Recruitment and Admissions Strategies for Diversifying the Student Body

Elizabeth Flanagan, M.A.Carolyn Howard, Ed.M.

Dean Whitla, Ph.DApril 2004

Two of the defining goals for National Campus Diversity Project are intrinsically related:

1) the identification of model diversity programs and what makes these models effective; and 2)

examination of admissions policies and practices of colleges that have been successful in increasing

numbers of under-represented minority (i.e., URM), students. This report presents key findings that

describe how recruitment and admissions efforts at specific colleges employ creativity and flexibility to

achieve a desired level of diversity among their student bodies.

Model diversity programs cannot occur on an ethnically homogeneous campus; therefore, a basic

common element among schools selected for investigation was a sustained campus presence of students of

color – a presence representing a certain percentage of the student population. This percentage ranges

among our schools from slightly under a quarter of the campus population to slightly over half of the

population. As researchers note, increasing the structural diversity of a school, or the ethnic/racial diversity

among a school’s staff, students, administrators and faculty is an integral first step toward achieving a

healthy, warm and welcoming campus climate for all students (Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Pederson and

Allen, 1999; Smith et al., 1997).

Increasing campus ethnic diversity lowers minority student stress, decreases ‘tokenism’ of minority

students on campus (Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Pedersen and Allen, 1999), and gives White students many

more opportunities for mixed peer interaction. Research suggests that mixed peer interaction decreases

White student bias and in some cases, improves White student critical thinking skills (Hu and Kuh, 2003;

Pascarella, Moye and Pierson, 2001). In their survey of 53,756 college students at 124 American college

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campuses, researchers Hu and Kuh (2003) note that interactional diversity on campus (e.g., the interactions

with peers from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural and social backgrounds) has positive effects on all students,

regardless of race or ethnicity. Furthermore, these researchers found that White students tend to benefit

slightly more from such interaction than did students of color.

The Supreme court’s decision allowing that race may be considered among many factors when

admitting college students gave many admissions officers the chance to breathe a sigh of relief when

recruiting students for their incoming classes. Indeed, most admissions officers understand the inherent

educational benefits of a diverse campus for all students: as Daryl Smith (1997) noted, campus diversity is

needed today to ensure success in our increasingly global society just as technologically primed campuses

were needed for success fifteen years ago. The next few sections in this brief paper will give examples of

successful recruitment and admissions strategies among schools visited by the Harvard National Campus

Diversity Project (NCDP). While this is by no means an exhaustive list of strategies, we offer the

experiences from a few schools to illustrate a variety of methods for improving URM student recruitment.

Recruitment

We found three approaches that a school can take to minority recruitment. In one approach, URM

student recruitment duties are assigned to one or a few specific individuals who travel to and recruit in

communities with high concentrations of potential URM students. The minority recruiter is generally the

point person in the admissions office for inquiries from prospective applicants about URM student

admissions and undergraduate life. This method can be successful in smaller schools that have well-funded

recruitment programs, such as Amherst and Williams Colleges. Mt. Holyoke recently changed their model

from one minority recruiter on campus to three recruiters who share the responsibility for recruitment in

communities with high representation of URM students. The impetus for this change served to reinforce the

message to all officers that diversity is a common goal.

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In a second approach, admissions officers, such as those at Agnes Scott, UC Berkeley, UT Austin,

and Yale, work on the premise that everyone in the office is responsible for minority recruitment.

Minority recruitment staffing at Stanford University offers a third approach. Stanford designates a

recruiter for each ethnic community applying to Stanford, and these staff members coordinate recruitment

activities for their respective communities. In addition, there is a Multicultural Recruitment Committee that

meets twice a month. This group consists of the ethnic recruiters and other officers and reports to the entire

staff on a monthly basis.

Beyond these three general approaches, it is helpful to view specifically how schools employ

students, alumni, and college preparatory programs in the recruiting process.

Student Recruiters. Harvard’s Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program (i.e., UMRP),

directed by senior admissions officer Dr. Roger Banks, has a specific mission to maintain and develop

diversity in the undergraduate applicant pool. Ten undergraduate students work with Dr. Banks, with two

students representing each of the five campus ethnic groups: African Americans, Asian Americans, Native

Americans, Mexican Americans, and other Latino students. These students facilitate all of UMRP’s

programs, including promotional mailing, phone outreach, personal correspondence, and hosting. However,

the most ambitious aspect of UMRP’s programming sends these students out to spend a week sharing their

experiences at Harvard with students in middle and high schools across the country. The demanding

schedule requires that the students recruit just as an admissions officer would: preparing their own

presentation, and working five days a week, visiting at least three schools a day. The admissions office

realizes that this is a major commitment and the travel is on a volunteer basis.

