Penn May Be on the Verge of Setting a Milestone in Black Freshman Enrollments

The University of Pennsylvania recently announced that it has accepted 3,622 of its 20,479 applicants this year. That is an admit rate of 17.7 percent.

African Americans were 11.1 percent of all admitted students at Penn. This was an increase from 9.4 percent of all admitted students in 2005. Overall, more than 400 black students were admitted to the university this year, up nearly 11 percent from a year ago. In 2005, 53 percent of all admitted black students decided to enroll at Penn. If Penn achieves similar yield statistics this year, blacks will make up about 9 percent of the entering class at Penn this fall.

This will be the highest percentage of incoming black freshmen at Penn since JBHE began tracking first-year enrollments at Ivy League institutions in 1992. This would place Penn at or near the top in black enrollments among Ivy League colleges.

Copyright © 2006. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.