In the first class of Hoyas admitted without race-based affirmative action, Georgetown University enrolled fewer students of color than in previous classes, according to data from an Oct. 9 university press release. 

According to the university’s data, of enrolled first-years who self-reported their race, 26% identify as Asian, 9% as Black, 1% as Native American, 1% as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 12% as Hispanic and 63% as white. Students could self-select one or multiple racial or ethnic identities or choose not to report their race or ethnicity; 9% of students did not report, while the university’s data does not report on the racial or ethnic background of international students, who represent 8% of the class.

In total, 49% of students enrolled in the Class of 2028 identified as students of color; 53% of students admitted to the Class of 2027 identified as students of color. 

Although the university has not made public further admissions records using this methodology for the classes of 2026 or 2027, admissions records on the classes of 2025 and earlier using the same methodology as the Oct. 9 data indicate that this year’s class, the Class of 2028, likely has fewer Black, Asian and Hispanic students than earlier classes.

In the current senior class, the Class of 2025, 10.3% of admitted students identified as Black, 12.2% as Hispanic and 25.6% as Asian, while in the Class of 2024, 11% of admitted students identified as Black, 13% as Hispanic and 28% as Asian. 

Nationally, 12.5% of college students identify as Black, 20.3% of students as Hispanic and 7.3% of students as Asian.

Notably, the enrolled Class of 2028 has a lower percentage of Black students than the admitted Class of 2016, which was 10% Black. The university did not release data about the race of enrolled students in either of these classes nor about the race of admitted students this year. 

Charles Deacon (CAS ’64, GRD ’69), the dean of admissions, said the university aims to ensure its student body is diverse.

“Georgetown pursues all available efforts to cultivate and support a diverse Hoya community,” Deacon said in the press release. “We will continue our commitment to this work in the years ahead.”

Deacon denied a request for an on-the-record interview through a university spokesperson.

A university spokesperson said the school will continue using a holistic admissions process. 

“Georgetown University only admits students who will contribute to the academic rigor and thrive in our community,” the spokesperson wrote to The Hoya. “Georgetown carefully considers all applicants to the University and, as a result, our admissions process has always been as personalized as possible.”

Zack Mabel, a research professor and the director of research at the university’s Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW), which researches education policy, said universities’ different statistical methodologies make it difficult for researchers to understand the full impact of ending race-based affirmative action on college classes’ demographics. 

“This is all coming from self-reported enrollment numbers from institutions, and they’re choosing to report their demographics however they want to,” Mabel told The Hoya. “And so institutions are using different definitions. They’re aggregating groups in different ways which also oftentimes makes it difficult, if not impossible, to really compare what the true impacts are across institutions.” 

The university also released data on the incoming class’s eligibility for Pell Grants, a federal grant for undergraduates demonstrating financial need, in an Aug. 28 press release. 

Of Georgetown’s Class of 2028, approximately 15% — the highest percentage in a Georgetown freshman class in more than a decade — are Pell-eligible.

The university spokesperson said Georgetown aims to meet students’ financial needs.

“Georgetown University meets the full financial need of all eligible undergraduate students and a student’s need for financial assistance never negatively impacts their chances of admissions,” the spokesperson wrote. “In fact, Georgetown nearly doubled the number of incoming students with exceptional financial need — through eligibility for the Pell grant — in the 2024-25 school year.” 

Racial and Ethnic Diversity at Georgetown

The 2023-24 undergraduate admissions cycle, during which the university admitted members of the Class of 2028, was the first in which the university could not consider race in its admissions process after the U.S. Supreme Court ended race-based affirmative action in June 2023. 

According to 2023 research from the CEW, the Supreme Court’s decision likely makes it more difficult for universities to admit and enroll racially and ethnically diverse classes. 

While many selective universities, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Johns Hopkins University, have since released data showing that the percentage of Black and Hispanic students enrolled in their first-year classes has dropped significantly, other institutions such as Dartmouth College have seen increases in their populations of students of color. 

Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy who has studied affirmative action in the workplace and in college admissions, said this variance is not surprising.

“For lots of places, the declines in diversity are not as large as people feared they would be,” Holzer told The Hoya. “It seems to vary from one school to the next one.” 

Mabel said universities’ differing policy changes after the Supreme Court decision have resulted in variation across different institutions. 

“A big question is, what new policies did each individual institution embrace in response to the Supreme Court’s ban on race-conscious admissions practices that may have been more or less effective in this most recent admissions cycle,” Mabel said. “Not all institutions chose to respond in the same way.” 

“Some, I think, took a very, very conservative approach and said we’re going to continue to do business as usual, except we’re not going to consider race,” Mabel added. “Other institutions were much more aggressive about introducing new strategies to try to make up for the potential losses in racial diversity.”

The university spokesperson said Georgetown aims to continue providing resources to a diverse student body.

“Georgetown remains committed to our efforts to recruit, enroll, and support students from all backgrounds to ensure an enriching educational experience that can best be achieved by engaging with a diverse group of peers,” the spokesperson wrote. 

