<p>From time to time, people will ask about the diversity that a student encounters on a particular college campus. Collegeboard.com provides this information and I have compiled the list below for the USNWR Top 50 based on the % of students on each campus that are considered White/Non-Hispanic. Only one school in the USNWR Top 20 was above 61% (Notre Dame at 73%) which shows how far the country has come in admitting non-white students into the most elite colleges. </p>
<p>Surprising to me were some of the high numbers for the publics (Penn State-85%, U Wisconsin-79%, U North Carolina-70%, Georgia Tech-68%, U Michigan-66%, U Virginia-64%). As you might expect, the numbers of whites were dramatically different for the California publics (UC Berkeley-29%, UCLA-33%, UCSD-28%, UC Irvine-23%, UC Davis-33%, UC Santa Barbara-52%) and privates (Caltech-37%, Stanford-41%, USC-47%). Here is the complete list:</p>
<p>1 Princeton 60%
2 Harvard 44%
3 Yale 49%
4 Cal Tech 37%
4 Stanford 41%
4 MIT 37%
7 U Penn 43%
8 Duke 52%
9 U Chicago 48%
9 Dartmouth 59%
9 Columbia 42%
12 Wash U StL 61%
12 Cornell 46%
14 Northwestern 59%
15 Brown 47%
16 J Hopkins 60%
17 Rice 47%
18 Emory 52%
18 Vanderbilt 61%
20 Notre Dame 73%
21 UC Berkeley 29%
21 Carnegie Mellon 40%
23 Georgetown 65%
24 U Michigan 66%
24 U Virginia 64%
26 UCLA 33%
27 USC 47%
27 Tufts 59%
27 U North Carolina 70%
30 Wake Forest 82%
31 Brandeis 53%
31 W & M 63%
33 Lehigh 71%
34 Boston College 70%
34 NYU 51%
34 U Rochester 55%
34 U Wisconsin 79%
38 UC SD 28%
38 Georgia Tech 68%
38 Case Western 62%
41 U Illinois UC 64%
42 Rensselaer na
42 U Washington 54%
44 UC Irvine 23%
44 Tulane na
44 Yeshiva 95%
47 UC Davis 33%
47 UC S Barbara 52%
47 U Florida 59%
47 Penn State 85%
47 U Texas 54%</p>
<p>That's pretty weird. I'm interested in UCLA and Berkeley, and that would seem pretty strange to be at a school that is only 1/3 white. I'm very tolerant of other races, but coming from a town that's 96% white, it would be a big adjustment attending one of the UC's.</p>
<p>You need to add together the "white" and "unknown" categories for this number to make sense. Significant percentages of white applicants now choose not to self designate. Without including these "unknowns", you get a very misleading view of the campus composition. Of course, the rate of "unknowns" varies quite a bit. The stronger the affirmative action, the less reason a white student would check an ethnicity box on an application.</p>
<p>By combining white and unknown, you are collecting the number of students who do NOT designate as Af Am, Asian Am, Latino/a, N. Am., or International.</p>
<p>BTW, USNEWS already combines these categories for you when they list the percentage of "white" students in their database. Some colleges even combine these in their own reporting.</p>
<p>For example, using the fall 2005 data from USNEWS, Harvard is 56% "white and unknown" versus 62% at Princeton. Still a difference, but nowhere near the 44% to 60% difference you list above.</p>
<p>nick the UCs are very diverse because of the hispanic community in and around the southwest and extremely high asian population in california accounts for less white pepople-- plus some eskimos come in</p>
<p>interesteddad,
Perhaps I should have stated that, for those students who self-declared, the numbers were as presented. You make an assumption that everyone who does not mark the box is white. They may be, they may not be. They are unknown.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You make an assumption that everyone who does not mark the box is white. They may be, they may not be. They are unknown.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'm just tellin' you the assumption that the colleges and USNEWS make. Because there is a huge variance in the reporting of the "unspecified" category, the numbers you presented above really don't give an accurate picture.</p>
<p>For example, Swarthmore reports 13.6% of its students as "unknown". Williams reports 0.0% percent, despite the fact that the two schools draw from essentially the same pool. Williams is clearly lumping their unknowns into the "white" category. </p>
<p>The only way to get any consistency across multiple colleges is to group the two categories. Does that mean that a handful of Asian Americans get miscategorized as "white"? Probably. But, that small number is likely consistent across the board.</p>
<p>interesteddad,
The data came directly from collegeboard.com. I am making no judgments about the folks who may have declined to declare.</p>
<p>everest1,
The data presented is for whites/non-Hispanic. The other groups explicitly mentioned in the collegeboard data are:
American Indian/Alaskan Native
Asian/Pacific Islander
Black/Non-Hispanic
Hispanic
Non-Resident Alien</p>
<p>Dorian_Mode, I guess that was suppose to be sarcastic? In fact, it is a "progressive attitude" in the sense that I feel that the status quo is so blatantly wrong. </p>
<p>I'll re-ask atomom's question: Is "whiteness" now a bad thing?</p>
<p>I can understand that you may feel the status quo should be improved, but automatically equating an increase in minority attendance with "lowering the bar" seems blatantly racist to me.</p>
<p>When reporting student race/ethnicity, colleges don't just separate "white" from "unknown"; they also separate foreign students from everybody else. </p>
<p>As the list at the start of this thread indicates, Harvard is 44% "white." But the university also has 9% foreign students who are listed in their own category regardless of race and 15% of students with race/ethnicity "unreported." In other words, we don't know the race/ethnicity of 24% of the students at Harvard -- quite a large percentage.</p>
<p>So all we can really conclude is that the proportion of white students at Harvard is somewhere between 44% and 68%. That's a rather wide range.</p>
<p>"Whiteness" is not a bad thing. My daughter (who is white) just did not want to go to a school that had little diversity. Her high school has a good mix of students and she likes that atmosphere. After one of her college visits, she said she definitely did not want to attend that college because it was "too white and preppy."</p>
<p>Internationals are always reported separately. It has a very specific definition: no US citizenship or green card.</p>
<p>As I've tried to point out, if you add the "unknown" and "white", you get a very consistent measure -- not only of year to year trends at a given school, but of school versus school comparisons.</p>
<p>Think about it. You would have to certifiably nuts to not check an ethnicity box on a college app if you are a URM (Af Am, Latino/a, Native Am). The vast majority of "unknowns" are white students who opt not to self-designate.</p>
<p>It's not really an issue of what's the best way to report these numbers. It's a matter of using a consistent standard that makes the numbers useful for something. It doesn't matter if a school is 60% or 62% non-white and/or non-US in absolute terms. What is useful is a consistent measure for comparing non-white and/or non-US populations at different schools or at one school over time. Expressing the percentage as "white" is simply the inverse of "non-white and/or non-US". Like saying the glass is 60% full or 40% empty -- same thing either way.</p>