Dean of Admissions Discusses 2030 Demographics

Following the release of the Class of 2030’s admission and enrollment profile, The Student spoke with Vice President and Dean of Admission & Financial Aid Mathew McGann to discuss the application review process three years after the end of race-based affirmative action. The discussion included the racial and ethnic demographics of the Class of 2030, and the status of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and standardized testing requirements in admissions. 

In an interview with The Student last year about the Class of 2029’s demographics, McGann referenced changes in applicants to explain the shifts in racial and ethnic demographics. According to federal reporting guidelines, 9% of the Class of 2030 identifies as Black or African American, up three percentage points from last year, while 10% of the class identifies as Latinx, down six percentage points from last year.

McGann said he saw similar shifts this year: “There definitely were shifts in the composition of the applicant pool.” More specifically, there were shifts in yield rates and the proportion of admitted students who matriculated, he said, emphasizing that these shifts are happening while being unable to see or consider a student’s racial and ethnic identity.

Following the Supreme Court’s 2023 decisions in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) Inc. v. Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina, which banned the use of race-based affirmative action in admissions, the admissions office remains guided by the mission of the college, McGann said. This includes “trying to identify those students who have applied that have, we think, best shown evidence that they would be part of a great Amherst College community that we’re trying to build, and each year is different.” Even as the law has evolved, he added, this remains the number one goal.

The Class of 2028 was the first class admitted after the Supreme Court decision. Only 3% of the class identified as Black or African American according to federal guidelines, compared to 11% of the Class of 2027. This statistic triggered conversations on campus and nationally, with reporting by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, about major shifts in the racial makeup of college campuses following the ruling. When asked what the admissions office has learned from that initial admissions cycle, McGann reaffirmed that the office is navigating a different legal environment, while “continuing to work towards the same mission of the college, which hasn’t changed.”

“We’ve just tried to do our best to be really thoughtful about our decisions,” he said. A positive change in recent years, he mentioned, is that the office spends more time on each application than it had prior. “We’re trying to take the time to have as thoughtful of discussions as possible, to best understand every student’s unique context, rather than just relying on very concrete metrics or things that are easily surfaced,” he said. “This, I think, has been one of the most important things that we’ve done that has helped us to best enroll a class that aligns with the college’s mission.”

The number of Asian American students has also been in flux since the end of race-based affirmative action. Twenty percent of the Class of 2028 identified as Asian American according to federal guidelines. For the Class of 2029, that number fell to 12%, and has increased to 15% for the Class of 2030.

In response, McGann said that across college admissions, there is a lot of flux: “I think some changes from year to year are to be expected.” He reiterated that admissions officers are unable to see or consider a student’s race and ethnicity, “so until we finally look at the numbers at the very end of the process, we have no idea what’s been happening there.” 

“Things kind of fluctuate in a way that we can’t directly control,” he said. McGann added that he cannot predict the demographics of next year’s incoming class, but he expects that it will differ from this year’s.

One source of uncertainty that McGann identified last year was the potential effect of federal immigration policies on the Class of 2030. “We were very fortunate this year that all of the international students that we hoped and expected would enroll for the class were able to,” he said. Credit for the smooth transition goes to many people at the college, McGann said, but he named Senior Director of Immigration and Visa Services Hannah Bliss as “truly excellent at helping our current and incoming students navigate an increasingly complex immigration and visa process.” 

There was an increase in international student applications for the Class of 2030, and while it is too early to say much about the Class of 2031, “it seems as if we may see another increase in international applications this year,” he said. He views the increase in applications as a good thing for Amherst and the country “that students still see themselves at a place like this.”

McGann remains uncertain about how federal immigration policies have changed the applicant pool. “Are there students who would have been great at Amherst that chose not to apply to Amherst or chose not to apply to any American university? I don’t know,” he said. He fears that the college is “missing out on some great talent.”

As for the decline in QuestBridge matches, which fell from 7% to 4% for the Class of 2030, McGann affirmed that “QuestBridge remains a very important partnership for us.” QuestBridge’s design emulates the medical school residency matching process, he said, using an algorithm that tries to maximize everybody’s utility: Students rank schools and schools rank students. “We have, each year, hundreds of QuestBridge finalists who rank Amherst as one of their top 15 schools, and we’re not always, and often are not, number one,” McGann said. 

