<h1>3 on Newsweek's list of the 25 most diverse schools:</h1>
<p>School</a> Basics - Newsweek - Education</p>
<p>Put it at the top of the home page and in letters from the president of the college. :)</p>
<p>The exact page on Oberlin: <a href="http://education.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/the-25-most-diverse-schools/oberlin-college.html%5B/url%5D">http://education.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/the-25-most-diverse-schools/oberlin-college.html</a></p>
<p>This surprises me as well considering the Oberlin College community has been having serious concerns about trying to improve their diversity when I was there in the mid-late 1990’s. Didn’t help when they did away with need-blind admissions not too long after I was admitted which did have a noticeable effect on student quality and diversity for a few years. Several younger classmates later complained that as a result of cutting need-blind admissions, Oberlin admitted more well-off but marginal White students whose parents paid full-freight which ended up forcing the dumbing down of many intermediate and some advanced courses because they ended up having to go material from the intro courses. </p>
<p>One scholarship classmate in particular was incensed when a 300 level course ended up mostly reviewing 100 level material because so many of those marginal full-pay students either weren’t able to/never bothered to learn the 100-level material properly when they took it. Fortunately, I heard this phenomenon only lasted a few years before Oberlin again was deluged with applications from a more diversified pool of academic achievers. </p>
<p>Hopefully with the greater alumni donation drives over the last few years, more money for scholarships and need-based aid can be given.</p>
<p>sorry, but that’s not credible…in fact, the academic stats of new students in recent years are higher than ever. Oberlin would probably love to be need blind, rather than need aware on the margins, at it has been for many years now, but it apparently isn’t economically feasible with its endowment, as long as it is committed to full financial aid for the students it does accept.</p>
<p>Mamenyu is right. As someone who’s been on the faculty at Oberlin for a long time, I can testify that I never experienced any of the sort of thing that cobrat is describing. The academic quality, and the diversity, of the student body has been remarkably consistent for (at least) 30 years.</p>
<p>"sorry, but that’s not credible…in fact, the academic stats of new students in recent years are higher than ever. Oberlin would probably love to be need blind, rather than need aware on the margins, at it has been for many years now, but it apparently isn’t economically feasible with its endowment, as long as it is committed to full financial aid for the students it does accept. "</p>
<p>May not be credible to you, but those were the perceptions and complaints I heard from several younger classmates after I graduated…with one being quite angry about the situation. Time period this took place was 1999-2002 when the last of them graduated.</p>
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<p>I’m curious as to how someone would be able to tell the financial status of students in their class accurately enough to make a generalization like this. With a handful of exceptions, I have no idea how much aid my classmates receive, and which ones get full freight from their parents.</p>
<p>FWIW, I’ve tried to find data (because numbers are awesome!) about racial diversity and financial aid awards before and after Oberlin went need-aware, but it looks like the Institutional Research site doesn’t go back that far. (I have found articles indicating that among LACs, Oberlin has one of the highest percentages of low-income students… but nothing about how that number has changed in the last 20 years.)</p>
<p>the perceptions (and anger?!) of a small group of students in 1999-2002 about the declining intellectual quality of students who came after them, imagined to be because those students have parents who can afford to pay full or portion of tuition costs, strikes me at best as naive, at worst, as a form of vanity. It certainly says nothing about the students who are presently at Oberlin, who seem as smart, committed, and more diverse than in previous years in this decade.</p>
<p>Note: The diversity applies more to the student body than it does to the faculty.</p>
<p>Actually, they do, to some extent. Oberlin brags about being the first institution of higher education to admit women and people of color. I actually just received a promotional piece of mail from them that read, “What if we still thought that skin color was directly related to intelligence? We never have.” Or something like that…</p>