Diversity and the College Applicant

Everyone knows most colleges and universities care about diversity, they seek students from multiple backgrounds, not just races but cultures, religions, hobbies, walks of life, etc. The question is why? According to Patricia Gurin, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan: “A racially and ethnically diverse university student body has far-ranging and significant benefits for all students, non-minorities and minorities alike. Students learn better in such an environment and are better prepared to become active participants in our pluralistic, democratic society once they leave school. In fact, patterns of racial segregation and separation historically rooted in our national life can be broken by diversity experiences in higher education.”

Source: http://www.diversityweb.org/digest/sp99/benefits.html

When it comes to measuring diversity, US News & World Report has developed a formula where the number closest to 1.0 represents the most diverse school. For the 2008-2009 academic year, the magazine ranks Rutgers as the most diverse in the country with a diversity index of 0.74. “That means that nearly 3 out of every 4 people you run into there will be from a different ethnic group. Other schools that have a diversity index of 0.70 or higher are the University of Houston (Texas), Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Nova Southeastern University (Florida), CUNY–City College, CUNY–Baruch College, St. Peter’s College (New Jersey), CUNY–Brooklyn College, CUNY–Hunter College, California State University–Sacramento, California State University–Dominguez Hills, Houston Baptist University (Texas), California State University–East Bay, La Sierra University (California), Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology (New York), CUNY–New York City College of Technology, and CUNY–York College.”
Source: http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2009/08/27/which-colleges-have-the-most-student-diversity.html

At Cornell,  “The proportion of students who identify themselves as other than white has more than doubled from 20 percent in 1985 to 43 percent in 2005. This trend persists in 2006 with around 30 percent of the incoming Class of 2010 identifying themselves as “people of color.” These are encouraging statistics from the perspective of diversifying the student body. Unfortunately…Over the same 20-year span, the percentage of Hispanic students has increased only from 3 to 5 percent… African-American students has remained static at about 4 percent, even though from 2001 to 2005, the number of applications from African-American students rose by 35 percent, the number of applicants accepted by 20 percent, and the number of accepted students who mailed in deposits increased by 17 percent.”
Source: http://cornellsun.com/node/18389

A school is recognized as having diversity when the “…campuses have a culturally mixed student body, employ an equally mixed faculty of professors, provide academic programs that focus on fostering global perspectives, host on-campus performers and lecturers from all walks of life, promote a broad spectrum of multicultural student organizations and events, and offer study abroad, internship, and service-learning programs around the globe.”
Source: http://www.collegeview.com/articles/CV/campuslife/campus-diversity.html

Table 1: STUDENT DIVERSITY, 2000-2001

Source: http://harvardmagazine.com/extras/faculty-diversity

Keep in mind that diversity is more than having a bunch of people in the same place together. “According to Harvard Professor Richard Light, one can walk the streets of almost any major city in America and see diversity — but unless you are living, working and playing together with people from varied backgrounds and experiences, you will never fully experience diversity’s most powerful impact. That’s the special — and often lost — opportunity for America’s colleges and universities.”
Source: http://www.collegenews.org/x338.xml

The same can be said of the typical high school experience where everyone belongs to a small clique- the jocks hang out with the jocks, the popular girls with other popular girls, geeks with geeks, the theater crowd sits in a  particular tree, Cubans with other Cubans, and so forth.  But college isn’t high school, and unless you go to a university where almost everyone is just like you, chances are you will have to interact with people that are completely different from you. They may be study partners, roommates, maybe even potential friends.

Gurin explains that at the University of Michigan “most of the…students come to Ann Arbor from segregated backgrounds. For most students…Michigan’s social diversity is new and unfamiliar, a source of multiple and different perspectives, and likely to produce contradictory expectations. Social diversity is especially likely to increase effortful, active thinking when institutions of higher education capitalize on these conditions in the classroom and provide a climate in which students from diverse backgrounds frequently interact with each other.”

According to “Why Diversity Matters” from US News & World Report, America’s working-age minority population is expected to increase from 34% to 55% by 2050. “Diversity prepares students for work in a global society. No matter what profession you enter, you’ll find yourself working with employers, employees, coworkers, customers and clients from diverse backgrounds—worldwide. By experiencing diversity in college, you are laying the groundwork to be comfortable working and interacting with a variety of individuals of all nationalities.”
Source: http://www.usnews.com/blogs/professors-guide/2009/08/12/why-does-diversity-matter-at-college-anyway.html

Institutions like Purdue University want to attract more minority students. The university’s first vice provost for diversity and inclusion said they “can attract top minority students but still falls behind peer schools in the numbers of students enrolled. For instance, 4.1% of Purdue’s undergraduate and graduate student population is black. That’s half of the state’s (Illinois) black percentage and a third of the U.S. black percentage. By gender, 42% of Purdue students are women compared with 51% of the general population.”

To change these numbers, Purdue University has developed the “equity scorecard, a strategy to identify and prioritize racial or ethnic inequities to create action plans, will be used.” With the goal of increasing “the percentage of African-American and Hispanic student from 7.4% of students to 15 percent and women from 42 percent to 50 percent.”
Source: http://www.jconline.com/article/20100604/NEWS0501/6040331/Diversity-report-shows-how-far-Purdue-needs-to-go

So if you’re African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific-Islander, etc, this is the perfect opportunity to apply to a school that African-American Senior Alex Padgett describes as “made of mostly of white men…If they want to add more color to campus, that’s great. But I don’t think it’s going to be a deal breaker for minorities that want to come to Purdue if the numbers stay the same.”

Diversity also matters at the graduate level, according to a report by the Council of Graduate Schools, “Hispanic and African-American students remain underrepresented in graduate study — especially in science and engineering, where each group makes up less than 10 percent of graduate students and less than 5 percent of new Ph.D.’s.”
Source: http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-Schools-Still-Lack/42798

Aside from race, schools also consider Geographic Diversity, Academic Diversity, Extracurricular Diversity, Socioeconomic Diversity, and Age Diversity.  You can read more about these types of diversity here: http://www.ecampustours.com/collegeplanning/applyingforcollege/definitionofdiversity.htm

Columbia University
Demographic Information for the Class of 2013

If you still believe you will not be considered diverse in some way, I can almost ensure you that you are wrong. We are all different in the way we see the world, process information, plan and reach for our goals. Seek what makes you diverse by understanding who you are, where you come from, and what makes your thought process different from that of other college candidates. With this in mind, communicate your differentiators. It is in this way that you will provide the diversity colleges look for when recruiting amazing candidates that positively impact their communities.

Links:

Diversity College Rankings
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2008/09/09/rutgers-leads-the-way-in-ethnic-diversity.html