“We identify students that we like, but ultimately students have agency to make their choices,” he said. Additionally, the behavior of competitor schools influences the college’s results. Some of the changes in a given year can be attributed to Amherst, but a lot of what happens at other institutions that students look at is a factor as well, he added.

He does not see the difference between the Class of 2030 and Class of 2029 QuestBridge matches as “any diminishing interest in QuestBridge students or the power of our partnership.” QuestBridge will continue to be a prominent part of the admissions process, he said. 

The college also continues to work with the Small Towns and Rural Students (STARS) Network. Twelve percent of the Class of 2030 come from small or rural towns, a one-percentage-point increase from the Class of 2029. “Geographic diversity has always been a priority for the college, but being a part of the Stars College Network has allowed us to do it better,” McGann said, adding that the network has created more opportunities to recruit students in rural and small-town areas. “Thanks to the grant funding that comes from the STARS Network,” the college has been able to bring more students to campus through the Access to Amherst, Amherst Small Town and Rural Overnight, and Be a Mammoth programming, and expand staffing, McGann said.

“This is a great way, I think, for us to extend Amherst’s reach to bring in more students that I think would be great in the community and show a lot of promise, and maybe have been overlooked by college recruitment in the past,” he said.

One part of the admissions process remains unchanged: The admissions office has not integrated the use of AI. “I’m glad that we still have a process that is very human-centered, both for the applicant and for people reviewing the applications,” McGann said. The office is keeping its eye on AI and is “interested to see how the landscape on all of this continues to change.” He added that the office is paying attention to faculty committees discussing the place of AI in the college’s curriculum and pedagogy. “For now, I think we’re taking it one admission cycle at a time,” he said.

While the admissions office continues to assess AI’s role, a change prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic has remained in place: Applicants are not required to submit their standardized testing scores. Last week, alumnus Shane Dillon ’26 published an op-ed in The Student, arguing that potentially re-requiring standardized testing scores could discourage students from applying and obscure the human beings behind the numbers.

McGann explained that during the pandemic, “the college and the faculty felt it was no longer reasonable or appropriate to ask all students to take standardized tests in that environment, so the college became a so-called test-optional school, which it has remained since.” With this decision came the agreement that the college’s standardized testing policy would be reviewed yearly.

This year’s review has already begun and “has included more faculty feedback forms than a number of other years have,” according to McGann. This iteration of the Faculty Committee on Admission and Financial Aid, he said, is taking the review “pretty seriously,” adding that the review is coming at a time when more of the college’s overlapping admission schools returned to requiring standardized testing. As of next year, all eight Ivy League universities will have reinstated standardized testing requirements, and two of the five Claremont Colleges have said they will also return to the policy, McGann said. “Students who are looking to apply to any of those sets of schools are going to be more likely to have to have taken score tests and have scores, so that’s something that I think is of interest to the faculty committee to review.”

McGann remains confident that regardless of its standardized testing policy, the college will be able to “enroll a great class that aligns with the college’s mission and values.” If anything were to change, it would impact students applying to the Class of 2032. 

The college’s mission also guides its approach to early decision applications. In an interview with The Student last year, McGann said that the college was intentional about keeping early decision numbers relatively low. This year, 42% of the Class of 2030 was accepted through early decision, compared with 43% of the Class of 2029. McGann said that a lot of institutions feel pressured to increase their early decision acceptances for ranking or financial reasons, but he is “glad that Amherst is a place that tries to do what is best aligned with our mission. He expects the incoming Class of 2031 to have early acceptance numbers in a similar zone as recent years.

For the Class of 2030, the college admitted 1,209 of 17,786 applicants, resulting in a 6.8% acceptance rate. On par with the Class of 2029’s 6.78% acceptance rate, these are record lows for the college. McGann said that the college is not driven to decrease its admission rate or turn more students away; rather, the focus is on the students welcomed into the community. 

“To the extent that a low admission rate means that Amherst is a place that students see themselves, that students want to be a part of this community. I see that as a positive thing,” he said. “But overall, I don’t want to judge the college or this office’s work by the admission rate.”