More Blacks, Latinos apply for college, but admission rates decline, report finds

News Brief

Monday, July 14, 2025 — 8:54 am

An increasing number of Black and Latino students applied to colleges between fall 2023 and fall 2024, but fewer gained admission, results from a report conducted by the Urban Institute found, according to Insider Higher Ed. 

The number of Black applicants rose by 0.47 percentage points, and the number of Latino applicants increased by 0.65 percentage points, according to the report, which drew on data from 18 colleges and universities to determine the impacts of the 2023 Supreme Court decision Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which ruled against affirmative action in admissions. 

In the wake of the decision, the report found that the number of Black students admitted fell for the first time since at least 2018. The number of Hispanic students also dropped for the first time since 2021. 

“We’ve seen a lot of enrollment numbers in news articles here and there since last fall. In some cases, they stay the same; in some cases, they change. But I think what these data are showing is that that’s not fully reflective of what might actually be happening,” Jason Cohn, a researcher for the Urban Institute, told Inside Higher Ed. “One of the big takeaways for me is just how much can be hidden if you only look at the enrollment numbers and aren’t seeing what’s happening in the rest of the admissions pipeline.”

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