<p>Where can you find academic rigor and real racial diversity?
So far, we've found Occidental, at 45% students of color. Other comparable campuses? Where else can you find 30-40% or more students of color, although not predominantly Asian (eg UC Berkeley)? My son is hapa (half-Asian) and wants to be in a community of all colors.</p>
<p>For colleges ranked in the USNWR Top 30 national universities, here is how they compare:</p>
<pre><code> from collegeboard for class entering in Fall, 2006
</code></pre>
<p>Total , Black , Hispanic , Asian , School</p>
<p>62% , 4% , 12% , 46% , UC Berkeley
61% , 2% , 14% , 45% , UCLA
50% , 1% , 5% , 44% , Caltech
48% , 8% , 12% , 28% , MIT
45% , 10% , 11% , 24% , Stanford
43% , 4% , 14% , 25% , Rice
41% , 6% , 13% , 22% , USC
38% , 11% , 13% , 14% , Columbia
36% , 9% , 7% , 20% , Duke
35% , 6% , 7% , 22% , Johns Hopkins
35% , 4% , 5% , 26% , Carnegie Mellon
34% , 8% , 8% , 18% , Harvard
32% , 9% , 3% , 20% , Emory
32% , 8% , 9% , 15% , Brown
30% , 10% , 7% , 13% , Princeton
30% , 6% , 7% , 17% , Northwestern
30% , 8% , 6% , 16% , U Penn
29% , 6% , 9% , 14% , U Chicago
29% , 9% , 8% , 12% , Yale
28% , 10% , 4% , 14% , Wash U
28% , 6% , 6% , 16% , Cornell
28% , 11% , 5% , 12% , U Virginia
26% , 7% , 5% , 14% , Dartmouth
26% , 7% , 6% , 13% , Tufts
24% , 8% , 8% , 8% , Georgetown
24% , 7% , 5% , 12% , U Michigan
24% , 12% , 5% , 7% , U North Carolina
22% , 9% , 6% , 7% , Vanderbilt
21% , 5% , 9% , 7% , Notre Dame
14% , 6% , 2% , 6% , Wake Forest</p>
<p>thanks, hawkette!
is there a similar list for LACs?</p>
<p>Swarthmore College (Fall 2007 enrollment):</p>
<p>7% International
8% Black, Non-Hispanic
1% American Indian or Alaskan Native
17% Asian or Pacific Islander
10% Hispanic, Latino/a</p>
<p>This list is missing native americans, who are also classified as minorities. (I am only saying this because Dartmouth is 5% NA, so its more diverse than the above list states.)</p>
<p>I think these numbers need some context, especially for the publics. To the extent public institutions primarily serve state residents, the appropriate benchmark for determining how well they serve minority students is the percentage of minorities in the state population. Although the Berkeley student body is only 4% black, that’s only slightly below (in absolute terms) the percentage of blacks in the state population, which is only 6.7%. UVa, on the other hand, although its student body is 11% black, serves a state that is 19.6% black. Michigan’s student body is only 7% black, in a state that is 14.2% black. And UNC’s student body is 12% black in a state that is 21.6% black. So although Berkeley has the lowest percentage of black students among these four institutions, it is doing at least as well as the other three when measured against the percentage of blacks in the state population from which it draws most of its students. </p>
<p>On the other hand, while Berkeley’s 12% Hispanic student body may appear impressive on its face, that figure falls far short of the Hispanic population in the state, at 32.4%. In contrast, Michigan, Virginia, and North Carolina, all with 5% Hispanic student bodies, actually exceed the percentage of Hispanics in the state population, 3.3%, 4.7%, and 4.7% respectively. </p>
<p>All four publics have a significantly higher percentage of Asians in their student bodies than the Asian percentage of the state population: Berkeley with a whopping 46% Asian student body (v. 10.9% Asian state population), Michigan 12% (v. 1.8% state), Virginia 12% (v. 3.7% state), and North Carolina 7% (v. 1.4% state). </p>
<p>For the elite privates which have no obligation to serve the population of any particular state, the relevant benchmark is the national population which is 13.4% black, 15% Hispanic, and 5% Asian. By this measure, none of the elite privates has a student body that matches the percentage of blacks in the nation’s population as a whole, and the same is true of Hispanics, although MIT, Rice, USC and Columbia come close. And like the top publics, all the elite privates have a higher percentage of Asians in their student bodies than the Asian percentage of the nation’s population as a whole.</p>
<p>I don’t see UMiami on that list, but several minorities I know have commented on the diversity there.</p>
<p>Reed College (Fall 2007 enrollment)</p>
<p>15% Unknown
9% Asian or Pacific Islander
8% Nonresident aliens
6% Hispanic
3% Black, Non-Hispanic
1% American Indian or Alaskan Native</p>
<p>Northwestern University
Stanford University</p>
<p>Stanford. It’s very racially diverse and is not filled with 40+% Asians like the schools that are ranked higher, except for MIT. And since MIT is a primarily tech school, people have wider academic interests at Stanford so its combination of academic and racial diversity really can’t be beat. But obviously I may be a little biased. :)</p>
<p>Biased? How so? </p>
<p><em>Looks around</em>. </p>
<p>Nope, nothing. Sounds good to me.</p>
<p>bclintonk- where did you get all that data? I have been interested in minority population percentages in different states, but you seem to have a boatload of data. Is there a website where I can look at other states as well?</p>
<p>It also may be more cogent to look at state populations of High School graduates and compare that to college enrollment. I suspect (I have no data, per se) that # hispanics in the population/# of hispanic HS grads is not the same as the same data for blacks, asians, American Indians, etc., etc. Obviously U of Texas cannot be expected to enroll the % of hispanics in the population if the # of available college freshman (HS graduates) is substantially different than that in general population.</p>
<p>Overall your approach of comparing the nascent population with state school enrollment is much more meaningful and useful than comparing simply enrollment numbers of different institutions.</p>
<p>^ Aardvark,</p>
<p>Good point about looking at the percentage of “available” potential matriculants, i.e., percentage of HS grads by racial/ethnic group. I’m not sure where you’d get that data. State population data by race/ethnicity is available from the Census Bureau, [Census</a> Bureau Home Page](<a href=“http://www.census.gov%5DCensus”>http://www.census.gov). The 2000 census data is pretty badly out-of-date by now but they have more recent estimates. Unfortunately it’s not all in one place; you need to scavenge around a bit.</p>
<p>As for Texas, it’s an interesting question whether the percentage of Hispanic HS grads would be larger or smaller than the Hispanic share of overall state population. My sense is that the Hispanic community in Texas is fairly young on average, so Hispanics may represent a larger fractional share of the school-age population than of the population at large. On the other hand, HS graduation rates tend to be somewhat lower for Hispanics than for non-Hispanic whites, which would tend to reduce the Hispanic share of HS grads—though the size of that disparity is disputed. Whether the net result is a larger or smaller Hispanic share of HS grads than of the state population as a whole, I don’t know.</p>
<p>Thanks for the website.</p>
<p>I was just using Hispanics in Texas as an example of the bigger concept.</p>
<p>For the original poster: it may not matter about the efforts that the schools take to influence minority enrollment relative to the state’s population. He/she may just be interested in “How many people of my race/ethnicity will I be able to associate with?”.</p>