Among the Nation’s Highest-Ranked Universities, Harvard Reports the Best Black Student Yield

So-called yield, the percentage of applicants who decide to go to a college that issues an invitation to them, has become the standard measure of an institution’s strength and drawing power. For most of the past 20 years Harvard University has been the nation’s gold standard in student yield percentage for both black and white students. In seven of the past 10 years, the JBHE annual survey has shown that Harvard has had the best performance in black student yield among the nation’s 30 highest-ranked universities. Among this elite group of universities Stanford had the highest black student yield twice and one year MIT was the top performer.

Despite the fact that its black student yield dropped from 71 percent in 2009 to 64 percent this year, Harvard once again leads the pack. MIT comes in a close second with a black student yield of 63.2 percent. Stanford was third with a black student yield of 60.6 percent.

The only other high-ranking university reporting a black student yield greater than 50 percent in 2010 is the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A number of the highest-ranked universities, including Yale, Princeton, and Duke, decline to divulge their black student yields.

Copyright © 2010. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.