African-American and Minority Students at LACs

Parents Forum
1

<p>This thread is inspired by another in which the OP took a certain university to task for having only a 3% African-American enrollment. This sent me on a search of other colleges and universities to see what sort of results schools have had in trying to diversify their campuses. It proved to be a more time-consuming task than I anticipated, as I attempted to get only the most current information available from the individual schools' common data sets. For this reason I am focusing the start of this post on 25 liberal arts colleges located in the Northeast. I would welcome posters to add to the list, however.</p>

<p>I have listed schools in order by the percentage of enrolled African-American students (since that was the thrust of the other post that inspired this one). Next to each school, by percentage, is the student population for 1) ASfrican-American students; 2) All ALANA -- Affrican-American, Latino/a, Asian-American/Pacific Islanders and Native American -- and; 3) International students. I have not included any colleges that include international students as part of the first two categories.</p>

<p>I'll refrain from any other comments at this point except to say that even those colleges that have historically demonstrated a strong commitment to diversity -- Williams, Swarthmore -- have some room for improvement in creating a student body that looks like the face of America. In light of that I would be hesitant to cast stones at colleges that have an even further road to travel. </p>

<p>Williams ( 9.8 %, 29.6 %, 6.7 %)</p>

<p>Amherst (9.5 %, 30.5 %, 7.1 %)</p>

<p>Swarthmore (8.5 %, 36.1 %, 6.6 %)</p>

<p>Haverford (7.5 %, 27.0 %, 3.7 %)</p>

<p>Wesleyan University (7.0 %, 26.0 %, 6.0 %)</p>

<p>Trinity (CT) (6.3 % , 17.8 %, 3.9 %)</p>

<p>Drew University (6.2 %, 19.0 %, 2.0 %)</p>

<p>Bowdoin (6.0 %, 26.8 %, 3.0 %)</p>

<p>Lafayette (5.2 %, 15.1 %, 7.1 %)</p>

<p>Goucher (4.9 %, 11.6 %, 0.5 %)</p>

<p>Holy Cross (4.4 %, 15.7 %, 1.0 %)</p>

<p>Dickinson (4.4 %, 14.2 %, 5.6 %)</p>

<p>Gettysburg (4.4 %, 8.5 %, 1.8 %)</p>

<p>Colgate University (4.0 %, 12.6 %, 5.6 %)</p>

<p>Franklin & Marshall (4.0 %, 12.0 %, 9.4 %)</p>

<p>Wheaton (4.0 %, 10.8 %, 2.4 %)</p>

<p>Hobart & William Smith (4.0 %, 10.4 %, 2.0 %)</p>

<p>Kenyon (3.9 %, 11.7 %, 3.3 %)</p>

<p>Hamilton (3.8 %, 14.5 %, 5.3 %)</p>

<p>Skidmore (3.5 %, 16.3 %, 2.8 %)</p>

<p>Union (3.4 %, 13.9 %, 2.2 %)</p>

<p>Middlebury (3.3 %, 19.6 %, 10.3 %)</p>

<p>Bucknell University (3.2 %, 13.5 %, 2.7 %)</p>

<p>Bates (2.8 %, 11.3 %, 5.3 %)</p>

<p>Colby (1.8 %, 13.3 %, 5.7 %)</p>

2

<p>Many LACs would be delighted to increase their numbers of African American and other students of color. However, it's very hard for LACs to do this because:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Most LAC are in the middle of nowhere, including being in places that have very few minorities. Many minority students want to be in locations where they can hear music that they like, get hair products and food that they like, go to places of worship that worship similarly to them, and where they can see a reasonable amount of people who look similar to themselves in the community. </p></li>
<li><p>Many LACs lack division one sports and football teams, and many minorities -- particularly African Americans -- want to be in colleges that have those things.</p></li>
<li><p>Many LACs are in very cold places in the country, and many minorities would prefer to be in warmer areas, not in the heavy snow belt.</p></li>
</ol>

3

<p>Northstarmom -- Certainly Williams is lacking is all of the areas you mentioned. It is DIII in athletics, is ice box cold seven months out of the year and is in the middle of nowhere with few African-Americans in the surrounding Berkshires. Yet it has done an admirable job in recruiting qualified black and minority students.</p>

4

<p>Still, it's not easy to attract minorities to LACs, and while Williams has been successful including recruiting one of my cousins, I don't think that it's possible for all of the LACs that are in the middle of nowhere to be that successful. Williams' being ranked #1 or #2 of all of the LACs certainly is a help.</p>

5

<p>Boston College has 1% African American. I was there earlier this year and that's what it felt like on campus. It's easily accessible by light-rail from the city, has good football, basketball and hockey teams, and minorities are plentiful in Boston.</p>

