CV NEWS FEED // A recent poll of Harvard University’s incoming freshmen has revealed the majority of its new students to be agnostic or atheist.
American political scientist and Baptist pastor Ryan Burge noted in his analysis of the results that in total, “nearly half of Harvard’s freshmen chose [atheist or agnostic]…For comparison’s sake about 12% of the general population identifies as atheist/agnostic. So, Harvard is four times higher than that.”
Harvard admitted approximately 1,220 students to its class of 2027. There are 21,613 students total, including postgraduates.
According to the poll, 24.6% of incoming freshmen at Harvard identified themselves as agnostic, while 21.5% identified themselves as atheist. Catholics make up the largest percent of Christians at 16.4%, while Protestants are just 6.1% of the new freshman class.
“But that’s not the only thing that jumped out to me,” he continued:
Maybe the biggest surprise was that just 6% of all Harvard freshmen identified as Protestant. That’s insane. In the Pew data from a general population sample in 2022, 43% identified as Protestants. The average American is seven times more likely to be a Protestant than a Harvard freshman.
Burge also noted that Harvard freshmen are “twice as likely to identify as atheist or agnostic” in comparison to over 250 universities in America that were polled by Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) earlier this year.
In terms of political beliefs, 19% of Harvard’s soon-to-be freshmen identified as “very progressive,” while 45.2% identified as progressive. A mere 7.1% identified as conservative.