Complementing a professional recruitment staff with student recruiters can produce astonishing

results. For example, soon after Governor Jeb Bush’s 2000 “One Florida” law mandated elimination of the

use of race in admissions policies, the University of Florida began to feel the negative effect of that

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legislation. Admissions and administrative executives noticed that despite the university’s success at having

the largest number of minority students on campus in the history of the school in 2000, enrollment for

African American, Latino, and Native American students dropped precipitously for both the late summer

and fall 2001 sessions compared with the previous year. The summer program in particular was hit hard:

enrollment for Latinos was down by one third, for African Americans down by half, and for Native

Americans enrollment was down by three-quarters.

To counteract some of the damage created by the “One Florida” initiative, both Walter Robinson,

Associate Director of Admissions, and Mike Powell, Assistant Director of Admissions and Minority

Programs, created ways to increase minority student recruitment and admission. Robinson and Powell made

an announcement to all students, regardless of race, that the school would have to take aggressive action in

recruiting minority students and asked interested students to become part of an admissions “Outreach

Ambassadors” group.

The response from all students, but particularly White students, was surprisingly strong according to

admissions officers. These U Florida “ambassadors” took a crash course provided by the admissions office

in recruiting minority students from their local communities. The Ambassadors are freshmen and

sophomores who visit local schools while at home during vacation, where they hold question and answer

sessions, talk about their experiences, discuss why someone might choose U Florida for college, and

describe their extracurricular activity participation. In its first year, there were 260 Outreach Ambassadors

visiting 83 schools. In 2002, 600 students attended the first orientation session and 180 schools were

targeted for a visit, including some outside Florida in the southeastern states, Texas, and Louisiana.

According to admissions staff, the students “took the program and ran with it,” organizing themselves as a

student organization in order to get student government funding for uniforms. As Walter Robinson put it,

the Ambassadors are the best “pitch people” the university has, because “they go out and say that ‘despite

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what you may have heard about [the] historical reputation of the school, I tried it, I liked it.’” He added,

“Our student salespersons handle the business and they do a great job.” (Interview notes from U Florida,

10/29/02).

Alumni support. Minority alumni networks, especially in major U.S. cities like New York,

Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Chicago, have been highly effective in the recruitment of URM

students in the Ivy schools, mid-sized schools like Emory and Tulane, and in smaller schools, such as

Haverford, Oberlin, Wellesley, and Agnes Scott. Minority alumni will host prospective and accepted

students in their homes, and conduct evaluative and informational interviews with students and their

families. According to the Director of Alumnae Relations at Agnes Scott, African American alumnae are

looking to “bond with each other … in the student support side. They would like to be mentors to students,

they would like to help more with recruiting.” (Interview notes from ASC, 4/24/2002).

At UVA, both Dean Rick Turner, Director of the Office of African American Affairs, and his

Assistant Director, Dean Sylvia Terry have cultivated the school’s African American alumni network to the

extent that it is a very effective recruiting arm for the admissions office. The faculty members we

interviewed made a point of mentioning UVA’s strong African American alumni association and its

participation in all aspects of the university’s administration.

“Although they’ll [i.e, URM students] never be Cavaliers in the same way, there is the sense now

that you are building these legacies of black students… Classes out of the70s, we’re seeing their children,

the 80s children will be coming soon. You’re getting a larger number of minority alumni who are

participating in the alumni association, tailgating, and taking part in the various alumni boards” (transcript

quote from UVA administrator). Another administrator at UVA noted that: “the president is a political

animal and we’ve got a very strong black alumni. That answers your question. And Rick Turner works

very hard at that and all he has to say is, “well, I’ll bring it to the black alumni.” That’s what happens, and

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Rick responds. He’s a good politician, he says the right things” (transcript quote from UVA faculty member

regarding the work of the Office of African American Affairs Director, Rick Turner).

Alumni support at Amherst College has endowed that school with a targeted admissions budget that

affords it many opportunities for attracting and hosting URM students. Minority admissions recruiters and

Amherst student interns visit identified high schools and school districts across the nation, but

predominantly in the New York, Boston, Florida, Washington D.C., Chicago, San Francisco and Los

Angeles regions. Recruiters meet with interested students in all three upper grades, and offer visits to high

school juniors in both the fall and spring of their junior year, as well as in the fall of their senior year.

Follow-up with interested students is personal and consistent – Amherst’s minority recruiter noted that she

had ten student interns regularly phoning interested URM applicants. Family visits also are strongly

encouraged and supported. Much of the focus in the Amherst admissions process appears to be on personal

contact. As the admissions officer we spoke with noted, “If we can get beyond the name recognition

problem (e.g., not being a Division I sports school), then we focus on a fall visit. Failing a visit, we work on

the phone. Parents of URM students, in particular, appreciate the support.”

The University of Texas at Austin has a minority alumni student network (the Ex-Students

Association) that is extremely active and offers, as an outside agency, specific grants for minority students.

