MIT's entering class will have significantly fewer blacks and Hispanics.

The class will still be diverse, but not racially balanced.

MIT has reported the racial and ethnic composition of its entering class of undergraduates — the class of 2028. The report shows a dramatic decrease in the representation of minority group members, especially blacks.

The exception is Asian-Americans. Their representation has been boosted significantly. White representation remains where it was.

Here are the specifics:

[Compared to the class of 2027] the percentage of Black students enrolled dropped to 5 percent from 15 percent, and the percentage of Hispanic and Latino students dropped to 11 percent from 16 percent. White students made up 37 percent of the new class, compared with 38 percent last year.

On the other hand, the percentage of Asian American students in the class jumped to 47 percent from 40 percent. (The percentages do not add up to 100, according to M.I.T., because students could declare more than one race.)

MIT’s president is unhappy with these results. She complained that this entering class “does not bring, as a consequence of last year’s Supreme Court decision, the same degree of broad racial and ethnic diversity that the M.I.T. community has worked together to achieve over the past several decades.”

She’s right. But the class is still diverse. MIT has more than 1,100 undergrads per class. Thus, there will be around 55 blacks in the class of 2028 and more than twice that number of Hispanics. If the composition of the next three classes is the same (and assuming no drop-outs or flunk-outs) , MIT will have approximately 220 black undergrads under the new admissions policies and around 500 Hispanics.

Whatever benefits racial and ethnic diversity bring to a campus, MIT’s projected numbers should be sufficient to deliver them. Remember, diversity isn’t the same thing as numerical balance.

MIT’s president is also right in attributing the change in the racial/ethnic composition of the entering class to the Supreme Court’s decisions in the Harvard and UNC cases. But that leaves open the question of whether MIT is fully complying with the decisions. If some level of racial/ethnic preference is affecting the school’s numbers, then the decisions, though significantly lessening the degree to which race and ethnicity enter the admissions process, have not eliminated it.

I’m encouraged that Edward Blum, the hero behind the Harvard and UNC litigation, says:

Every student admitted to the class of 2028 at M.I.T. will know that they were accepted only based upon their outstanding academic and extracurricular achievements, not the color of their skin.

This statement finds support from Peter Arcidiacono, the Duke University economist who did a great job as an expert witness for Blum’s group, Students for Fair Admissions. He says the MIT numbers are consistent with what he predicted at trial would happen at Harvard if race were taken out of the equation. Arcidiacono added that he’s surprised, MIT didn’t take steps to soften the blow, such as changing the weight it gave to test scores.

So am I.

I trust the assessments of Blum and Arcidiacono. However, I would still like to see MIT’s information, by race and ethnicity, about the academic performance, grades, and extracurricular activities of its applicants for the class of 2028. (We almost certainly will not see this.)

The far more pressing question is whether other elite colleges and universities were content with levels of diversity comparable to the ones produced at MIT or whether they “softened the blow” (or negated it altogether) by having race and ethnic considerations enter the admissions process through the back door.

We’ll soon find out. I’m told that the data of Harvard, for example, will become publicly available in about a month.