Harvard U diversity...

<p>I once heard how Harvard University raves about it's campus diversity. My reading was then followed by a former student who said that even though they say it-it really isn't. If anyone here goes to HARVARD, what is your opinion-DIVERSE or NOT DIVERSE?</p>

<p>Ethnically, racially and geographically, yes - very diverse. Economically, less so, but changing. Intellectually, no: they're all smart. Politically, no: overwhelmingly liberal.</p>

<p>thankss so much, I was mainly talking about Racially, but the other information is great to know as well. Thanks again.</p>

<p>African Americans will constitute 9.3% of the Class of 2010.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/05.11/01-yield.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/05.11/01-yield.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Harvard has the nation's highest yield rate for African Americans among elite colleges and universities - over 70% That is, if admitted, they tend to enroll.</p>

<p>Finally, Harvard has a higher graduation rate for African Americans than any other college in America - 95%: if enrolled, African Americans are satisfied enough and encouraged enough to stay and graduate. This means that if you are admitted, they are pretty certain you can do the work.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>So if someone is poor student but has republican views, would there be any chances to be admitted if they have all necessary GPAs, SAT and SAT, APs, and grade point above the median of the admitted class. Many parents have said that with $$$$$$ need in financial aid, chances decreases quite substantially.</p>

<p>If you are poor, your chances, ironically are higher, assuming you apply and are otherwise qualified, because they are pushing very hard for economic diversity now. Tuition is waived for those with a family income of $60,000 or under, and substantially reduced for those with a family income of $80,000 or less. Harvard is aggressively seeking such applicants.</p>

<p>See: "Harvard expands aid for low, middle income families"
<a href="http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/04.06/01-finaid.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/04.06/01-finaid.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>still, according to that same magazine, harvard ranks only 8th out of 26 elites for its overall success in integrating african-americans.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.jbhe.com/features/36_leading_universities.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.jbhe.com/features/36_leading_universities.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>As you well know, scottie, that's an odd chart measuring "rate of improvement" - so that it focusses on and spotlights certain schools (like Princeton, for example) that have recently improved a previously very poor record.</p>

<p>As for Harvard: "Harvard is the highest-rated university in the important category of black student yield. Nearly two thirds of all black students who are accepted for admission at Harvard decide to enroll. This statistic in itself demonstrates that college-bound black students have the highest regard for the university. Also, the university's black student graduation rate remains the best in the nation."</p>

<p>Note, also, that the data is five years old.</p>

<p>at the time, harvard had lost 1.3% from its percentage of black students and 12.5% from its black yield in the previous five years.</p>

<hr>

<p>But Harvard's black student yield has been dipping in recent years and so has the black percentage of its freshman classes. In the past five years, black student yield has dropped from 76.1 percent to 63.6 percent. In the same period, the percentage of blacks in the first-year class dropped from 8.5 percent in 1997 to 7.1 percent in 2001. </p>

<p>The recent controversy involving Harvard president Lawrence Summers and the faculty of Harvard's Afro-American studies department may put further pressures on Harvard's ability to maintain its high black student yield. Preliminary enrollment data suggests that this year's freshman class will have fewer black students than the class that enrolled in the fall of 2001. </p>

<p>Also, Harvard is ranked very low in terms of the percentage of blacks on its faculty. Harvard is known for offering the most prestigious black studies department in the world. This department has consistently attracted a large group of leading black professors. But black professors are almost totally absent from a large majority of the university's mainstream academic departments. As a result, Harvard's overall faculty numbers are far below those of many of its peer institutions.</p>

<p>All that is outdated and overriden by intervening events, scottie.</p>

<p>From the April 20, 2006 JBHE bulletin:</p>

<p>"Top Universities Report Good Results in Recruiting Black Students</p>

<p>Several of the nation’s leading colleges and universities have reported impressive successes in their efforts to increase racial diversity in their entering classes. Here is a sampling of statistics on the number and percentage of blacks among students accepted at some of our most prestigious institutions of higher education.</p>

<p>• Blacks were 9.6 percent of the 2,150 students admitted to Dartmouth this spring. This is equal to the black percentage of accepted students in 2005.
• At Harvard University, blacks were 10.5 percent of all students admitted. This equaled last year’s record high percentage.
• At Johns Hopkins University, blacks were 9 percent of the 3,232 students offered admission. In 2005 blacks were 8.8 percent of all students accepted for admission, but a low black student yield resulted in a freshman class that was 6.3 percent black."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.jbhe.com/latest/index042006.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.jbhe.com/latest/index042006.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>note that those numbers are for admits, not matriculants.</p>

<p>for the class of 2009, for which matriculant no's are available:</p>

<p>"Princeton's freshman class has the highest percentage of black students in the Ivy League with 9.4 percent, just ahead of Harvard's 9.3 percent and Yale's 9.2 percent, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE) announced last week. Princeton also topped the journal's Ivy League list for the biggest increase in black student enrollment since last year, with a 38 percent jump."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/10/24/news/13574.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/10/24/news/13574.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>If a student has a score of SAT 1 800/800 and SAT II 800/800 and APs 5 in subject like AP European history, AP BC Calc, and AP Chemistry only in 10th grade and are having upper management positions in activities that are valued in the school such weekly newspaper editor, debate, volunteer work etc. However, the downside is that the kid attends the prep school on full financial aid of $130,000 from one of the eight elite prep schools with additional money coming from the Jack Kent Cooke Young foundation. In addition, have done research with HYMS faculty and have attended extremely selective program in humanities and math and sciences all summer long while at one of the prep school. Then despite needing financial aid, kid may have a chance to get in.
School send routinely 15% to HYP and 37% kids to Ivy League and M and S. </p>