This network also acts as a resource for incoming freshmen: it gives students the ‘historical’ or pre-

Hopwood [pre-Hopwood needs explanation, as this is the first time it is mentioned.] era lay of the land when

it comes to services that were ‘historically’ earmarked for minority students. Minority student enrollment

has inched back toward pre-Hopwood levels with the “Top 10% solution” (admissions guaranteed to

students in the top 10% of their class from any Texas high school), but critics of the “solution” state that it

has negatively affected UT Austin’s minority student yield.

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College Preparatory Programs. The Posse Foundation, a K-16 outreach program for minority

youth, is charged with the mission of building racial, ethnic and social diversity at some of the most

selective institutions in the nation. The Foundation recruits students from the New York, Boston, Los

Angeles, and Chicago inner cities, prepares them for college-level work, and sends the students to “Posse

Partner” colleges in teams of seven to ten. Students are recruited and assessed using founder Deborah Bial’s

Dynamic Assessment Process. Students are initially nominated through their school counselors or teachers.

Once nominated, a number are chosen from the pool to participate in the assessment process; a process that

essentially involves a number of interactive group activities observed by Posse staff. Staff determine ratings

for students in areas such as teamwork, high communication skills and problem-solving skills. Roughly

sixty percent of the screened students are invited back for individual interviews – of these, a number are

chosen for further screening by University partner staff (Fields, 2002). Finalists are awarded full

scholarship at the partner school. Despite the fact that Posse has become known for placing primarily

minority students at partner schools, the founder states that Posse is open to everyone, it is not a ‘minority

scholarship’ funding source, nor does Posse screen for need (Fields, 2002).

Once students are ensconced at their schools they are given regular support through meetings with

Posse mentors and weekly meetings with older Posse students. At this time, the Posse Foundation lists its

student retention rates at 90% across seventeen campuses. Posse Partner institutions currently include:

Bowdoin, Brandeis, Bryn Mawr, Carleton, Colby, Denison, DePauw, Dickinson, Grinnell, Hamilton,

Illinois, Lafayette, Middlebury, Trinity, U of Wisconsin, Vanderbilt, and Wheaton. Posse continues to grow

and capitalize on its success as it plans to launch a new program site in Washington, D.C. this year.

Prep for Prep, a program based in New York City, seeks talented students from underrepresented

communities who would benefit from attending independent preparatory schools. The organization

prepares these students for the challenging level of academics at independent schools and oversees their

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applications. Thirty-six day schools in the New York City area and ten boarding schools commit almost

$12,000,000 each year in scholarships by reserving places for qualified Prep for Prep applicants. All Prep

for Prep students who fulfill the Preparatory component of the program are guaranteed an independent

school placement. The organization’s most recent published statistics, from September 2000, list 609 Prep

for Prep alumni/ae as being enrolled in college, and 714 as already graduated. The largest number of Prep

for Prep alums are enrolled at or graduated from Ivy League institutions. (General information from the

Prep for Prep website, www.prepforprep.org/prepforprep/).

TRIO:Upward Bound/McNair is a program established in 1965 by the U.S. Congress to improve the

educational opportunities of low-income Americans and to help students navigate and overcome class,

social, and cultural barriers to higher education. Initially just three (e.g., TRIO) programs, TRIO has

expanded to include Upward Bound and the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement programs,

which are specifically designed to promote URM student participation in higher education. Upward Bound

instructs secondary and high school participants in literature, writing, math, and science on college

campuses after school, on Saturdays, and during the summer. (See the TRIO website,

www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/HEP/ trio/index.html). Of the schools that we studied, Occidental College, UC

Berkeley, U Florida, University of Maryland, and New York University each run an Upward Bound

program for their respective communities.

The McNair program promotes careers in college teaching and preparation for doctoral study to low-

income and minority undergraduates. A majority of the schools we visited receive McNair funding to offer

research opportunities and faculty mentors to their students.

College Bound. College Bound is an academic enhancement program run locally in communities

throughout the country. Pomona College joined the local College Bound program in 1997, and works with

inner city students as early as the fourth grade, following them through their senior year of high school.

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College Bound is a writing-intensive college preparatory program geared to students who show great

academic promise, but lack funds for tutoring. Tutoring is offered for reading comprehension, writing,

mathematics, sciences and languages. Pomona offers student tutors, classrooms, and local outreach as part

of its participation in the program. Students attend classes on Saturdays, and parents are expected to

participate in seminars related to the college experience and support their children who are enrolled.

Pomona’s current involvement is with 150 children, six of whom have been accepted and are currently

attending the college.