6

<p>Northstarmom -- I agree with all of your points. This is one reason I caution against throwing stones at those schools that have not been as successful as Williams to date. I have little doubt that the administrators are sincere in wanting to increase diversity among the student body, but it is not a simple matter that can be accomplished over the course of 3 or 4 admissions cycles.</p>

7

<p>In the Admissions thread Token Adult has a thread for race related questions. There is a post on page 22 that has data from The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. I don't know how to link over to it or make the journal information pop up here.</p>

8

<p>
[quote]
Northstarmom -- Certainly Williams is lacking is all of the areas you mentioned. It is DIII in athletics, is ice box cold seven months out of the year and is in the middle of nowhere with few African-Americans in the surrounding Berkshires. Yet it has done an admirable job in recruiting qualified black and minority students.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Williams' partnership with the QuestBridge Program helps with recruitment of minority/African American students.</p>

9

<p>not like you stereotyped or anything, northstarmom.
really now... hairproducts? come on.</p>

<p>Many LACs would be delighted to increase their numbers of African American and other students of color. However, it's very hard for LACs to do this because:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Most LAC are in the middle of nowhere, including being in places that have very few minorities. Many minority students want to be in locations where they can hear music that they like, get hair products and food that they like, go to places of worship that worship similarly to them, and where they can see a reasonable amount of people who look similar to themselves in the community. </p></li>
<li><p>Many LACs lack division one sports and football teams, and many minorities -- particularly African Americans -- want to be in colleges that have those things.</p></li>
<li><p>Many LACs are in very cold places in the country, and many minorities would prefer to be in warmer areas, not in the heavy snow belt.</p></li>
</ol>

10

<p>"not like you stereotyped or anything, northstarmom.
really now... hairproducts? come on."</p>

<p>I'm actually from an Upstate NY place in the middle of nowhere where there also is a LAC.</p>

<p>I had problems finding hair products, make-up, stockings the right color for me when I lived there. </p>

<p>Some LACs have even tried to solve the hair problem for African American women by bringing in hairdressers to serve them weekly or monthly.</p>

11

<p>LACs also tend to have a wealthier student body. I'm not saying all minority people are poor or anything(please! I don't wish to offend anybody)... well, it would not be a lie to state that a lot of them ARE less-privileged.</p>

<p>Bigger universities have bigger funds and offer lots of scholarships. Many New England LACs also tend to have a very large contingency of preppy students who come from prep schools. Schools such as Colgate, Trinity, Middlebury.... They all have ridiculously "preppy" reputation where there are lots of J.Crew-nantucket-pants-wearing, lacrosse-playing, blonde white caucasians students. Of course, I'm speaking entirely of general stereotypes. I have personally heard many of minority students complaining and not feeling too comfortable with that. (Preppy people can be very exclusive....)</p>

12

<p>You left off Oberlin, which was the first college to accept African American students, way back in the mid 19th century. It now has only 6.4% African American students -- maybe for some of the reasons suggested, particularly location; it is actively recruiting non-White students through various programs, has generous financial aid, and seems to be a welcoming environment. It is not preppy, either.</p>

13

<p>Mamenyu -- Thank you for that information. Yes, I decided to limit my research to the Northeastern LACs because of time constraints. I hope other posters will add to my initial list as you have.</p>

14

<p>Link to Journal of Blacks in Higher Education article on the acceptance rates of blacks at the nation's top LACs: The</a> High-Ranking Liberal Arts Colleges Where Black Students Stand the Best Chance of Admission</p>

<p>"n the fall of 2004 all 27 high-ranking liberal arts colleges in our survey provided detailed information on their acceptance rates for black students. For the current academic year the black acceptance rate was greater than 50 percent at seven of the 27 highest-ranked liberal arts colleges. Mid-dlebury College had the highest black applicant acceptance rate of these 27 institutions. At this highly selective college in Vermont, 58, or 71.6 percent, of the 81 black applicants were accepted for admission. The other six highly ranked liberal arts colleges that accepted more than one half of their black applicants in 2004 were Macalester College, Trinity College, Oberlin College, Pomona College, Mount Holyoke College, and Haverford College.</p>

<p>At the lower end of the acceptance rate rankings, only 10, or 23.3 percent, of the 43 black applicants to Harvey Mudd College in California were accepted for admission. Bates College, Grinnell College, Wesleyan University, Davidson College, and Colgate University all accepted less than one third of the black students who applied in 2004."</p>

15

<p>my oldest D attended private schools throughout college graduation.
These schools all offered a great deal of need & merit based aid- however- like the cities where they were located- not as diverse as others.</p>

