Princeton, Yale Asian students decline despite affirmative action ruling

Asian students are being discriminated against by elite colleges even after the Supreme Court ruled affirmative action unconstitutional, the Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) group alleges.

Princeton, Yale, and Duke have come under scrutiny as the demographic breakdown of their incoming classes has barely budged despite the ruling, apart from a decline in Asian students, according to data published by the schools.

At Duke, the percentage of Asian students dropped from 35% to 29%, according to the New York Times, and at Yale it plummeted from 30% to 24%, their published statistics show. Black and Hispanic student percentages held steady at both.

Princeton University’s school newspaper boasted that their incoming class breakdown was “untouched by [the] affirmative action ban.” However, the percentage of Asian student enrolled dropped from 26% to 24%, according to the student publication.

“It is likely that universities that did not have a decline in the [percentage] of racial minorities are using a proxy for race [in the admissions process] instead of direct racial classifications and preferences,” Blum, the legal strategist who brought the case that overturned affirmative action before the Supreme Court, alleged to The Post.

At other schools, such as MIT, the percentage of Black, Hispanic, Native American and Pacific Islander students in the Class of 2028 dropped to 16%, compared with 25% in the prior year. Meanwhile the percentage of Asian students climbed from 40% to 47%.

SFFA’s successful case brought before the Supreme Court against Harvard University alleged the college systematically discriminated against high-achieving Asian applicants by scoring them lower on a subjective “personality” metric, allegedly in order to increase class diversity.

It led to the court ruling in a 6-to-3 vote last June that race-based affirmative action was unconstitutional.

“Our experts concluded that the elimination of race would cause a significant decline in the enrollment of African Americans and Hispanics and a significant boost to Asian Americans and to a lesser degree whites,” Blum explained. “That wasn’t really disputed by either party.”

International admissions at Princeton, Yale, and Duke, which includes enrollees arriving to study from Asian countries, were not impacted by more than a percent either way, according to their published figures.

Blum, who has been crusading against affirmative action in multiple areas for years, told The Post he believes schools must be exploiting some sort of loophole: “We don’t know what they did. We don’t know what Yale is doing … It’s a head scratcher.”

Promising to investigate further, he added: “Based on SFFA’s extensive experience, your racial numbers are not possible under true neutrality,” he said in a letter sent to the three colleges.

“You are now on notice. Preserve all potentially relevant documents and communications.”

One loophole the Supreme Court case left open is that nothing prevents students from writing about their race or ethnicity in their application essay — something which could appeal to admissions officers.

“The court ruling was pretty clear that it certainly wasn’t prohibiting students from ever talking about their race and ethnicity,” Katherine Meyer, a fellow of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, told The Post. “Admissions offices can certainly read a student writing about their race and ethnicity and how that shapes some characteristic.”

In response to affirmative action being thrown out, Princeton changed its admissions essays in August of 2023, and now asks students to “reflect on how your lived experiences will impact the conversations you will have in the classroom, the dining hall or other campus spaces.”

College admissions consultant and Command Education CEO Chris Rim thinks anti-Asian bias in the admissions process is still happening.

“Asian students are unable to obscure their racial identity on their applications because of their names —in many cases, top schools can easily determine which students are Asian and continue their practice of unfairly rejecting them in order to manufacture diversity,” he explained.

Princeton has been upfront about its approach to the Supreme Court’s ruling.

University president Christopher Eisgruber called the ruling “unwelcome and disappointing” and promised the university will “work vigorously to preserve — and, indeed, grow — the diversity of our community.”

He also said in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer the school would be “as creative as we can within the boundaries of the law.”

A Princeton University spokesperson told The Post the school “carefully adhered to the requirements set out by the Supreme Court.”

The school added: “Before the ruling, race was just one of many factors considered in our holistic admission process that involves a highly individualized assessment of the applicant’s talents, achievements and potential to contribute to learning at Princeton; now race plays no role in admission decisions.”

Duke University and Yale University did not respond to requests for comment from The Post.

To Rim, who coaches students through the admissions process, it’s more important than ever for schools to be transparent — and to prove they aren’t still indulging in discriminatory practices.

“Bombshells dropped during the Supreme Court hearings have made it all the more urgent for elite institutions to demonstrate transparency about their admissions practices,” he said. “It is imperative that schools clearly define what they factor into admissions decisions, how important each factor is, and the measures they are taking to guard against bias in the process.”