Recruiting Families. This strategy involves personal, aggressive recruitment of students and

families (or in some cases, high school communities) into the new college community. The strategy

involves immersion into the continuum of student services; students, their families, and educators from their

hometown are made aware of everything the schools offer in terms of support. In most cases, this strategy

includes providing a highly personal touch from recruitment to graduation so that minority students feel

welcomed and valued. Graduates from these initiatives ultimately become very valuable assets in the

school’s alumni minority recruitment programs.

UVA boasts the second highest percentage of African American students (9.5 percent in 2002)

among the top 26 national institutions according to the American Council on Education’s Office of

Minorities in Higher Education. Of our visited schools, UVA is the highest academically ranked institution

with the highest percentage of African American students. Given the historical legacy of racism and

segregation at UVA, which padlocked its doors rather than admit African American students in 1958 and is

still referred to as a “Plantation school” by a few current faculty and students, such high enrollment numbers

are remarkable.

According to a recent article from DiversityInc.com, aggressive outreach to minority students began

under the former director of UVA minority admissions, Michael Mallory. Mallory believed in planting

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UVA as a college of choice in the heads of minority students by personally writing to promising students in

local urban high schools as early as their sophomore year. He stated that he wrote one or two students

personal letters each day, and wrote far more to counselors at urban high schools with large populations of

minority students. Mallory would invite prospective students to campus to meet with specific faculty before

their application was sent. Furthermore, when these students visited, Mallory would introduce them and

their families to other students of color, and to minority staff running support services for students of color.

Valerie Gregory in admissions has taken over Mallory’s mission, and she stated during our visit that one of

the most influential people prospective African American students and their parents could meet was the

Director of the Office of African American Affairs, and the Dean for African American students, Dean Rick

Turner.

Dean Turner has made minority student retention at UVA his personal mission. His office supports

and is one of the major homes for the African American student community at UVA. His Assistant

Director, Dean Sylvia Terry, worked in UVA admissions for years before coming to the student support and

retention side. Together, this team works to regularly include students’ parents in the planning of their

child’s educational career. Dean Turner is often on the road to speak with parent groups about the

application process and how students can best negotiate college life. He has worked with college bound

programs at local elementary, middle, and high schools to promote interest for potential first generation

college students. He is an adjunct faculty member in Sociology and teaches courses on the “Sociology of

the African American Community.” Thus, through UVA’s continuum of services, from admission through

graduation, Dr. Turner and his colleague, Dean Sylvia Terry, have helped increase the African American

student graduation rate to 87%, among the highest of public Universities in the nation.1

Now we turn to look at several effective admissions strategies.

1 For a complete report on Dr. Turner’s Office of African American Affairs, please see: Turner, M.R. (2004). The Office of African American Affairs: A celebration of success. In: F.W. Hale (Ed.) What makes racial diversity work in higher education: Academic leaders present successful policies and strategies. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

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Admissions Strategies

Making contact upon admission. At the University of Maryland at College Park, admissions staff

members state that personal contact with students and their families (after applications are received) is

critical. However, while “every student admitted receives a phone call,” those calls are prioritized by who

gets called first and who does the calling. URM students receive very high priority. Admissions staff make

sure that no student gets left behind, and that there is enough time for students to make decisions after their

phone call.

University of Maryland admissions staff also sponsor a Multicultural College and Career Conference

designed for underrepresented high school juniors and their families, held on a Saturday in the spring. The

program is designed for families to become familiar with the college admissions process. Students and their

families choose from a variety of workshops such as “the application process and the essay,” and “how to

negotiate the college campus” (i.e., how to pick and register for classes, what is involved with dropping a

course, where to go for specific problems, how to use advising, etc.). Workshops are designed specifically

to decrease intimidation among first generation college students, to assure them that it is important to ask

questions, and to go for information or help. “Maryland Day” is another community day that serves as a

campus-wide open house. Each department hosts activities, and the admissions office uses the morning to

target prospective high school juniors because the University does not truly offer a high school junior open

house. Information sessions are offered in both English and Spanish.

Once students are admitted, Maryland offers a two-night overnight program for admitted students of

color. During the first evening, high school students are paired with a Maryland student, have dinner, and

take time to get to know one another. The next day, high school students attend class with their college

partners, go to lunch, and attend information sessions. The second evening is devoted to a social event, and

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the following day features the actual college open house, at which parents are invited to join students and

get the flavor of the campus. The yield rate for this two-night open house program is over ninety percent.

Like University of Maryland, Yale University uses personal contact through phone calls from

admissions officers and enrolled student recruiters to improve yield for students of color. Yale University’s

“Bulldog Days”—a few days during the spring devoted to persuading accepted students to attend Yale—

includes a phonathon, which was described by students in our focus group as being very effective in

recruiting new URM students. URM students at Yale volunteer to call newly accepted students of color to

talk to them about concerns they might have about coming to Yale. One student explained the value of this

program:

“ … there’s a lot of preconceived notions about attending an Ivy league institution, of course one as old as Yale, and I know that last year … when I went to go call, I was able to track down all the people who’s names I could recognize and I called them personally. And just being able to speak to their parents in their native language is really helpful because a lot of the parents have so many reservations about sending their kids from California and I can identify with that. And they had a lot of questions about financial aid that they couldn’t really speak in English to, say, someone in the admissions office, about, so I think that the program is really effective.” (Yale Asian Female, 4/4/2002).

