Re: #59
It looks like class of 2013 high school graduates in the US were 59% white (not Hispanic or Latino), slightly lower than the 62% for the overall population. However, in some states, the difference is significantly greater, such as California with overall population 38% white but high school graduates only 28% white.
@TooOld4School While I agree that being a much larger state is a significant advantage, you can’t discount the importance of cost when looking at low SES students. It not only impacts enrollment rates, but also graduation rates. A low SES student is much more likely to pass on an “expensive” in-state flagship, and enroll at a directional that offers significant merit-based aid.
@bclintonk Both UC-B and UCLA have a significant % of international undergraduate students. These students are, as a rule, high SES students and of course, can’t receive Pell Grants. It’s better to look at each schools in-state enrollment numbers, which is 69% at UC-B and 73% at UCLA. That’s more comparable to UVa’s 66% and UM-Ann Arbor’s 55%. (Fall 2015 #'s). Also consider that UC-B and UCLA give little to no aid to OOS students, unlike UVa.
About 40 percent of students who decided not to go to their college or university of first choice cited reasons related to costs.
Having lived in heavily Hispanic Dade County, many low SES students stayed local for college instead of going to Gainesville or Tallahassee for a variety of reasons:
1 - Saving money on living expenses by staying at home.
2 - Attending a community college instead of a 4 year school.
3 - More availability of part time work.
4 - Staying inside the Dade County bubble where many people speak Spanish instead of going to school in “redneck” north Florida.
Those are probably similar to the reasons some kids choose to go to Wayne State instead of UM, GSU instead of UGA or VCU instead of UVA.
Whites make up about 54 percent of the 0-18 age group that will be feeding into four year colleges over the next decade, so the 62 percent figure is on the high side.
Here are the percent of white kids at various top 25 “national” private colleges:
Chicago: 49.9%
Penn: 49.5%
Brown: 48.8%
Emory: 48.7%
Harvard: 47.5%
USC: 46.2%
Cornell: 45.3%
Johns Hopkins: 44.4%
Rice: 42.2%
NYU: 42.1%
Stanford: 40.9%
MIT: 40.3%
Columbia: 39.4%
CalTech: 29.8%
Schools with more than 50 percent white enrollment are not listed above. The data is from www.collegedata.com.
“I feel so bad for Asian males looking to get into STEM majors at top universities.”
One thing that I have learned from reading CC posts: I have been stunned by the outstanding quality of some of the students that have been turned down by multiple universities. Also, given the number of ECs and the number of AP classes some students take, I also wonder when they sleep.
@DadTwoGirls “I have been stunned by the outstanding quality of some of the students that have been turned down by multiple universities.”
It really is amazing what these top students have accomplished.
The average student has not improved over time and still has an ACT of about 21. However, the quality of students in the right tail of the distribution has really improved. Many of the students in the right tail were already getting ACT scores in the 25-30 range in middle school.
15 years ago, a student with a 1500/1600 SAT and the grades to match it would probably be admitted to an Ivy or equivalent school. That isn’t true any more. That is a good start, but they need an additional “Wow” factor to distinguish themselves. It is really tough to be a top student today. What they are achieving is really remarkable.
I see Michigan and Wisconsin in Sweet 16–but Ohio State not even in CIT??
Here is a year old piece from the UM newspaper with thoughts on the process:
https://www.michigandaily.com/section/mic/michigan-color-diversity-initiatives-will-fail-without-dedicated-budget
Just for comparison purposes:
In 2015-16, the University of Michigan had 1,216 black undergraduates, including 298 newly enrolled black freshmen. This compares to a total of 16,311 black students who graduated from Michigan high schools in 2015.
In 2015-16, UC Berkeley had 583 black undergraduates, including 100 newly enrolled black freshmen. This compares to a total of 25,727 black students who graduated from California high schools in 2015.
