The College rejected multiple requests for information over the past month from The Dartmouth about the Class of 2029’s racial and ethnic demographics.
In previous years, Dartmouth admissions published a “class profile” that included data about demographics such as geographic, gender, income and racial and ethnic background. Last year, this information was released on Sept. 16, 2024.
Though published data from Dartmouth admissions included the admitted Class of 2029’s geographic and income backgrounds, it did not include information about gender or racial and ethnic backgrounds.
“We don’t have a comment on this at this point because we have not yet released any class profile information about the matriculated 29s,” College spokesperson Jana Barnello wrote in an email to The Dartmouth on Sept 24.
Further requests for comment were declined or did not receive replies.
Since January, the Trump administration has put pressure on higher-education institutions to halt the use of proxies for race in admissions. Among the terms of the administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which was received by the College and eight other universities on Oct. 1, is a requirement that universities admissions decisions are “based on and evaluated against objective criteria.”
“No factor such as sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious associations or proxies for any of those factors shall be considered, explicitly or implicitly, in any decision related to undergraduate or graduate student admissions or financial support, with due exceptions for institutions that are solely or primarily comprised of students of a specific sex or religious denomination,” the compact states.
The Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard in June 2023. The 1,702 students accepted to the Class of 2029 were the first admitted since the College reinstated its standardized test requirement in February 2024 and the second admitted since the Supreme Court’s decision.