It is this kind of personal attention tailored to the needs of the applicants and their families that

results in the successful of recruitment of URM students.

Geographic Focus. Many of the admissions officers that we interviewed have found that

strategically planned recruitment in specific geographic areas has contributed greatly to the yield of minority

students annually. In a place like Miami, location is a major admissions plus. The student structural

diversity at U Miami in 2000 was quite high – 9.8% of the students were African American and 25% were

Latino. The Dean of admissions attributes these high numbers to Miami’s location, and to the fact that

many Latino families prefer to keep their children close to home.

At Occidental College the admissions staff attributed their success with recruiting a diverse pool of

applicants to the ethnic richness of California and the west coast in general. They noted that there are fewer

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highly selective private liberal arts colleges in the area, which makes Oxy “a little more attractive, if this is

what you want.” (Interview with Occidental Admissions staff, 4/16/2002). The Oxy staff also concurred

that many southern Californian Latino families find it easier to send their daughters to a school that is closer

to home.

In addition, Occidental makes use of its location by hosting a variety of non-profit organizations for

their annual meetings and conferences. A number of southern Californian early outreach organizations, the

Conference for Children without Families, the Fulfillment Fund, Oxy’s own Upward Bound program, the

Young Black Scholars organization, and the National Hispanic Institute have all selected Oxy as a meeting

place because of the school’s commitment to diversity. Occidental’s only stipulation for use of the school’s

facilities is that the young participants of whatever conference is taking place attend admissions and

financial aid information sessions and take a student-guided tour of the campus. During summer 2001, Oxy

hosted 175 Latino high school juniors on campus at the week-long National Hispanic Institute leadership

conference where they believe they made an important early outreach connection with a number of students

and parents.

At Carnegie Mellon University, location is a very important factor in attracting and retaining

minority students. A few years back, the CMU Admissions Office completed a research effort on the

University’s most successful minority students. They found that those students matriculating from towns

within a 500-mile radius around Pittsburgh had a much greater retention rate than students beyond that area.

The office elected to recruit heavily from this “Diversity Circle” or geographic area. It is obvious that

location can greatly increase a school’s applications from URM students, as in the case of U Miami.

However, it is the creative use of location in practices like those used by Oxy and CMU that enhances the

added benefit of location to an admissions office’s minority recruitment strategy.

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Training High School Guidance Counselors. Many of the schools we studied have found that in

addition to recruiting families, recruiting guidance counselors is an extremely effective tool in the challenge

to attract and retain strong URM students.

At Carnegie Mellon, the admissions staff members are in their third year of implementing CMU’s

Diversity Circle and continue to learn specific recruitment techniques. Chief among these is the need to

create personal relationships with students and their counselors by visiting students at targeted high schools

within the Diversity Circle during the spring of their sophomore and junior years. High school counselors

and students are then invited to visit CMU. Carnegie Mellon organizes and funds a bus service from the

schools to the CMU campus for full day or full weekend visits. Carnegie staff follow-up these visits by

returning to the targeted high schools twice in the fall to meet with seniors.

Rice University also works directly with high school counselors through its own program known as

the “Rice Nominator’s Circle.” The Nominators Circle was created by Associate Provost Roland Smith as a

Post-Hopwood initiative, and is supported by the Office of the President. The Nominators Circle is

designed to create partnerships with urban high schools that have large populations of minority students.

These schools are invited to send counselors, teachers and students to attend two-day activities at the

University. Activities include: lunch with Rice students, attending classes, meeting with college deans,

dinner with faculty, sessions with admissions and financial aid, and a campus tour. Once a school has sent

its group of counselors, teachers and students to Rice, counselors and teachers are given “nominator

medallions” to place on the applications of promising minority students. These applications are given

special attention since the professional who nominated the student has assessed that student’s strengths and

has concluded that the student can thrive in the Rice academic climate.

Occidental College puts a premium on contact with high school counselors by making special efforts

to bring counselors from schools that serve URM students to campus for events. In addition, in June 2002,

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they hosted a regional conference that attracted 600 school counselors, admissions, and financial aid staff.

On a regular basis, Occidental hosts joint high school counselor forums with admissions deans from places

like Stanford and Swarthmore. Admissions staff also believe that Oxy’s mission has created a diverse group

of alumni who are teaching and counseling in public schools or acting as directors of outreach programs like

Upward Bound. Such alumni are able to generate interest in the school.

