At CUNY's Top Colleges, Black and Hispanic Freshmen Enrollments Drop More than a decade after the City University of New York ended open admissions to its four-year colleges, a marked shift has occurred at its top institutions as freshman classes now enter with far better academic credentials and also a different demographic mix. The changes began in 2000, with new minimum requirements for test scores for college admission, continued as academic standards were raised in stages over the years and accelerated sharply with the recent recession, as CUNY's bargain prices beckoned far more applicants. At the university's five most competitive four-year colleges - Baruch, Brooklyn, City, Hunter and Queens - nearly 12 percent of freshmen entering in 2001 had SAT scores of 1,200 or more. In 2007, for the last prerecession class, the figure was up to 16 percent, and by last fall, it had jumped to 26 percent. At the same time, black representation among first-time freshmen at those colleges dropped, to 10 percent last fall from 17 percent in 2001. Over the same period, the Hispanic share rose slightly for several years, then fell once the recession began, to 18 percent, while the white portion fell slightly, to 35 percent. Asians are now entering the top colleges in the greatest numbers, composing 37 percent of those classes, up from 25 percent a decade earlier. The ethnic changes at CUNY's top colleges confirm the predictions made during the battle over ending open admissions, one of the city's most charged political disputes of the 1990s: Proponents said the colleges would rise in status, while opponents said black and Hispanic enrollment would fall. "We're not condemning CUNY; we just don't think they've taken into account the long-term effects of what's happening," said David R. Jones, the president and chief executive of the Community Service Society of New York, an antipoverty group, which has just completed a study of the changes. If you're taking a lower percentage of blacks and Latinos out of high school, you should try to make sure this doesn't continue. The CUNY chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, said enrollment changes among first-time freshmen were a concern, but he noted that transfer students had outnumbered first-time freshmen at the five top-tier colleges for the past three years. The racial and ethnic mix has shifted among transfer students, as well, but not as drastically, according to CUNY figures. Where students end up matters more than where they start, Dr. Goldstein said, adding, "We are graduating more black and Hispanic students than we ever have before." Across the country, the most selective public colleges have been growing more so for decades, with many of them seeing a notable shift in the past few years. The share of entering freshmen who were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes rose to 73 percent last fall from 69 percent in 2007 at the University of Texas at Austin, to 57 percent from 49 percent at Binghamton University and to 80 percent from 76 percent at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to name a few. "There is plenty of evidence that our flagship public universities have been growing more selective for 30 years, with a decided uptick in this recession," said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Whether there has been a resulting demographic change is unclear, because most colleges have changed the way they record racial data, and in some states, new laws banning affirmative action have influenced enrollment. With 12 senior colleges, 6 community colleges, several graduate schools and about 260,000 students in degree-granting programs, CUNY is one of the largest systems in the country. Unlike most public and private universities, its admissions are race-blind, based entirely on grades and test scores. Tuition for the next school year will be $5,430 for a New York State resident who is a full-time student at a four-year college, one of the lowest prices in the country. Considering the charged debate that surrounded the decisions to establish and then to abolish open admissions, the greatest surprise may be how little political noise the results have generated. For almost 30 years, beginning in 1970, CUNY admitted any high school graduate to at least one of its colleges, though that meant admitting many who needed remedial courses. Enrollment surged, graduation rates dropped, and more high-achieving students went elsewhere. C .J. Hughes contributed reporting.