We are from California and my son(Asian) is applying to WFU RD. Very surprised at a lack of diversity, especially for the Asians,(consistently less than 5%). Duke is greater than 20%. I also read some horrible stories in this forum against the Asian students at Wake, which are all subjective opinions. I get that. However, I am concerned about the real hard numbers. The Asians make up anywhere from 3-4% for the last 15 years. If you subtract the international students from this figure, there are hardly any Asian-Americans at all compared to other elite colleges around the region. Why are there almost no Asian-Americans at Wake? Am I missing something here?
1 Like
A college counselor told me that Wake is one of the least diverse “top tier” schools. Duke is incredibly diverse – even more so than UNC (which is mostly white & AA – which I guess represents the pop of NC). I was really impressed with how much more Duke was than when I was a student in the late 80s. Wake, meanwhile, looks as if it’s stuck in 1989 as far as diversity goes. My husband is a prof at a San Diego State & a colleague at Wake described the student body as “white, rich kids from Atlanta”. I’m sure that’s an overgeneralization, but still…
We looked at Wake Forest at the same time visiting Duke. I know a lot of kids are doing that now from California. Specially coming from the west coast, I admit we experienced a little bit of culture shock mainly from the lack of diversity at Wake. Wake apparently made a conscious effort to keep the homogenous student body intact for many years. The percentage of the Asians skyrocketed at Duke because more and more Asians applied there. I’m sure Wake had similar increases over the last decade. I can’t help but to think there might be a quota within the admissions for the Asian-Americans at Wake, in which case, we are not really welcomed or accepted in the campus. The real question is if you are a bright and well-qualified Asian-American kid,do we even bother applying here at this point?
31% of admitted students for the Class of 2020 identified as persons of color. That number has been steadily rising over recent years, and the school has a demonstrated commitment to creating a diverse environment.
78% White, 22% Diversity according to 2016 Stats. That is probably the most percentage of whites among the top 40 schools in the country.
Asian-Americans are not as prevalent at Wake, than say, Duke, as it only (relatively) recently that Wake Forest became a nationally recognized “top-tier” school. For most of its history, Wake Forest was more of a regional university with religious roots, and drew mostly students from the Southeast (where the Asian population is low compared to other parts of the country.)
I have no doubt the number of Asian-Americans at Wake Forest will continue to increase as the school becomes more and more well known/established within Asian-American communities. Wake’s increasing STEM/engineering offerings will also attract more diverse array of students.
Also, when looking at diversity, consider how well Asian and other minority students are integrated into the community. Some schools are MUCH more diverse than Wake, but there is a de-facto segregation where students of different races and ethnicities don’t seem to really interact with each other.
My son is an Asian but never had any Asian friends growing up. He is definitely not going to hang out with the Asian crowd in any colleges. At the same time, I hate to see him struggling with the “southern discrimination”. I’m just a worried parent… There are so many fine academic institutions in the country. I’m afraid Wake is just not ready yet for the prime time. Sure they attract many students from all over the country but the diversity seem to remain remarkably unchanged.
Having only recently risen in the rankings to the “top tier,” (#27-30 in USNWR rankings) I believe Wake wasn’t a big draw for the Asian community, or any other community from afar, in the past. If it continues to deserve its newfound attention, I believe more Asian students will apply. In the meantime the demographics are closer to those of the general population of its region. My child is a white Californian and their interest in Wake arose from the excellent debate team and the high quality undergrad teaching (a surprising #5 per USNWR!- not maybe the best indicator but it does suggest a strength). We found no one has heard of Wake Forest out in the West unless they were from the Southeast or big D1 basketball fans, and I imagine this extends to our sizable Asian population in CA.
I do not sense an effort to keep Wake “homogeneous” or any quotas in the current era. In fact, they are very concerned about raising/ maintaining their rankings and making a huge investment in expanding their offerings, and surely understand talented minority applicants are essential to their mission. If a private college is not Ivy-level or located near a desirable big city, attracting top students from the rest of the US will depend on it being a welcoming place with reassuring demographics and academic stats. I support the idea of college students moving outside of whatever cultural bubble they were raised in. The question for your son is whether he is interested in what Wake offers academically and is the vanguard type who will enjoy broadening the local horizons a bit, or alternatively, having lived outside of a large Asian community so far, he might like to explore his Asian identity in a different place with an larger Asian student body.
