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The first class of freshmen at elite MIT since last year’s Supreme Court ruling banning racially conscious affirmative action programs has significantly fewer black and Hispanic students and more Asian students, according to newly released data on the class of 2028.

The number of black students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has declined from 15 to 5 percent compared to last year, while the number of Hispanics and Latinos has dropped from 16 to 11 percent. The number of Asian students has increased from 40 to 47 percent this year.

The figures, the first to be released by an elite U.S. university since the ruling, could provide clues as to how the Supreme Court’s precedent will affect other institutions.

MIT representatives recognized the new class while expressing their support for the goal of building a diverse student body.

“The class is, as always, outstanding in many ways and will bring us … like last year’s class and those before it … an inspiring influx of new talent, interests and perspectives,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said in a statement Wednesday. “What it does not bring, however, because of last year’s Supreme Court decision, is the same level of broad racial and ethnic diversity that the MIT community has worked together to achieve over the past few decades.”

“Based on empirical data and personal experience, I am convinced that MIT’s education is strongest when our student body is at a high level of academic excellence and is diverse,” Stu Schmill, dean of admissions and student financial services at MIT, told a university news site.

The shift in the demographic composition of the new class reflects the allegations made in the high-profile lawsuits filed by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and the University of North Carolina that became the undoing of the arguments.

In the lawsuits, SFFA argued that the affirmative action policy de facto discriminates against Asian American and white students.

“Every student admitted to MIT in the class of 2028 will know that they were admitted based solely on their outstanding academic and extracurricular achievements, not the color of their skin,” said Edward Blum, a conservative legal strategist who founded SFFA. The New York Times.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision, while students can still talk about how their race, ethnicity or culture has affected their lives in other parts of their application, such as their personal statement, admissions officers cannot formally consider race as an explicit factor in admissions.