Asian student enrollment drops at UMD after Supreme Court ends affirmative action

McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md. (Amina Lampkin/The Black Explosion)

First-year Asian student enrollment for the class of 2028 dropped more between 2023 and 2024 than in the last three decades at the University of Maryland, according to admissions data published by the university.

The 3.8% decline reflects the first class of university students impacted by the Supreme Court’s six to three decision to overturn affirmative action in June 2023, ending universities' abilities to consider race as a status in admission decision-making.

First-time student enrollment for Black students dropped as well, but only by 0.16%, keeping the mean enrollment steadily above 11% since 2020. In contrast, White student enrollment rose for a second time by 3% after consistently falling for four consecutive years between 2018 and 2022.

The university’s Black Student Union said the recent admissions data “is both alarming and indicative of deeper systemic issues within our educational system” in a statement to The Black Explosion.

“It suggests barriers that may be preventing prospective students from accessing higher education,” the statement read.

The university’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions expected the drop in enrollment of students of color after conducting a mock race-blind application review.

“We found that without using race as a factor, the numbers of students of color were decreased in the pool of students that were deemed admissible to the university,” Shannon Gundy, the Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management in Undergraduate Admissions, said.

Gundy said that due to the findings, the admissions office has made efforts to maintain diversity by convincing accepted applicants to enroll at the university.

“I think the impact of that work was shown in the outcomes [of student enrollment],” Gundy said.

“The slight decrease that we had in African American [students] and the slight increase that we had in Latino students was something that we were pleased about,” she said.

“I think that our results would have been less successful,” Gundy said, “if we had [not] implemented so much in the world of yield.”

Before the Supreme Court ruling, the admissions office considered 26 factors, including race, during the admissions process, according to Gundy.

In place of race as a factor in admissions, the university added an additional prompt for prospective students asking how race has impacted their lives. Gundy says that because of this, “students, regardless of their race, were able to give us information about the impact of diversity may have had on their lives and that was considered as part of our full student review.”

The prompt, sent to The Black Explosion by James Massey, the Director of Undergraduate Admissions, reads, “we know that diversity benefits the educational experience of all students, the University of Maryland values diversity in all of its many forms . . . please describe how you have learned, grown, been inspired or developed skills through one or more components of diversity.”

The impact of new admissions policies will not be fully understood, according to Louis Seidman, a Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University.

Regardless of the court’s decision, Seidman said, the schools have the ability to change certain aspects of their admission criteria.

“Not relying on standardized tests, giving people preference in particular geographic areas, [taking] into account socio-economic data [and evaluating] on an individual basis whether race has played a role in the students' development,” Seidman said. “We just need some time to go by maybe three to four years, and the courts need to clarify exactly what the decision means.”

Students for Fair Admissions, the group that brought the case that overturned affirmative action in front of the Supreme Court, sent letters on Sept. 17, questioning whether schools were complying with the court's decision to Yale, Princeton and Duke.Gundy said the university has not received similar notices.

The university holds records of the admissions process and is willing to make that information available if questions arise but, as of now, the admissions department is not fearful of a lawsuit, she said.

Gundy said that the Office of Undergraduate Admissions is working within the law.

“That being said, we’re also not backing off of our efforts to have a diverse campus,” Gundy said.