Neither school is doing a good job of recruiting and retaining black students, but strictly by the numbers, it appears UC Berkeley is doing considerably worse. Black freshmen at Michigan in 2015-16 represented only 1.8% of the state’s 2015 black high school graduates, but black freshmen at UC Berkeley’s represented only 0.4% of California’s 2015 black high school graduates.
Not surprisingly given each state’s demographics, UC Berkeley enrolls many more Hispanic students, 3,875 Hispanic undergraduates and 706 newly enrolled Hispanic freshmen in 2015-16, compared to 1,300 Hispanic undergraduates and 344 newly enrolled Hispanic freshmen at Michigan that same year. But UC Berkeley draws on a much larger pool of 138,524 Hispanic students who graduated from California high schools in 2015, compared to only 4,100 Hispanic students who graduated from Michigan high schools that same year. Michigan’s newly enrolled Hispanic freshmen represented 8.4% of the state’s 2015 Hispanic high school graduates, compared to UC Berkeley’s 0.9%.
The two schools have similar total undergraduate enrollments: 27,496 at UC Berkeley in 2015-16, compared to 28,312 at Michigan.
UC Berkeley might boast of a higher percentage of Pell grant recipients, but when it comes to serving URMs, UC Berkeley lags well behind Michigan. Both schools have a long way to go in that regard.
Michigan has about 124,000 high school graduates per year, while California has about 399,000 high school graduates per year. So the ~6,300 new frosh at Michigan are equivalent to 5% of Michigan high school graduates, while the ~5,800 new frosh at UCB are equivalent to 1.5% of California high school graduates.
Michigan enrolled 1.8% of the number of black Michigan high school graduates, by your numbers. UCB enrolled 0.4% of the number of black California high school graduates. But the difference between the universities that you point out is not too much different from what can be expected from the relative sizes of the universities compared to their states; both appear to be enrolling black students at a significantly lower rate than for all students (which is not a good sign, though assessing and solving whatever problems exist seems to be a difficult thing to do for politicians and policy makers).
Michigan does seem to have a relatively high Hispanic/Latino enrollment relative to its state, enrolling 8.4% of the number of Hispanic/Latino high school graduates versus around 5% of all high school graduates.
Out-of-state students could make such comparisons less clear.
^ Figures I have show Michigan with about 107,000 new HS grads in 2015, and California with 448,000. I think you’re using older data; Michigan’s school-age population has been declining, while California’s is growing.
I take your point that UC Berkeley enrolls a much smaller fraction of the state’s HS grads than Michigan does. I’m not sure which way that cuts, however. Inter alia, it means UC Berkeley has a much larger pool of black and Hispanic HS grads from which to recruit qualified applicants.
And despite drawing from a much smaller in-state pool, Michigan’s entering class stats are virtually indistinguishable from UC Berkeley’s
Michigan middle 50% (2015-16):
SAT CR 630-730
SAT M 660-770
ACT 29-33
UC Berkeley middle 50% (2015-16):
SAT CR 610-730
SAT M 640-770
ACT 29-34
It could be, however, that Michigan’s large OOS cohort pulls up its standardized test medians.
It is interesting that the US is the only western country to consider Hispanics to be “non white”. As a result, when you add in Hispanics, most of these universities are still predominately “white”.
A part of that is Hispanic could include Black Hispanics, Native-American Hispanics, Asian-Hispanics, etc.
Hispanics in US data can select any of the current 5 race categories. There is no Hispanic racial group.
@marvin100 Yes, that’s true but universities artificially break out Hispanic students from other white students. That’s a bit odd. Why not Italians?
“Underrepresented” in higher education refers to racial and ethnic populations that are disproportionately lower in number relative to their number in the general population. AA is a racial group, while Hispanic is an ethnic group. Italians (which would be an “ethnic” group) is not underrepresented, as is the case with most white ethnic groups. Asians are also not “underrepresented” in higher education.
In the census, history and politics play a role in determining which categories to measure.
@exlibris97 - That’s quite a bit outside the topic of this thread.
@marvin100 Let’s agree to disagree on that.