Harvard College Admissions Prohibits Race Disclosures in Interviews
Graphic by Sophia Rascoff
Harvard College is navigating a series of changes for its 2025-2026 application cycle. Following a new policy that bans alumni interviewers from writing about applicants’ race, ethnicity, or cultural affiliations, the College is faced with further tightening of race-conscious admissions—spearheaded by the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Restrictive Early Action closed Nov. 1, and the Regular Decision deadline is set for Jan. 1. As thousands of applicants hit “submit,” these changes have sparked conversation across campus and beyond about what equity and transparency mean in this new admissions landscape.
Under a presidential memorandum issued on Aug. 7, the United States Department of Education now requires higher education institutions to submit detailed data on applicants, admitted students, and enrolled cohorts—disaggregated by race and sex. Beginning this academic year, institutions must also report academic metrics such as standardized test scores, GPAs, and other measures of achievement, allowing federal officials and the public to better monitor whether race-based preferences persist in any form.
“Race-based admissions practices are not only unfair, but also threaten our national security and well-being. It is therefore the policy of my Administration to ensure institutions of higher education receiving Federal financial assistance are transparent in their admissions practices,” the memorandum read.
Alumni interviewers may discuss such topics in general terms when relevant to an applicant’s background or experiences, but not racial or cultural identifiers. For instance, interviewers may note that a student speaks a second language at home or is an immigrant, but they may not specify the particular language spoken or the country of origin. Evaluation reports containing restricted information will be disregarded, and in such cases, a second interviewer may be assigned to ensure compliance with the updated guidelines.
The effects of the post-SFFA admissions policy changes are already visible in the numbers. Black undergraduates comprised roughly 18% of the Class of 2025, compared to about 11.5% in the Class of 2029. Hispanic or Latino enrollment has similarly fallen from 13.3% to around 11% over the same period.
“It is already the law of the land that race/ethnicity/religion/other identity characteristics cannot be directly weighed in admissions comparisons,” Theda R. Skocpol, Harvard Professor of Government and one of the foremost scholars of American public policy, wrote in an interview with the Harvard Independent. “So I am not surprised that steps are being taken, like telling personal interviewers their reports cannot flag such things.”
The Harvard 2024-25 Common Data Set previously confirmed that the College’s admissions office was not considering race, religion, or place of residence. However, a student’s first-generation status and geographic origin will still be considered, as well as their academic GPA, standardized test scores, talent/ability, and other factors.
“The overall principle should be full and equal consideration of the entire range of qualities applicants bring to the table—not just formal measures like test scores or grades but evidence of specialized talents, taking on challenges, cooperating with people, serving communities, the entire set of qualities that wholistic admissions at privileged universities like Harvard can weigh,” Skocpol said.
“I do worry a bit that interviewer reports could be turned into vague mush by extra efforts to rule out any specific descriptions,” Skocpol continued. Still, she believes the system will adapt. “People will adjust, and many applicants of all backgrounds will flourish and gain admission.”
Harvard students are more reserved following this tightening of race-conscious admissions policies.
“The whole point behind this is [that] they don’t want to be biased towards certain ethnicities or racial backgrounds…[To] make it fair for everyone, then I guess it makes sense to not have that,” a Harvard sophomore who wished to remain anonymous told the Independent. “But again, I think that not having that takes away from really getting to know the person beyond just what things they did.”
Students who believe their backgrounds played a large role in their Harvard acceptances further stressed their reservations about the University’s new guidelines. “I’m also very Christian, so I think a lot of my application was hinged on my involvement [in] youth group, praise team. I think those things were also mentioned in my interview,” a College junior from Quincy House who requested anonymity said to the Independent.
Before the 2023-2024 application cycle, applicants could submit an optional, longer essay on a topic of their choice or select from prompts that encouraged broad reflection on identity, intellectual interests, life experiences, integrity, and community contribution.
Since the 2023-2024 application cycle, essay questions are shorter, narrowly framed, and limited to 150 words. The new, creative prompts leave more room for an applicant to disclose identifier-specific experiences if desired. Notably, explicit references to race, ethnicity, or cultural background have been removed.
Beyond admissions, Harvard has reshaped its diversity infrastructure amid pressure from the Trump administration to roll back DEI programming in higher education. On April 28, the University announced that it would rename its Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging as the Office for Community and Campus Life.
“All universities are subject to the new SCOTUS rules and Trump administration threats about over-wielding attacks on social diversity, ” Skocpol noted.“Very rich universities have the capacity to make individualized, all-around evaluations, while large state universities and less wealthy institutions are more easily forced into reliance on mechanical measures.”
Harvard also quietly ended its Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program—an initiative founded in 1971 that encouraged minority high school students to apply to Harvard by providing them with information and application guidance. Its functions have now been folded into a new, race‑neutral initiative called the Harvard Recruitment Ambassadors program, which focuses on general outreach and enables prospective students to connect with current undergraduates, but explicitly avoids in‑person high‑school visits or targeting specific student groups.
Yet while admitted undergraduate identifiers are in flux, one element remains constant among Harvard College’s incoming classes: strong involvement in academics and extracurricular activities. However, according to Skocpol, there is room to rethink what kinds of experiences deserve greater recognition in the admissions process—and what merit itself should be defined.
“I would give extra points to applicants who had worked in real-world modest to low-wage jobs, e.g., in summers, and less weight to those who did foreign trips or fancy programs that cost their parents a lot of money,” she suggested.
“If we admitted more students who had at least found out personally what regular non-college-degree work is like jobs at restaurants, on farms, in construction, in poorly paid social services, we would help sustain valuable kinds of diversity in our classes AND have privileged students who had gotten out of their wealthy cocoons and made some contacts with non-college people,” Skocpol continued. “There is nothing in this idea that would in any way violate the SCOTUS decisions.”
Restrictive Early Action decisions will be announced in mid-December, with Regular Decision results following toward the end of March. Data for the incoming class of 2030 will not be released until the following fall. Nonetheless, recent trends in the admission statistics currently suggest a potential continuation of shifts in the representation of specific minority groups.
Eden Bridge-Hayes ’29 (edenbridgehayes@college.harvard.edu) and Laura Cremer ’29 (lauraperezcremer@college.harvard.edu) write News for the Harvard Independent.