If you look at the admission demographics for the last ten years at wake, it is extremely consistent. It is naive to think that the admission does not keep track of the percentage of the minorities in the campus. They might understand that increasing the talented minority pool is vital in moving up in the rankings, but will they actually expand the minority pool? Wake Forest will not be the next “Duke” unless they become more diversified. Maybe, they are not interested in following the Duke’s path. They will never release the number of the minority applicants for that same period. According to Princeton University study, the bar is set much higher for the Asian-American students at the top-tier colleges. SAT scores must be 500 points higher to be on par with the "white " students. We have faced this “reverse” discrimination for a while. I am OK with this as log as there is a positive trend for accepting more Asian-American students. But there is no such a trend at many of the top colleges in the south. Nothing ever changes fast in Winston-Salem, but hope for the change in near future.
@divdad123
I think it is highly unlikely that Wake actively tries to not admit Asian students. What is likely the case, is that Asian students are not applying in the same numbers to Wake as they are to other schools and that those that are admitted are more likely to make another choice. They may be choosing other schools that have a higher Asain population and thus it is harder to break the cycle. Just as conservative students are not flocking to apply to Wesleyan or Oberlin, the same thing can be happening here.
As for SAT discrimination, your numbers simply don’t work. At top tier schools, an avg SAT can be 2100-2250. So you are saying an Asain student needs to be 500 points higher? 2600-2750 is impossible. There may be discrimination, but it is most definitely not 500 points.
I meant to say 500 points higher than the African-Americans. Those are not my numbers. See the linkhttp://observer.com/2015/06/asian-americans-are-indeed-getting-screwed-by-harvard-but-not-how-they-think/
@divdad123 First off, congratulations to you and your family! Your son is clearly bright, will succeed at whatever school he ends up, and is aiming high. That’s great and glad you’re looking at my alma mater. I encourage you to look through my past posts, I find plenty of things to criticize about WFU and I have no illusion that it has in ANY way “reached it”, but I also try to be fair to both its strengths and weaknesses, which I try to do in this post.
Second, @Steglitz90 and you both pointed out an area that no doubt Wake Forest (and many private, liberal arts schools) can/should grow: diversity. I’d argue (and have in various posts across the years) that this is perhaps most pressing in socioeconomic diversity, which in turn would sadly result in a rise in ethnic diversity and zip code diversity. That said, as both a student and later when I worked at Wake, the fewer number of asian students was noticeable. While WFU has made a huge stride in these areas from my first year of 13 international students for example, progress must continue.
Third, despite this valuable area to grow that you correctly identified, I would like to point a few things out (do not take next statements as attacks on Duke where members of my nuclear family attended!), but just facts which I think are relevant to this topic. A) Duke states 21% of its students are Asian, which compares to about 5.5% of Americans being Asian descent and 12 or so percent of Ivy League schools being of Asian descent. There is nothing wrong in my mind in being “overrepresented” but if diversity means to reflect, state, national, or academic peer #s, then would one say this statistic makes Duke ethnically diverse? Using those metrics, Wake Forest’s Asian population is certainly under-represented (it is also under-represented both with Latino and African American/Black students).
Fourth, @divdad123 there are a few things that you mention that I must disagree as politely as text allows on. A) WFU has made huge strides in terms of expanding the diversity. There are so many reasons this is important and must be consciously continued and I for one. By statistics the raw statistic of ethnic diversity has increased about 40% in 5 years! http://admissions.wfu.edu/campus-life/diversity/ B) I vigorously disagree that WFU’s admissions office in any way profiles negatively against Asian students. I know that this is not true and to be honest I think accusing someone/an office of negative bias is a bit unnecessary. I know that individuals in that office would likely be among the first to say they have lots of areas they’d like to grow, probably including this discrete demographic area.
Unfortunately, at WFU, I have no doubt that you will see at least some “defacto segregation.” That is unfortunate and an area the school must challenge. Unfortunately, I’ve lived in 8+ countries now and see this occur all over so it’s an area I want to see my several million person city be challenged in as well! Your son will do great I’m sure at whatever school he attends. I wish him the best of luck and if he chooses WFU, good luck! And if he doesn’t, good luck! He’ll be fine! As always, #GoDeacs!
