Selective Liberal Arts Colleges and diversity: Pomona's shining example

[GMTplus7]

Domestic students of color make up the majority of the admitted class at 52.3 percent. Of these students, 14.4 percent are Asian, 12.4 percent Black/African American, 16 percent Latino, 8.1 percent multiracial and 1 percent Native American.
…
An example for other schools in California or for the Ivy League?

Was the racial breakdown of the APPLICANT POOL proportional to the racial breakdown of the admitted students, i.e. were the applicants 14.4 percent Asian, 12.4 percent Black/African American, 16 percent Latino, 8.1 percent multiracial and 1 percent Native American? Or did Pomona illegally engage in pursuing racial quotas? The diversity story at Pomona isn’t happy news for the white or asian students who were denied admission.

In addition, this diversity does not seem the dilute the academics at one of the most selective schools in the country

How can you make this statement without first knowing the strength of the applicant pool? For all you know Pomona could have admitted 50% of the black pool and 10% of the white pool. Had it admitted 20% of the white pool and 2% of the black pool, it potentially could have admitted an even stronger academic class.

[OnTheBubble]

When will the white group be broken down into religious and ethnic pools? That should be fun to read.

[klingon97]

I’m a bit hesitant to post this given the vitriol that is usually directed against people who say the slightest thing against Pomona, but I frankly find it peculair how Pomona advocates are always broadcasting their statistics and stressing how they are right up there with Harvard, Princeton, Columbia etc… Why the obsession with the Ivy League? If Pomona is a great college–and it is–it doesn’t need to “benchmark” itself constantly against the Ivies etc. It’s almost as if Pomona advocates have a chip on their shoulder. Rejoice in going to a great college. And in having a great college experience. But don’t be so defensive. Or “evangelical.” It smacks of insecurity.

[artrell]

Your statement could be true for almost any favorite college following on this board. It is human nature to have favorites whether it be a college, a sports team or anything else one wishes to be passionate about.

[Mastadon]

I don’t buy the lack of LAC’s on the west coast as having an influence on the acceptance rate. You would have to take the population of say a radius of 700 miles. I think the population outside of California is not dense in comparison to say NY’s surrounding states. Meaning if you would look at population for the east coast vs west coast based on several states vs CA. And then look at the top LAC’s vs Claremont and a few more selective LAC’s in the area. Someone would have to pull the numbers and examine it to really make that argument.

@artrell - here is the data for top 50 LACs plus Universities with less than 10K students…

LA Metro Area - population 13M

Local Top 50 Private LACs &Universities with less than 10K students
Caltech 1K

Pomona 1.6K
CMC 1.3K
Mudd .8K
Pitzer 1K
Scripps 1K

Occidental 2K
Total seats approx 8.6K for 13M population

San Francisco Metro Area 7.1M population
Local Top 50 Private LACs & Universities with less than 10K students
Stanford 7.0K
Total seats approx 7K for 7.1M population

California State Population 38.3M
No additional schools
Total seats approx 15.6K for 38.3M population

Boston Metro Area - population 4.6M

Local Top 50 Private LACs & Univ with less than 10K students
Harvard 6.7K
MIT 4.5K
Tufts 5.2K

Wellesley 2.3K
Olin .4K
Babson 2.1K

BC 9.2K
Brandeis 3.7K

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Total seats for Boston Metro 34K seats (8 schools) for 4.6M pop

(135 people/seat)

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Massachusetts Population 6.7M
Additional Schools
Williams 2K
Amherst 1.8K
Smith 2.6K
Holy Cross 3.0K
Mount Holyoke 2.2K
Incremental seats 11.6K for 2.1M incremental population

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Total for Massachusetts 45.6K seats(13 schools) for 6.7M population

(146 people/seat)
Compared to:
Total San Francisco Metro 7K seats (1 school) for 7.1M pop
(1,000 people/seat)

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All New England - population 14.5M
Additional Schools
Dartmouth 4.3K
Brown 6.6K
Yale 5,5K

Bowdoin 1,8K
Bates 1.7K
Colby 1,8K

Middlebury 2.5K

Wesleyan 2.9K
Trinity 2.2K
Conn College 1.9K

Incremental seats 31.2K for 12.4M incremental population

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Total for New England 76.8K seats (23 schools) for 14.5M pop

(188 people/seat)
Compared to:
Total for LA Metro 8.6K seats (7 schools) for 13M population

(1,512 people/seat)

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All NY - population 19.7M
Additional Schools
Columbia 6.1K
URochester 6.3K
RPI 5.6K

Barnard 2.6K
Bard 2K
Colgate 2.9K
Cooper .8K
Hamilton 1.9K
Skidmore 2.6K
Union 2.2K
USMA 4.4K
Vassar 2.4K
Incremental seats 39.8K for 19.7M incremental population 495 people/seat

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Total for New England&NY 116.6K seats (35 schools) for 34.2M population
(293 people/seat)
Compared to
Total for California 15.6K seats (8 schools) for 38.3M population

(2,455 people/seat)

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[klingon97]

@Mastodon Sorry, way too convoluted an answer. And I fear you have a problem with spurious correlation.

[klingon97]

@Zeldie Admission rates are a very bad statistic, since they say little about the applicant pool. For years University of of Chicago had an admission rate of around 40% but also one of the most intellectually gifted student populations. The reason is that its applicant pool was largely self-selecting. It seems that students love quoting low admission rates as a way of stoking their egos.

[Mastadon]

@klingon97-

No need to apologize, It’s really quite simple…

You don’t need to understand the process, all that matters is the bottom line - which is that New England/NY has nearly an order of magnitude more seats in “top 50” small private liberal arts institutions per capita than California.

In terms of fear, someone famous once said that you have nothing to fear but fear itself…

Since I only provided raw data, there is nothing to fear, because there is nothing to spuriously correlate to. There could be a potential problem if you are inferring something from the data, but you would need to share your inference for us to know if that is the case.

[NYMomof2]

Zobroward, I’d like to address your comment about seeking diversity being equivalent to treating minority families as social experiments rather than people. I think that the opposite is true. I actively sought diversity at the preschool level, because I wanted my sons to be comfortable with people who didn’t look like them. The Montessori school I chose was not only an excellent school with the developmental approach I favored, but very diverse. Not only was the student/family community diverse, the teaching staff was, too. I think that the school leaders recruited a faculty with an eye toward including minorities, and the student body followed, as minority parents felt comfortable. This was not at all a selective school, so it wouldn’t have been possible to select a diverse student body.

As a result, my sons had friends from multiple racial and ethnic groups. The friendships formed because of compatibility, or whatever drives friendships among 3-5 year olds. For my sons, now grown (younger is in 12th grade), racial/ethnic identity is not a consideration. They have diverse groups of friends, none chosen because they are “diverse.”

The composition of Brown’s ED admitted group is similar to Pomona’s.