University admissions statistics after the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to ban affirmative action align with national trends that demonstrate a decrease in offer rates most drastically for Black students, followed by Hispanic students, at top universities. While the University's overall acceptance rate has decreased since 2023, the magnitude of the declining offer rate differs by race.
The Cavalier Daily compiled a dataset of admissions offers issued between 2016 and 2022, when affirmative action policies — established to ensure equal opportunities in admissions for historically underrepresented minorities — were still in effect. The data is categorized by race and compared to aggregated admissions offers made in both the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 admissions cycles after the policy was discontinued.
All offer rate calculations were conducted by comparing aggregated data across two time periods. For each period — 2016 to 2022 and 2023 to 2025 — the total number of applicants was measured against the number of admission offers to determine an overall offer rate, which was then compared between periods to assess changes following the end of affirmative action.
The dataset measures offer rates — the number of applicants within each racial group who received admissions offers. This differs from overall acceptance rates, which reflect how many admitted students ultimately choose to enroll.
The University became more selective overall in recent years, meaning that offer rates across all racial groups fell. Overall, from 2016-2022, the University’s offer rate was 20.4 percent, while from 2023-2025, it was 16.4 percent. However, the increase in selectivity has not affected all racial groups equally.
Even though individual racial groups experienced larger declines in offer rates, the overall decrease is smaller because it reflects a weighted average across all applicants rather than changes within any single group.
Comparing admissions cycles from when affirmative action was in place from 2016-2022 to those after the policy ended from 2023-2025, white and Asian applicants experienced similar declines in offer rates. White applicants saw a 7.34 percentage point decrease, while Asian applicants saw a 6.68 percentage point decrease for the same time period.
Black and Hispanic applicants, however, experienced larger declines in offer rates than white and Asian applicants. Although Hispanic applicant enrollment marginally increased from 9 to 9.1 percent in the admissions cycles before and after the affirmative action ban, offer rates for Hispanic applicants fell by 8.03 percentage points when comparing 2016-2022 cycles to the 2023-2025 cycles. Enrollment rates for Black students dropped from 8.2 percent to 6.1 percent in the cycles immediately before and after the policy ban, and offer rates for Black students saw a steeper 14.58 percentage point drop when comparing the 2016-2022 cycles to the 2023-2025 cycles — nearly double the decline that could be attributed to increased selectivity and other factors.
The decline in Black student offer rates reflects a broader national trend at highly selective universities, where students from this group have faced higher rejection rates at many of the country’s 50 most competitive institutions, according to an analysis done by the nonprofit organization, Class Action.
Despite these differences in offer rates, the first class admitted after the end of affirmative action — the Class of 2028 — showed only minimal demographic changes when looking at enrollment statistics compared with the previous year. The Class of 2029 also showed similar demographic characteristics to previous years.
Changes in offer rates do not necessarily translate to shifts in the demographics of the enrolled class, as they do not account for which admitted students ultimately choose to enroll. Some research has identified a “cascade effect” in higher education, where declines in admission offers for Black and Hispanic students at highly selective universities lead more of those students to enroll at public flagship universities.
University Spokesperson Bethanie Glover explained that while the University is committed to admitting students from diverse backgrounds, it is also dedicated to following the law.
“The change in enrollment rates from Fall 2023 to Fall 2024 reflects the University's commitment to follow the majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) case,” Glover said. “Application reviewers do not have access to information on the race and ethnicity of prospective students, and that data is not made available until the full application review and enrollment process is complete each year.”
Glover also noted that the University is focused on improving its recruitment of students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and improving relationships with Virginia high schools with high rates of socioeconomic disadvantage.
About 83 percent of public flagship universities have seen increases in the enrollment of underrepresented minority students following the Supreme Court’s decision. The University, despite being Virginia’s public flagship, is among the schools that have not experienced such an increase. This may be due in part to lower offer rates for minority applicants, meaning that even if a greater share of admitted underrepresented minority students choose to enroll, overall enrollment has not risen.
Another Virginia institution, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University also has not reported gains in minority enrollment since the ban of affirmative action and has seen declines in offer rates for some racial minority groups.
Virginia Tech saw a 2.2 percent increase in the offer rate for white applicants between the 2022-23 and 2024-25 admissions cycles, while the offer rate for Asian applicants decreased by 0.9 percent during the same period. In contrast, offer rates for Black applicants declined by 24.5 percent and offer rates for Hispanic applicants fell by 22.5 percent. Overall, Virginia Tech’s total offer rate declined by 2.2 percent.
Looking ahead to the 2025-2026 admissions cycle for the Class of 2030, Early Decision, Early Action and Regular Decision results have already been released. However, demographic and enrollment statistics cannot be assessed until admitted students make their enrollment decisions by May 1.
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