@CKDeac I haven’t seen the numbers, but I would agree with you that socio-economic diversity is as important as ethnic/racial diversity. It is up to each school to determine what its mission is & how to handle diversity. For UNC, I think it is appropriate that the school try to mirror the racial & socio-ecomonic make-up of the state it serves. For schools like Duke & Wake, they are free to determine, what if any, measures they are going to take to recruit their students. Or, they could be like MIT, which goes purely off of test scores/GPA & if you don’t have the top scores/grades, no “hook” will get you in.
We still love Wake & Duke – our kid would be lucky to be admitted to either school!
@CKDeac I am definitely not accusing anybody from Admissions of negative bias. I am simply pointing out the FACTS. 40% increase in diversity over the last 5 years? What is that mean? How did they arrive at this number? When you have a small number of minorities to begin with, the percentage will be elevated even with very small minority additions! For example, if you go from 10 minority students to 15, there is a 50%increase but the total number of minority students remains low. Also, there was ABSOLUTELY no significant change in Asian-American student admission numbers during those 5 years. And the number of Asian applicants have been rising for the last 5 years.
Having said all that, Wake is a great private academic institution and they can admit whoever they want. Given all the negative posts here about the Asian experiences at Wake, I am merely pointing out the challenges and difficulties endured by any qualified Asian-American students when exploring private southern schools like Wake. And it is sad to even talk about this in 2017.
@CKDeac To be bluntly honest, visiting Wake reminded me of going through the admission process for my country club 20 years ago. I was admitted as a token Asian only because I knew the admission chair. I always felt uneasy and ended up quitting the club eventually. Wake is the only top 40 tier school that puts such a HEAVY emphasis on the interviews. What is that about? I’ve been doing the alumni admission interviews for my alma mater Stanford for the last 20 years. A half of the kids are so nervous, and they can’t even talk. It is extremely hard to objectively evaluate a 17 yearly high school kids with a 20 minute interview… Most schools realize this and interviews just serve as an optional supplement. Admissions are strictly based on meritocracy.
However at Wake, the interviews count and they count BIG. No one gets in without being interviewed by an admission counselor. Having interviewed thousands of kids, these interview evaluations are very subjective at best and biased at worst. At Wake, I’ve noticed a bunch of qualified kids being denied based on bad interview performance. I’ve seen some not so qualified students be admitted with good interviews. Wake calls this “holistic”. Many question this for an antiquated system subjected to bias and discrimination.
@divdad123 On the topic of interviews, I think they are a great tool in holistic admissions and believe that many schools would like to add them but can’t because of resource constraints or the fact that their school simply has too many applicants. What a great way to really get to know an applicant and provide a different perspective than a list of ecs on a common app or reading a supplement or essay that may have been heavily edited by someone other than the applicant. In a school that practices holistic admissions, interviews can provide some great information to the school, and for the applicant, it can really help them stand apart from a sea of other applicants.
@wisteria100 Wake could not accommodate all the interview requests this year. So how do you" holistically" evaluate all those applicants Wake could not interview? My guess is that they will not get in or will be placed on the waiting list at best. The point is that the holistic approach with the “required” interviews does not allow Wake to effectively evaluate all the possible applicants.
Seriously, do you think you get to know a 17 year old teenager really well after a 20 min interview? I wrote many many admission interview reports. I try to write as much positive personal attributes as possible. However, I do not get to “know” the applicant. But, I might be able to figure out very quickly if an applicant fits a certain “profile” the school is looking for.
@divdad123
College applications are certainly an imperfect process. But, yes, I think a 20 minute interview conducted by an admissions counselor can provide a lot of additional insight. It can be equally or more informative than the common app essay. The schools that encourage interviews are often times the schools that track interest. So requesting an interview late and not getting one, may indeed not help your application.
Are you suggesting that the purpose of these interviews is for the school to assess what ethnic background the applicants are from?
@divdad123 There is no requirement to interview. And if you do not? Well, my son did not and he got in last year. (He didn’t visit either).
I never heard of Wake Forest until we decided to visit Duke last year. After the visit, I must say the unusual characteristics of the school really grabbed my attention.( My son lost interests right away). I did a lot of research on my own and talked to many alumni, college counselors, the parents of Wake students, current students, etc… In all fairness, it is a good academic institution. The four years spent at a college will be the most memorable experiences and will define you as a person. It is far more than just getting a BS degree. Unfortunately, Wake might not be a “perfect” match for many kids who do not fit the profiles of the homogeneous student body at Wake. That is my honest opinion.