<p>I am an African-American female looking to potentially apply to ND however I am worried about lack of diversity. I was wondering if any current students could tell me about the diversity situation at this school. Although I have been raised mostly around white people it is still uncomfortable to be the only black person in the room and on campus and I would hate to waste time at a school where I feel uncomfortable. Any help would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>You are asking two different questions here. The first is about “lack of diversity.” You can look up the statistics, which differ from year to year, but the percentage of black students has hovered around 5-6% in recent years. So, there will clearly be situations in which there will be only one black student in a class, especially in small upper-division courses. </p>
<p>The second question is whether that would make you “uncomfortable.” Only you can answer that question.</p>
<p>From a new ND article on the Class of 2016:
“The number of international students is also up 40 percent for the class of 2016 and 26 percent of the incoming class will be composed of students of color. Both of these numbers demonstrate the impact of the Universitys recruiting efforts in recent years.” </p>
<p>The percantages are not broken down further in the article, but it does give a feel for where the university is heading.</p>
<p>There is a reason that the percentages are not broken down.</p>
<p>“Where the university is heading” is more Asian, international (who are mostly Asian), and Hispanic students. Black students will continue to be a small percentage, in large part because so few American blacks are Catholic. Notre Dame is making heroic efforts to attract more black applicants, and to admit more black students, but it has proved to be a frustratingly difficult task. Every other top school is also competing for this relatively small group of black students, and a Catholic school in a relatively small, economically depressed midwestern community isn’t always as appealing as a cosmopolitan university in a big city, or a school located in a picture-perfect college town.</p>
<p>There isn’t a lot of diversity, and there will be a lot of cases in which you’ll be the only black student in a room. The university is very white, at least from my South Florida perspective, and perhaps the only diversity lacking more than racial is economic.</p>
<p>I would recommend applying, if you’re interested, and visiting overnight. If you do one of the many “diversity weekends,” they’ll likely place you with another black student* and you can experience classes, a dorm, and daily life while also hearing about the experiences of your host.</p>
<p>*When diversity weekends happen, my black friends are asked to host black students and my Asian friends to host Asians, so it seems they do this on purpose.</p>
<p>
Well, there’s the fact that it just referred to them as colored, but hey, let’s ignore that for now. Anyway, this includes Blacks, White Hispanics, non-White Hispanics, Asians, and Natives.</p>
<p>
True, only 4% of American Catholics are Black, which could explain the 5-6% of Black students. Black students are also fairly underrepresented in universities all across the country, because of the social and economic oppressions of poverty, and Notre Dame is particularly full of rich students (70% of students come from $100,000+/year families, 30-35% from $300,000+/year families, and only around 4% of us are from the bottom 25% of society – I don’t know anyone else below the poverty line, but I know several people from millionaire families).</p>
<p>The economic explanation could also serve for the Hispanic population (around 9%, I think), which doesn’t compare to the roughly 32% of (documented) American Catholics that are Hispanic.</p>
<p>There are a good deal of Asian students, though. All of the Asians I know are non-Catholic (non-religious, too, for that matter), with the exception of Filipinos, so percentages of East Asian Catholics don’t really matter.</p>