Georgetown holds recruitment events in every state, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which aim to reach out to a diverse variety of students, according to Melissa Costanzi, the director of undergraduate admissions. 

“Recruitment activities include joint travel (in-person and virtually) with other top universities in a group called Exploring College Options, high school visits and in-person and virtual Georgetown information sessions and tours,” Costanzi wrote to The Hoya. “In addition, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions offers application workshops (including workshops designed specifically for first-generation college students and international students), a series focused on facilitating conversation between current and prospective students of similar backgrounds, and financial aid literacy workshops produced in partnership with the Office of Student Financial Services.”

Costanzi said the university works to specifically reach out to first-generation students through partnerships with educational organizations on presentations, college fairs and application preparation.

“While each individual staff member works within their own geographic region to recruit to a group of prospective students from a variety of different backgrounds, a Diversity and Access team coordinates outreach to first-generation college students and others through programming with a variety of organizations,” Costanzi wrote. 

Georgetown’s Class of 2028 includes fewer Black and Hispanic students than the first-year classes at many of the university’s peer schools, which the university uses as benchmarks for comparison, including Columbia University, Northwestern University and Duke University. 

At Columbia, 19% of the first-year class identified as Hispanic and 12% Black, while 49% of first-years identified as white and 39% as Asian. Northwestern’s first-year class is 15% Black and 18% Hispanic, while Duke’s is 13% Black, 14% Hispanic, 29% Asian and 52% white. Each of these schools calculated admissions statistics for domestic students using the same methodology as Georgetown.

Asher Maxwell (CAS ’26), a student organizer who has worked with the student organization Hoyas Against Legacy Admissions, which aims to encourage admissions reform, said the university’s admissions results were disappointing relative to these peer schools’. 

“The university should be seeing these numbers grow,” Maxwell told The Hoya. “That is where we should be, and that is what a commitment to community in diversity looks like. But that is not what we’re seeing with this.”

Prior to the Supreme Court decision, Georgetown’s admit rate for Black and Hispanic students had been decreasing, while its admissions of Asian and white students have increased, according to publicly available data from the Common Data Set (CDS), a set of standardized questions colleges answer about their admissions and financial aid processes.

CDS data uses a different methodology to the university’s data: While Georgetown’s data allowed students to select more than one racial or ethnic identity, the CDS classifies students by one race only or as mixed-race. 

Under the CDS formula, the Class of 2027 includes 52.3% white, 18.6% Asian, 5.4% Black, 4.5% Hispanic, 7.1% mixed race and 8.5% international students. In contrast, the Class of 2022 included 50.8% white, 12.3% Asian, 7.6% Black, 10.2% Hispanic, 5.4% mixed race and 11.3% international students. The CDS data does not report on the racial or ethnic background of international students or mixed-race students, nor does it report on the racial identities of Hispanic students. 

Georgetown did not immediately make available data for the Class of 2028 using this methodology. According to a university spokesperson, the university typically releases data using this methodology in spring. 

Darius Wagner (CAS ’27), another organizer with Hoyas Against Legacy, said Georgetown’s decreasing diversity reflects a lack of commitment to opening the university to students of all backgrounds.

“It feels like the university is more committed to ensuring that the gates are higher and less accessible than opening the gates to more students from different backgrounds,” Wagner told The Hoya. “If you deeply care about diversity, then you will do everything in your power to protect and expand it, not just protect it, but expand it.”

Financials

This year, the university began considering students’ eligibility for Pell Grants as part of its admissions process according to the Aug. 28 release.

In the release, Provost Robert Groves said this financial diversity benefits every Hoya.

“Every student at Georgetown, all class discussions, all learning are advantaged by a student body with diverse life experiences,” Groves said in the press release. “Pell students are part of our multipronged approach to building a socioeconomically diverse student community and fostering an environment of dialogue among diverse perspectives.”

Georgetown’s increase in Pell-eligible students comes as the U.S. Department of Education changed eligibility rules to make approximately 610,000 new students eligible for Pell Grants — increasing the pool of Pell-eligible students by approximately 10%. Approximately 34% of undergraduates across the United States receive Pell Grants.

As a result, many of Georgetown’s peer schools have also seen upticks in their Pell-eligible student populations, with those schools’ Pell-eligible student populations often larger than Georgetown’s. 

At Duke, 22% of first-years are Pell-eligible, while at Columbia, 24% are Pell recipients. At Harvard University and MIT, neither of which Georgetown counts as peer schools, 20.7% and 20% of first-years, respectively, are Pell-eligible, while at Howard University, 45% of first-year students received Pell Grants in 2021. 

Felix Rice (CAS ’26), a Pell Grant recipient and another student organizing with Hoyas Against Legacy for changes to the university’s admissions process, said the university’s rising Pell-eligible student number is not impressive because it is still far lower than both peer schools’ numbers and the percentage of Pell-eligible students in the United States.