<p>Many parents have told me in private conversation that our safe bet are schools like that offer merit aid and have very low Asians applying. Ivy probably will not select kids who need financial aid, as Ivies are full of Asian kids. Additionally most of these kids have similar stats and have $$$$$ to fund the education. There logic is that being poor Asian, colleges tend to overlook poor Asians, and go for Asians who can afford full freight. </p>

<p>So how true is a chance for a kid who definitely needs $$$$$ in order to attend the college. The prep school has given money from last three years full tution which is around $30,000, and offered a much bigger package for the fourth year.</p>

<p>Financial aid is awarded on the basis of need at the Ivies. I am not clear what ethnic biases other schools may have in awarding so-called "merit" aid.</p>

<p>The only way to get a meaningful comparison is to apply to two or more schools, gain admission, and see what the bottom line money award is from each institution.</p>

<p>It appears that the African American fraction of the class may be slightly higher at Harvard than at Princeton this year, much to scottie's mortification! The difference may be the much higher yield rate for African American Harvard admits.</p>

<p>See:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/05.11/01-yield.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/05.11/01-yield.html&lt;/a> </p>

<p>Compare the vague wording here: </p>

<p><a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/05/12/news/15614.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/05/12/news/15614.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Doesn't Harvard have Princeton beat by almost a whole century for the date at which it first admitted a black student? I recall NorthStarMom saying that there are third-generation legacy black students at Harvard--are there any such students at Princeton?</p>

<p>i'm not seeing any "vague wording." in any event, the numbers are from JBHE, not from the individual schools' newspapers.</p>

<p>"I recall NorthStarMom saying that there are third-generation legacy black students at Harvard--are there any such students at Princeton?"</p>

<p>there certainly could be, since princeton has been admitting black undergraduates since 1942. </p>

<p>"Interestingly, the first Princeton degree to be earned by an African American was not John Leroy Howard's undergraduate degree. Rev. Irwin William Langston Roundtree received a Master of Arts degree from the College of New Jersey , as Princeton was then known, on June 12, 18 95. Rev. George Shippen Stark, also a clergyman, received the second Master of Arts degree earned by an African American on June 13, 19 06. In addition, three African American men studied at Princeton in the 18 th century without earning degrees: for two years starting in 1774, John Witherspoon tutored John Quaumino (sometimes spelled Quamine) and Bristol Yamma before they undertook missionary work. In the early 1790s, former slave John Chavis studied religion prior to becoming a Presbyterian minister." </p>

<p><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/mudd/news/faq/topics/African_Americans.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton.edu/mudd/news/faq/topics/African_Americans.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Princeton, as you know. had close ties to the Confederacy, and was the last Ivy to admit blacks. Unlike Harvard and Yale, Princeton long had a systematic policy of excluding blacks.</p>

<p>There is the famous story, recounted in "The Chosen", of a black student, Bruce Wright, who was accidentally admitted to Princeton in 1939. When he came to enroll, he was pulled out of the line by upperclassmen who told him "The dean of admissions would like to see you." The dean, Wright later reported, "looked at me as though I were a disgusting specimin under a microscope."</p>

<p>"If you are trying to come here, well, you're going to be someplace you're not wanted", the dean said, and told Wright to go to a college "of his own kind."</p>

<p>In a formal letter, Wright (who later became a distinguished justice of the Supreme Court in New York) was informed by the dean, that:</p>

<p>"I cannot conscientiously advise a colored student to apply at Princeton simply because I do not believe he would be happy in this environment. There are no colored students in the university and a member of your race might feel very much alone."</p>

<p>No black student was enrolled at Princeton willingly until 1956 - long after Jackie Robinson had broken the color line in major league baseball. (Four blacks, in 1945, came in under the federal government's V-12 program. Scottie's 1942 claim is in error. 3 of the 4 federally-sponsored students were blackballed from the "eating clubs.")</p>

<p>The traditional hostility to blacks at Princeton dated not only to its "special relationship" with the Confederacy, but to the college presidency of Woodrow Wilson, a raging bigot who later enforced rigid sgragation at the national level matching his policies at Princeton.</p>

<p>See: "The Chosen" - pp 232-237.</p>

<p>all true, except for the "close ties to the confederacy" you allege. of course, there were similarly unsavory tales in cambridge and new haven, which were hardly any more progressive than princeton on the "negro question" until mid-century.</p>

<p>about 1942:</p>

<p>"It was not until World War II, when the federal government opened a Naval Training School at Princeton on October 5, 19 42 that the color barrier was finally broken. Four black students, John Leroy Howard, James Everett Ward, Arthur Jewell Wilson, Jr., and Melvin Murchison, Jr., entered the University through the United States Navy's V-12 program, with the first three earning undergraduate degrees. Howard was the first to receive a Princeton degree on February 5, 19 47. Though both Ward and Wilson entered Princeton two weeks prior to Howard, Wilson did not receive his degree until June 7, 19 47 and Ward his on October 1, 19 47. Murchison left the University without graduating on October 20, 19 45." </p>

<p><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/mudd/news/faq/topics/African_Americans.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton.edu/mudd/news/faq/topics/African_Americans.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Or what about this</p>

<p>
[quote]
While President of Princeton, he [Wilson] turned away black applicants for admission, saying that their desire for education was "unwarranted".

[/quote]
</p>

<p><a href="http://www.reason.com/links/links121802.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.reason.com/links/links121802.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>