As colleges and universities look for new ways to diversify their student bodies and increase access to low-income students, one national program is emerging as an increasingly popular tool in those efforts.
QuestBridge, a national match program that places high-achieving low-income students at selective partner colleges, saw early-admission rates for its applicants rise by 17 percent this year, according to data released in December. A total of 2,627 students from QuestBridge’s program were accepted early to the Class of 2029, and that number will likely grow as regular-decision acceptance letters roll in.
And that growth will likely continue into the future after the 21-year-old organization recently added three new university partners to its roster: Bates College, the University of Richmond and, most notably, Harvard University—the last Ivy League institution to join forces with the organization.
QuestBridge students go through a competitive application process to become finalists: Only 7,288 were selected this cycle out of more than 25,000 applicants. The finalists rank their top choices out of the organization’s 55 partner colleges, and QuestBridge matches them with a full scholarship at the highest-ranking institution on their list that accepts them.
A spokesperson for QuestBridge chalked up this cycle’s record-breaking early acceptances to typical growth. But the numbers are hard to ignore: QuestBridge went from having 1,755 early admits in 2023 to 2,627 in 2025, during which time it only added two partner universities.
Institutions say that QuestBridge helps deliver talented students from diverse backgrounds, filling in where their resources fall short. That’s become especially important since the Supreme Court’s decision in June 2023 banning affirmative action. In fact, universities’ interest in QuestBridge scholars surged last year, too, right after the ruling, when admit rates went up by a whopping 28 percent and the program added Cornell University and Skidmore College as partners.
The vast majority of QuestBridge’s partner schools practiced affirmative action before the court decision. After a slew of selective colleges reported declines in Black and Hispanic enrollment this fall, they have been looking for race-neutral recruitment and admissions tools to enhance incoming classes’ diversity, including expanded financial aid programs and a commitment to first-generation students.
Bryan Cook, director of higher education policy at the Urban Institute and the author of an ongoing study on the wide-reaching effects of the Supreme Court decision, said that whether colleges were looking to boost racial diversity or expand on efforts to admit more low-income students post–affirmative action, QuestBridge fits the bill.
“My sense from talking to admissions professionals across the country is that they’re utilizing every tool available to them to identify diverse students,” Cook said. “Before [the Supreme Court decision], QuestBridge was a good resource but maybe not necessary,” so “it’s not surprising to see an uptick after the fact.”
Some of the colleges with the steepest declines in underrepresented student enrollment are doubling down on QuestBridge during this early admissions cycle. Brown University, which saw a 10 percent decline in Black, Hispanic and Indigenous students, admitted 90 QuestBridge finalists early, up from 64 the prior year. Tufts University had a six-percentage-point drop in underrepresented students this fall and admitted 42 QuestBridge applicants early, up from 30 in 2023–24. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which reported a nine-point drop in minority students, admitted 100 QuestBridge students early, nearly double the 56 it accepted last year and comprising more than 10 percent of its early-action cohort this cycle. Black, Hispanic and Indigenous enrollment also fell by 10 percentage points this fall at Cornell, which is welcoming its first class of QuestBridge scholars this cycle.
QuestBridge, crucially, is not a race-based program—if it were, it might earn the scrutiny being given other race-conscious scholarships and admission-adjacent initiatives. Instead, its criteria are income-based; this past year, 90 percent of applicants came from families who earn less than $65,000. While the organization’s website breaks down data on certain applicant characteristics—81 percent first-generation, 37 percent Southerners, 5 percent noncitizens—it offers no information on racial demographics. As recently as 2020, the organization did publish those breakdowns; that year, about 41 percent of finalists were white, 24 percent were Asian American, 14 percent Latino and 9 percent Black.
“As an organization focused on socioeconomic status, we do not currently publish race data, although there have not been significant shifts in our demographics by race pre and post the [Supreme Court] decision,” a QuestBridge spokesperson wrote in an email.
Chazz Robinson, education policy adviser at the left-of-center think tank Third Way, said the affirmative action ban isn’t the only important context for the rise in QuestBridge admits. Heightening scrutiny of wealthy colleges has increased pressure to boost financial aid programs and increase socioeconomic diversity—both problems that QuestBridge can be part of addressing.
“There’s growing concern from students about costs. There’s growing questions for administrators about value, about the students they’re serving,” Robinson said. QuestBridge “can be part of building the case that they’re helping students from struggling backgrounds achieve socioeconomic mobility.”
In a statement, Harvard admissions director William Fitzsimmons said the partnership reflected the university’s commitment to “bringing the most promising students to Harvard from all socioeconomic backgrounds.”
Leigh Weisenburger, dean of admission and vice president for enrollment at Bates, said the new partnership isn’t specifically aimed at increasing racial diversity, but it is part of the university’s commitment to increasing “all kinds of diversity.”
“Given the law, I don’t want to misconstrue [the QuestBridge partnership] as an attempt to racially diversify our class,” she said. “While we can’t consider race any longer, we obviously are continuing to do everything in our power to feed our prospect applicant pools in access-oriented ways.”
Extending Recruiters’ Reach
Stephanie Dupaul, vice president for enrollment management at the University of Richmond, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that the university had been entertaining a partnership with QuestBridge for “many years.” She emphasized the program’s potential to amplify the university’s recruitment range geographically and reach high schools outside its normal recruitment zone.
“We were particularly interested in their connections with rural students who might not have exposure to schools like Richmond,” she wrote.
Weisenburger also stressed the benefits of QuestBridge’s broad geographic reach.
“Bates is on the smaller scale of many of the institutions with whom QuestBridge partners and so for us to be present in Oklahoma as much as we’re present in California, as much as we’re present in rural Vermont, just isn’t feasible,” she said. “This allows us to be in those students’ conversations.”
Geographic gaps aren’t the only recruitment concern for selective private colleges. Bates, like many small New England liberal arts colleges, has historically struggled to diversify its student body, which is currently about 72 percent white; its most diverse cohort yet, admitted last year, was made up of 32 percent domestic students of color. Bates’s student body is also disproportionately wealthy. Fewer than half of students receive any kind of need-based aid, and a 2023 New York Times report ranked Bates as tied for last in socioeconomic diversity out of a pool of 283 colleges. The Times report also found that only 8 percent of Bates students receive Pell Grants, and the share of Pell recipients in the student body fell by five percentage points from 2011 to 2023.
Weisenburger said that while Bates has always striven to welcome a wide variety of students to its Lewiston, Me., campus, finding the resources to not only recruit those students but support them once they arrive on campus can be a challenge. And though she maintains Bates has a better history of diversity than many of its peers, Weisenburger acknowledged the college has a reputation for being “undiverse and privileged.”
“We do have limited resources, looking at the college’s overall operating budget and our financial aid budget, and so we have to think really strategically and critically about how we’re going to best use those funds,” Weisenburger said. “That’s where QuestBridge for us just seems obvious.”
Cook said that QuestBridge, with only a few thousand finalists a year, is not a cure for colleges’ diversity woes. But as admissions offices scramble to plug the hole left by the affirmative action ban, he said, partnering with outside organizations like QuestBridge can be a good short-term solution—and based on growing interest in the program, colleges may be thinking the same thing.
“A lot of admissions professionals are still trying to figure out what are the best tools and options available to achieve the type of diverse student bodies they want. And most of them, to my knowledge, have not found a magic bullet,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that QuestBridge is a replacement for doing the hard work of figuring out other strategies. But understanding that’s not going to happen overnight, why not use it to help in the interim?”