As part of its efforts to connect with high school counselors, Agnes Scott College belongs to the

Peachtree Conference, a consortium that includes many schools in the area, including Spelman College and

Emory University. The conference members invite high school counselors from across the U.S. to visit and

tour each of the schools bringing those institutions valuable exposure. At Agnes Scott, admissions staff use

these connections to call and follow-up with a counselor. At that point the staff member and the counselor

discuss which prospective students might thrive at ASC.

Financial Aid. Research indicates that one consistent predictor in all reviews of minority student

dropouts is financial concern (Paulsen and St. John, 2002; Sherman, Giles, and Williams-Green, 1994).

Admissions and financial aid staff have also found that financial concern greatly affects a minority student’s

decision to attend a particular institution. The most effective financial aid policy that a university can offer

is need-blind admissions: the entire need of each student will be met by the school in the form of a financial

aid package that includes grants, loans, and work-study funds. In many cases, when a school meets an

underrepresented student’s full need, the financial package is what ultimately convinces the student to

attend that institution.

Continuing to meet a student’s full need also contributes greatly to a students retention and

participation in college life. Some minority students on financial aid may express dismay at not being able

to participate in activities that require extra money and say they find it hard to fully enjoy the college

experience. On the other hand, students at Rice University mentioned that financial aid packages were quite

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generous – many graduate with little to no debt, and extras like studying abroad are extensively promoted by

administrators.

Andrea Brattle, the Associate Director of Rice’s International Programs made it her personal

mission to seek out URM students who might consider the idea of studying abroad, but would not follow

through due to the extra costs it would incur for the school year. She noted that many African American

and Latino students bypassed the Junior-year-abroad experience simply due to what they thought was

insurmountable extra cost – a burden they were loathe to place on their families. Through her networking,

Ms. Brattle has found a number of work/study abroad scholarships that get students where they want to go

(most notably Africa), without a debt load. Her motto is, ‘if someone wants to study abroad, and promises

to follow through with the paper-work, we’ll make sure it happens at a fraction of the regular cost.’

In 2001, the Board of Trustees at Princeton University announced that all students in financial need

would receive financial assistance. This announcement was made in order to affect yield in the upcoming

year as there would also be a shift in financial aid packaging from loans to grants that would help lower-

middle income and lower income families.

Our student focus group from Harvard University mentioned its admissions and financial aid

policies as two of the strongest practices that Harvard has in attracting and retaining low-income minority

students. Indeed, Harvard student focus group participants were quite frank about their financial need and

cited a few examples of how Harvard’s financial aid officers were quick to be helpful. One African

American sophomore said:

… in terms of providing, I think Harvard offered the best—it would have cost me a lot more to go to my State school, then to come here … it’s not this faceless thing, you can be like, “I don’t have enough, this is not enough,” and even if that’s what your FAFSA says you should pay, then they are like, “Ok, what do you need?” During the year, it’s like “well, I need money for this,” and they are definitely good with backing you up financially. (Harvard African American sophomore female, 5/14/2001).

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At Harvard, when the admissions decisions are in, the financial aid office calculates an applicant’s

need and financial awards are made. This year (2004), Harvard President Lawrence Summers and Dean of

Admission William Fitzsimmons initiated a new financial aid policy: Harvard will ask for no parental

contribution from any family with a total annual income of $40,000 or less, and only a minimal amount

from families with a total annual income of $60,000. The hope is that other institutions with larger

endowments will follow these new guidelines and make it possible for more students who come from

families of limited means to attend selective schools. [aren’t they all high tuition?]

Pomona College admissions officers make it clear that admissions is need-blind, and full need will

be met whenever necessary. When admissions officers work in the local Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and

Riverside public school districts, they focus on prospective first generation students to ensure that the high

achievers are clear about the financial aid available – so that they clearly view Pomona as a viable

alternative to state education. Over 20% of Pomona students are first generation college students. Work-

study is a part of the financial aid package; however, if it appears that the work-study requirement is taking

away from the student’s academic work, it will be replaced by a grant. Furthermore, at Pomona the number

of loans to students in the Junior and Senior years is kept extremely low. The intent behind Pomona aid

packages is to make sure that students graduate on time with a minimum ongoing financial burden.

Like Pomona, financial aid at Agnes Scott also is need-blind, and many students are attracted to the

substantial aid packages at such a small institution. The financial aid staff explained that ASC is a small

school with a very large endowment, and when students comes to the Financial Aid Office the staff “make

every attempt to meet 100% of their need.” (Interview with Admission and Financial Aid officers,

4/24/2002). In 2002, 60% of the tuition at ASC was paid through financial aid. When we spoke to ASC

undergraduates, many students mentioned the generous financial aid and stated that it had been the

determining factor in their decision to attend the school.

