WPI & Asian Diversity

WPI only has 3% Asian enrollment and most similar schools have 8 to 12% (US population is 5.6%). Any theories as to why? Do you think there are any cultural biases in play?

Sounds like WPI is tackling the diversity issue in a holistic fashion - https://www.wpi.edu/news/project-inclusion-building-diversity-inclusion-and-equity https://www.wpi.edu/about/diversity-inclusion/project-inclusion

anecdoctally, I personally know an Asian student accepted to WPI - he considers WPI as one of his safeties.

My son’s roommate at WPI is Asian. This was his dream school and he is happy with his choice. Being a STEM school where applicants self select and with a 42% admission rate, WPI is definitely not a safety school, unless you are comparing with the ivies. I do think that there are definitively cultural biases in the works here.

I don’t know where the 3% figure came from, but assuming it is domestic students there is another part to the story. The out-of-country Asian population of 200 undergraduate students represent an additional 4.7% of the undergraduate student body for a grand total of 7.7% of the undergraduate population. By far, the largest group of these students come from China with 147 undergraduates. Vietnam is well represented with 29. Way back in 1970 when I was a student there, China initiated and set up a program to bring undergraduates to WPI. They were already planning ahead for those STEM programs.

There are now 463 graduate students enrolled from China.

There can be some advantages to a planned economy!

Similar data about low relative Asian US enrollment comes from three sources. Collegedata.com, US News (premium account to see) and self reported at college navigator here: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=WPI&s=all&id=168421#enrolmt

While the percentage does not take into account international students the comparison is Apples-to-Apples with other colleges who have international students too. I don’t know why this fact is true just a guess but it could be because 67% of students come from the New England area (per US news). Glad to see they are taking steps to be more diverse.

In 2018, 61% of the undergraduate student population was from New England. This figure was gleaned from the WPI Dashboard @ https://public.tableau.com/profile/wpi.institutional.research#!/vizhome/IR_DataDashboard-MapofStatesofDomesticStudents/StatesTerritories. According to Wikipedia, only 3.5% of New England is Asian. By comparison, California is 14.9% Asian. Only 4.1% of the student body is from CA.