Long before even thinking about applying to colleges, Kristina Barrios–a native Chicagoan who’s now a top Hispanic high school student in Houston–was courted by some of the nation’s best universities.
As early as her freshman year in high school, she won a spot in a four-week, all-expense paid summer program geared to minorities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And that was only the first of many pitches to attend Illinois.
Later, when she scored 1340 on her SAT, colleges around the country–including Harvard, Notre Dame and the U. of I.–surfaced with letters and phone calls. Many offered free campus visits. Once she was accepted, a number of schools granted hefty financial aid and scholarship packages.
Such lavish treatment is commonplace today for selective universities that have become increasingly sophisticated in their campaigns to diversify.
With a controversial federal appeals court decision on affirmative action likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, attracting the small pool of the best minority students takes on new urgency.
The University of Michigan Law School’s practice of using race as a factor in considering applicants was upheld by a federal court in May. Still, another conflicting opinion in a Texas case decided by the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans has some college officials in a quandary over the best approach to diversifying their campuses.
Many have decided to forge ahead anyway. They argue that diversity creates a better education for everyone and helps answer a corporate push for more qualified minority job candidates.
In Illinois, a study by the State of Illinois Board of Higher Education reports continued increases in college enrollment by African-American and Hispanic students from fall 1999 to fall 2000.
Black undergraduate enrollment increased 2.2 percent during that period. A 3.6 percent decline in the number of African-Americans signing up at public universities was offset by a 9.1 percent increase in enrollment at private schools and 2.1 percent increase in those attending community colleges. Meanwhile, Hispanic undergraduate enrollment increased 6.1 percent for the year.
At public universities in Illinois, African-Americans now represent 12.7 percent of the undergrad enrollment and Hispanics make up 6.5 percent of the total.
More recruitment
Michael Behnke, vice president and dean of enrollment at the University of Chicago, said it’s clear all selective colleges are courting minorities like never before.
“There’s a sense on all of our parts that we have to do better,” he said. “Very few places have as many students of color as they’d like to have.”
To build up a more diverse group, colleges take the approach Barrios saw first-hand: free summer workshops for high school underclassmen and juniors who haven’t even mailed in applications. Aggressive phone recruiting by alumni or current minority students is also a tool, as are all-expense-paid campus weekend visits and generous financial aid and scholarship packages.
“That was really cool,” Barrios said of the attention that schools like the U. of I. gave her in her freshman year of high school. “It was like `Oh my God, they really want me to come.”‘
Later, the attention only intensified for Barrios, who finally decided on Notre Dame.
“Every year we increase our efforts with these groups,” said Cindy Santana, assistant director in the admissions office at the University of Notre Dame. “It’s just that important for students to be exposed to students of other cultures, religions, even sexual orientations.”
On a recent Monday morning at the U. of C., 360 high school juniors gathered at Ida Noyes Hall to tour the school’s Gothic campus, talk to faculty members and students and hear about the storied core curriculum.
Nasif Rogers, a 17-year-old junior at DuSable High School, said during his freshman year he started getting mailings from colleges, many pushing their diverse student body. It’s an angle that Rogers, an African-American, found encouraging.
`A sense of comfort’
“I think it’s good, because it attracts us to the colleges more,” said Rogers, who is interested in DePaul and Bradley Universities. “It gives us a sense of comfort.”
Roughly 10 percent of the U. of C.’s undergraduates are minorities. That includes about 150 African-Americans and 300 Hispanics, with the Hispanic numbers growing steadily over the last five years and African-Americans remaining fairly consistent, said Behnke.
The U. of C. buys names from lists the College Board provides of prospective students in various categories, including minorities and top scorers on preliminary college entrance tests taken in the sophomore year.
Special mailings
The U. of C. also pushed up its targeted mailings from the junior to the sophomore year.
Minorities get special mailings with information on cultural programs at the U. of C., and the university has increased its school visits in the Chicago area. Minorities are also likely to get follow-up calls if applications are incomplete or if they need help with financial aid forms.
In recent years, the U. of C. began paying for campus visits for minorities who have been accepted, providing a final, subtle push. Still, Behnke said the pool of qualified candidates remains small.
“We’re all competing for a relatively smaller group of students,” he said. “It’s a real pipeline issue.”
Notre Dame, which has long fought a reputation of being a mostly white, Catholic campus, has also become more creative and aggressive.
This summer, it will host its third group of top African-American students for a “Leadership Development Seminar.” Forty high school juniors, many of them from Catholic high schools, will attend a weeklong, free visit to campus to examine the history of African-American leadership and expand their own skills as leaders.
Of course, Notre Dame hopes many of those scholars will also consider applying to the school. With a campus that’s just roughly 3 percent African-American, this fits a real need.
“Until we get them here, it’s a very unappealing place. We’re not talking about a city that’s very warm and appealing to minorities,” said Dan Saracino, director of admissions at Notre Dame. “Some of these programs are the best way to grow our numbers.”
For the U. of I.’s Urbana-Champaign campus, programs in the university’s engineering school as well as a variety of scholarships underscore the school’s efforts to attract minority students.
Even with the best of efforts–and in the best of programs–it’s slow going, officials concede.
“We try to send the message that minority and women students are very welcome here,” said David Daniel, dean of the U. of I.’s highly ranked engineering school.
Daniel said his school has earmarked $400,000 in scholarship money to improve diversity. But competition for qualified students is intense: The college offered scholarships to six women, and five turned them down last month.
Daniel said the pressure is growing from the private sector for the college to improve its track record in attracting minority students. He said a major Illinois company had recently said it was reducing its support of the U. of I. and sending the money to Georgia Tech.
“They told us, `Our management looks at the bottom line and your bottom line is not as good as Georgia Tech’s,'” Daniel said.
Progress at U. of I.
Still, diversity at the U. of I. has improved. James D. Anderson, a professor and head of the educational policy studies department, remembers when he came to the U. of I. some 30 years ago as a graduate student from Stillman College, a historically black college in Alabama, “you could spend two days on the quad and not see a person of color.”
Anderson, who chaired a university committee exploring diversity, said though there is room for improvement, he believes the university is committed to diversity as an important educational tool.
“It really takes the blinders off,” Anderson said of a multicultural campus. “It demands a higher order and more critical thinking.”
Still, the relatively low numbers of minorities on many campuses have many recruiters scratching their heads. Some say the most meaningful efforts should attack minority underachievement in elementary and secondary high schools.
Target Hope
Euclid Williamson did just that when he created a Chicago program called Target Hope in 1993.
Williamson identifies promising students from Chicago’s public schools and puts them through Saturday workshops for 42 weeks a year for four years. College professors teach the courses, exposing the students to academic skills as well as practical knowledge about college life.
Many Target Hope students are immigrants and youths living in tough neighborhoods. Yet the program has had real success in getting them into and through college.
Of the 150 high school graduates of his program in 1998, 145 are graduating from college this spring, Williamson said.
“Universities have raised the bar. The standards are higher and they’re more aggressively going after the top [minority] students,” Williamson said. “But I want to see more people get a piece of that pie. … You have to deal with the root of the problem.”
