — recorded in matriculation data from May, which was shared with a small group of students in August.

The College’s yield rate for international students was more than 90 percent, with eight individuals choosing to defer, according to a Harvard press release. The stable matriculation numbers came despite a summer of clashes between Harvard and the White House over international student enrollment.

The Trump administration revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification in May, threatening to halt its ability to enroll international students until a judge imposed a series of temporary blocks on the revocation. The State Department also stepped up screening of international students arriving at Harvard, and Trump also tried to prevent international students from entering the U.S. on Harvard-sponsored visas — another move that was swiftly halted in court.

At least one admitted Harvard freshman was unable to join her peers because of a separate entry ban imposed by the Trump administration on 12 countries.

Amid the uncertainty, Harvard took the unprecedented step of offering admitted international students the ability to accept a place at a non-American university along with their Harvard slot. Harvard also extended waitlist admissions past the traditional June 30 deadline, citing uncertainty over international students’ status.

In total, Harvard admitted 75 students off the waitlist, compared to 41 students last year and 27 the year before. Harvard College admissions director Joy St. John told some students in August that Harvard had admitted about 25 to 30 additional applicants off the waitlist.

When they submitted their applications, 12.1 percent of current first-years intended to study the humanities, 25.2 percent engineering, 26.7 percent natural sciences, 34.5 percent social sciences, and 0.4 percent a special concentration.

The Class of 2029 is also the first class admitted since Harvard expanded its financial aid offerings to provide free tuition to students from families making less than $200,000 per year. Forty-five percent of this year’s freshmen class is attending Harvard tuition-free, with more than half of those students receiving full financial aid that also covers room and board.

Harvard did not report the overall percentage of students receiving financial aid from the University. Twenty percent of incoming freshmen are first-generation college students, and 21 percent are estimated to be eligible for federal Pell grants.

“Even amid shifting economic realities, our commitment to access and opportunity remains unwavering. That nearly half of this class will attend Harvard tuition-free fills me with immense pride and optimism for the future they will help shape,” Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra wrote in Thursday’s press release.

—Staff writer Cassidy M. Cheng can be reached at cassidy.cheng@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cassidy_cheng28.

—Staff writer Elias M. Valencia can be reached at elias.valencia@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @eliasmvalencia.