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Having considered recruitment and admissions strategies at specific schools, we now turn to

examine how legislation in three states has presented a particular challenge to schools seeking diversity.

Legislation Affecting Admissions in Texas, Florida, and California

Anti-affirmative action backlash legislation in Texas, California and Florida (i.e., the Hopwood

decision, Proposition 209, and the Governor’s initiative) dramatically affected state college and university

admissions recruitment programs and policies. To best understand the repercussions of these plans we offer

some background on how these came into effect. The bulk of this background was provided by researchers

at the Harvard Civil Rights Project (i.e., for the complete report, see Horn and Flores, 2003).

Texas and the Hopwood decision. In Texas, four White students sued the University of Texas law

school when they were not admitted in 1992. The case, Hopwood v. Texas, contended that the school’s

admissions policies were violating the students’ Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection. When

the case reached the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and

went further to forbid the use of race-conscious admissions policies at any state institution. This abrupt end

to the university’s affirmative action plan threatened the enrollment of African American and Mexican

American students throughout the entire state system. Enrollment concerns prompted State Senator

Gonzalo Barrientos to create a task force to study the effect the decision might have on higher education in

Texas as well as to conceive of alternatives. The task force came up with is what is known as the Texas “10

percent plan,” which guarantees admission of each student in the top 10 percent of each public or private

high school to the public institution of his or her choice. The top 10 percent is based on student rank and the

completion of courses that comprise the “minimum graduation criteria.” (Horn and Flores, 2003, p. 20).

In 1995 the University of California’s Board of Regents voted to end the use of race or ethnicity

in the UC system’s admissions process, and in 1996 the California Civil Rights Initiative (Proposition

209) created an amendment to the California Constitution by creating a ban on affirmative action that

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included public employment and contracting as well as public higher education. The proposition was in

place by 1998 and in 1999 when Governor Gray Davis took office he proposed a 4 percent plan that

would guarantee admission to the UC system for each student in public and private high schools in the

top 4 percent of his or her class. The plan was accepted by the UC Board of Regents and introduced as

policy three months after Governor Davis announced it.

The requirements for the California top 4 percent are more complex than those for the Texas top

10 percent. California students must complete 11 units of UC designated course requirements, they

must be identified by their school as being in the top 10 percent of their junior class, and the high school

must have parental permission to turn over a student’s transcript to the UC system. The UC system uses

its own formula to establish the top 4 percent students; it then notifies the students and gives them an

Eligibility in Local Context (ELC) identification number. Unlike Texas, students in California who are

eligible and have received an ELC number are not guaranteed admission to the school of their choice or

one of the state’s flagship institutions (UC Berkeley and UCLA); so, students then apply to the UC

system, where additional information or materials to complete an application may be required.

The leader of the referendum to end affirmative action in California, Ward Connerly, next set his

sights on race-conscious policies used in Florida in 1999. Florida Governor Jeb Bush publicly disputed

Connerly’s proposal, and countered by introducing the “One Florida” initiative in November 1999. Like

the California’s Proposition 209, “One Florida” banned the use of race- or gender-conscious decisions in

state employment, contracting, and higher education. However, race-conscious decisions were still

allowable in scholarships, outreach, and pre-college summer programming. At the same time, Governor

Bush conceived of the Talented 20 policy for the Florida State University System, which guarantees

admission to the Florida state system for public high school students who are in the top 20 percent of

their class and complete required coursework.2

2 Horn & Flores, p. 19.

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In Florida, students who qualify as Talented 20 must fulfill a variety of requirements: (1)

students must have a “B” average in 19 required school academic units; or (2) students must have a

specified combination of high school GPA and admissions test scores on a sliding scale if their GPA is

less than a “B” average (Horn and Flores, 2003). Because the Talented 20 program does not guarantee

entry into the school of one’s choice or one of the two flagship institutions (University of Florida and

Florida State University), eligible students apply to particular institutions, which often require additional

material for admission.

After legislation went into effect in Texas, California and Florida, respectively, each university

system experienced marked drops in applications from and enrollment of underrepresented minorities.

Each state school was forced to implement aggressive and creative strategies to continue to attract a

URM population that reflected the state’s demographic make-up. We visited three of the schools

affected by legislation and found each school dealing with losses in minority student enrollment in

varyingly effective ways.

In addition to sending the UT Austin’s President, Larry Faulkner, into high schools with large

URM populations to recruit and attract students with scholarships designated for those schools, UT

created the Presidential Achievement Scholars program to recruit students from disadvantaged socio-

economic backgrounds who managed to excel academically despite inferior schooling. The scholarship

takes into account family socio-economic status, school quality, SAT or ACT performance, and class

rank; funding (from $1000 to $5000) goes to students in the top 25 percent of their high school classes.