“The expansion of Pell eligibility is a victory, because it means that college is more affordable to more people,” Rice told The Hoya. “It’s not a victory for Georgetown.”

“Socioeconomic diversity isn’t just a data point, it also fundamentally shapes your experience on campus when you’re on the lower end of that, and it shapes whether or not you feel that the institution that you’re going to is made for you,” Rice added. “What has fundamentally changed?”

Mabel said Georgetown’s lower Pell-eligible student population may be a result of the university offering smaller financial aid packages to lower-income students than other universities do.

“​​If they’re not being offered a financial aid package that can compete with the Columbias or the Princetons of the world, and the reality is that many of these institutions are competing for the same students, then it’s a smart decision on the part of the student to enroll at the institution that’s offering them more generous financial aid,” Mabel said. “And it’s gonna show up in the enrollment numbers that Georgetown is falling behind its peers in terms of the representation of Pell-eligible students on campus, I would expect.”

Holzer said the low percentage of Pell-eligible students at selective schools, including Georgetown, reflects increasing class disparities at elite schools.

“These days, it’s just much harder for middle class people, working class people, for their students to compete with high-income people in admissions,” Holzer said. “The high-income people now have so many advantages. They send their kids to the very best schools, and they invest in coaches — essay coaches — and test score tutors. And so the gap has grown much wider.” 

Future Admissions

Members of the Georgetown community have called for the university to further adapt its admissions strategies, including by installing a class-conscious affirmative action system or by eliminating legacy admissions — preferential treatment in admissions for children of graduates, faculty or staff. 

The 2023 CEW report recommends that colleges eliminate legacy and student-athlete admissions preferences, expand recruitment efforts to less wealthy communities and use class-conscious admissions systems to maintain the levels of racial diversity they had with race-conscious admissions in place.

After the Supreme Court’s decision on race-based affirmative action, University President John J. DeGioia (CAS ’79, GRD ’95) said the university planned to consider socioeconomic factors in admissions as a substitute for race-conscious affirmative action. The university spokesperson did not directly address questions about any socioeconomic factors the university considers beyond Pell eligibility. 

“The best answer we as a higher-ed community have come up with thus far has been using socioeconomic status as a proxy,” DeGioia told The Hoya in September 2023. “We’ve had 25 years of experience with this, and it’s an imperfect proxy is the best way to describe it.”

Holzer said class-based affirmative action could allow the university to attract more low-income students of color.

“Affirmative action by class, if done the right way, could help bring in more people of color,” Holzer said. “It won’t be large enough to fully offset if there’s a big drop, but I think it would help. It would help at least a little bit.” 

“I think it’ll be an interesting time as schools, every year, they will watch these data, and I think they will adjust to try to preserve as much of the racial diversity that they had before, and maybe even be more diverse along class lines, which I think would be a good thing,” Holzer added.

Mabel said that a class-conscious admissions system would require Georgetown to increase its investment into financial aid.

“It is absolutely true that recruiting a more diverse class and using socioeconomic metrics to not only try to diversify the family income representation at selective colleges, but to use that as a tool to also try to diversify racial representation on these campuses means requiring much larger financial aid investment,” Mabel said. 

Students and faculty have also called for the university to end its practice of legacy admissions preferences. Since August 2023, 38 student organizations and over 1,100 students, faculty, staff members and graduates — including Mabel — have signed a petition calling for the university to eliminate legacy admissions preferences. 

Inspired by the petition’s success, organizers including Maxwell, Wagner and Rice formed Hoyas Against Legacy Admissions, which has since met with university staff members and Washington, D.C. elected officials and campaigned both at Georgetown and within D.C. seeking admissions reform. 

Holzer said universities justify legacy admissions by arguing that the practice increases graduates’ loyalty to the university. 

“They think it increases the fundraising, their ability to fundraise, the contributions that alums give,” Holzer said. “I’m not sure that legacy preferences have quite as big an effect on those things as the schools believe, and there’s even been a bit of evidence on this that the schools might be overstating how much they really get from those legacy preferences. And if that’s the case, then we should reduce their influence on admissions.” 

Maxwell said the university’s reluctance to end legacy is shameful. 

“When the university was told by its own researchers that ending legacy admissions was an absolute, necessary first step to protecting against the losses of affirmative action, and the university did not take those steps, and then saw a loss in minority enrollment, that is embarrassing for the university,” Maxwell said. “It’s a failure of the university to act, and it spits in the face of the Jesuit values that the university purports to adhere to.” 

Mabel said eliminating legacy admissions is an important step in ensuring students of all backgrounds feel welcome to apply to Georgetown. 

“It’s not the silver bullet, but it can make differences on the margin around expanding both class and racial diversity,” Mabel said. “I think it’s, more than anything, a really important signal that preferences on those considerations should not be held in higher regard to preferences for race or any other purposes.”

“If we’re not going to give preferences to level the playing field on account of people’s background due to racial discrimination, then we certainly shouldn’t be giving preferences because you come from a privileged background where someone in your family has attended the university previously,” Mabel added.