<p>Her class, was the first graduating class in her elementary school of more than 1 student. It was small- mostly caucasian- less than 15 students.
( they had started as a preschool program on campus at UW, affilated with a Harvard study- but had been trying to grow through elementary for some time.)
While she had attended since 1st grade, at which time they also had 3rd graders, parents wanted a " known" cohort of students, and many left for other private schools for 5th grade ( or earlier)
However- IMO it was diverse enough for our purposes, I didn't need to fight every battle & was an amazing school.</p>

<p>Many students do not want an LAC.
My younger daughter- who attended public schools after 2nd grade and who graduated from an inner city public school, only briefly considered LACs.
Too small, too expensive- which possibly also resulted in her third reason, not enough diversity.
While she was interested in Occidental , for its academics and diversity, it also is quite expensive & I have heard from parents whose children have attended/transferred, that much diversity is racial, not economic.
We were interested in racial diversity- but also socio economic diversity.</p>

16

<p>Glancing at that list, I would hazard a hypothesis that the rank order of their endowments per student would not be very different. (Not true in every case -- Middlebury is an outlier -- but pretty true.)</p>

<p>For the reason Northstarmom gave, isolated LACs can be a tough sell to qualified African-American students (many of whom wind up with lots of options). My son's last girlfriend in high school is a URM at one of the top group of colleges on that list, and he has another URM high school classmate at the same college. Both of them were strong candidates for anywhere; both became convinced that going to a LAC was the right thing for them. But when they visited a number of the colleges on the list, they simply did not feel comfortable with the lack of critical mass of people like them, both in the student body and in the surrounding community. One of them is an observant Muslim; it would be awfully hard to attend a college with only a handful of other Muslims and no Muslims within an hour's bus time in any direction. So they both chose a relatively non-isolated LAC that offered them good financial aid. </p>

<p>There was a thread recently about how completely socially isolated an African-American freshman felt at one of the schools in the top third of that list. She came from a suburban high school; she had always had lots of white friends. But she really was made to feel unwelcome there (not deliberately, more a question of her classmates not feeling comfortable that they knew how they were supposed to behave, since none of them had had a lot of experience with black friends). It really struck home for me, because a friend of one of my kids had the same experience at the same college. It was horribly destructive.</p>

17

<p>Op omitted Muhlenberg: 2% black, 2% Asian, a northeastern LAC about 20 minutes from Lafayette.</p>

<p>I do love the article about the accept rates for black students. I had no idea. That is amazing. I won't tell her, but I'm feeling very optmistic now. My D is applying to two Ivies (Brown and Cornell), six LACs, plus Lehigh and Penn State. She received an acceptance letter from one of the LACs last Saturday. One down, nine to go. Penn State should be next, probably right after New Year's Day.</p>

18

<p>Being an African-American, I think Northstarmoms list of reasons is only partially true, for me at least and several of my peers.</p>

<p>1). I would want to attend a schol in a uran area because of there are more opportunities for internships and easier to build up a network. I also enjoy being around people of different ethnic/socioeconomic backgrounds as well as urban areas having more things to do instead of staying in some secluded campus playing frisbee to take up the time.</p>

<p>2). I'm not a sports person, I would rather spend my time at a play or a art gallery than watching sports.</p>

<p>3). Having been to a bible belt state, I would not want to go to south for college just because the way I was treated when I visited. I plan on going north to college if I get in to my #1 because of its location, a city, which are usually more diverse and accepting. The north is generally anyway. Most of my peers feel this way as well and don't even want to go to college in the more rural areas(western) part of Virginia.</p>

<p>Hope this helps from an AA students perspective :D</p>

19

<p>"This thread is inspired by another in which the OP took a certain university to task for having only a 3% African-American enrollment."</p>

<p>I refused to consider schools with low black enrollment for my D; but I wouldn't say that I took any school to task - - I just crossed it off the list. Also, I note that you didn't include any of the top women's colleges; most, if not all, of them have a dritical mass of black students (5-6% of total enrollment) and large minority enrollment overall.</p>

20

<p>A friend of D2's (who visited our home with D one weekend) was telling me about a program in which she participated. It was sponsored by The Posse Foundation that works with the top minority high school students from the inner city to help them with college enrollment. The group has year-long seminars and workshops for high school students in the program; there are also partnerships with various colleges. Besides supporting the minority students in their college searches, the program also works with the students once they are in college so that these students can assist their colleges to create welcoming environments for students of all backgrounds. D2's friend felt that the program was one reason that she was happy at her LAC. It sounded like a great program for bringing minority students and LACs together in a productive way.</p>