UT also created the Longhorn Opportunity Scholarship for low-income students in the top 10 percent of

their classes from targeted high schools in low-income areas. In addition to the school taking action,

minority alums organized themselves to recruit and attract URM students to UT Austin. As mentioned

earlier in this report, the “Ex-Students Association” is extremely active and offers specific grants for

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minority students as an outside agency. This network also acts as a resource for incoming freshmen: it

gives students the ‘historical’ or pre-Hopwood era lay of the land when it comes to services that were

‘historically’ earmarked for minority students.

Berkeley’s student groups have participated in much of the school’s efforts to attract URM

students to the campus through a program called Bridges Multicultural Center. A number of different

ethnic affinity organizations have been trained and funded by Bridges to visit high schools, conduct

essay-writing workshops, and assist students with completion of their college applications (Horn and

Flores, 2003). Scholarships like the Incentive Awards Program and the Cal Opportunity Scholarship

Program, earmarked for URM and low-income students, are also used by Berkeley to attract a more

diverse applicant pool.

The University of Florida’s aggressive and creative approach to remedy the drop in URM student

applications after the implementation of One Florida was discussed earlier in this report. Outreach

Ambassadors has been an extremely successful program for Florida in bringing the number of URMs in

the applicant pool back up over the last year and a half. The Florida Alliance partnerships have also

been a very effective tool in re-establishing Florida’s name in schools located in low-income or failing

school systems. Because the state legislation did not ban the use of race-conscious financial aid, the

school continues to attract minority students with scholarships and financial aid packages designated

specifically for underrepresented minorities.

Interviewed administrators and admissions staff at the schools in Texas, California and Florida

have found that the percent plan solution is an overly simplified answer to the extremely complex matter

of achieving diversity in public higher education. In California and Florida the plans cannot guarantee

admission to the top school or schools in the state; whereas, all students eligible in Texas do have the

opportunity to attend that state’s flagship institutions. Horn & Flores note that “… the percent plans

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seem to have the least impact on the most competitive campuses, which have persisting losses in spite of

many levels of efforts to make up for affirmative action. Only the Texas 10 percent plan provides

automatic admission to the best campuses” (p. 59).

As we have seen, each school affected by legislation has been forced to

pursue the most aggressive minority recruitment programming possible, despite

the introduction of a percent plan as law. Preliminary data from 2002 have only

just begun to reveal a partial recovery from the drop in minority enrollment at UT

Austin and U Florida. In summary, percent plans have had primarily a deleterious

effect on URM student applications and admissions. Any gains that California,

Florida and Texas have seen in URM student yield at their state flagship

institutions after these plans went into effect has much to do with the valiant

recruitment efforts of admissions staff to counter the challenges to diversity posed

by the plans themselves. Fortunately, now that the Supreme Court has ruled that

race can be used as a factor among many in admissions, the Hopwood ruling in

Texas no longer holds sway.

In short, our research has found that admissions offices that exercise flexibility and innovation

create the desired diversity among incoming classes for their schools. Using socio-economic

background as a proxy for race in creating campus diversity does not allow college admissions officers

to achieve the type of racial and ethnic diversity students need to prepare themselves for our increasingly

multicultural world. Or as one former admissions officer says, “you have to use race and ethnicity as

criteria in admissions if you want to achieve any type of racial/ethnic diversity in the class.” Seasoned

admissions officers have strategies that legislators cannot begin to accommodate – strategies that are

evidence-based and often particular to each school. Fortunately, the Supreme Court’s recent decision

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allowing colleges to consider race as a factor among many in admissions suggests current positive

practices in recruiting URM students need not be altered.

Most college administrators we met with agree that creating student bodies that are ethnically

diverse, as well as best suited to the school, require admissions committees that are ready and able to

perform full file reviews on their applicants. Furthermore, as a response to the attacks from the anti-

affirmative action groups, more and more colleges are inviting White students to ethnically themed

orientation meetings. Rather than do away with such orientations, administrators are realizing that

inviting White students to student of color groups allows White students to gain a better perspective of

the world around them. Given the choice between either losing these orientation programs or inviting

White students to them, most of the students of color in our focus groups agreed that inviting White

students was fine as long as the integrity of the program did not become eroded.

Today, students of color on predominantly White campuses usually have a history and thus, a

better ability to navigate between cultures than their White peers. In graduate schools, research tells us

that White students rely heavily on their student peers from different racial/ethnic backgrounds to learn

nuances in the professional practice, and ultimately to become more successful in working

professionally with different groups of people. According to our research, those undergraduate schools

that made a concerted effort to educate White students in the need for understanding multiple

perspectives typically had students who were more satisfied overall with campus climate and campus

life. The admissions process is key to creating a diverse college campus. Research indicates that all

students benefit from a diverse college campus. We hope that this report will give campus

administrators at predominantly white institutions across the nation a number of ideas for improving

campus diversity through their recruitment and admissions strategies.

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