High Yield Pushes Penn to New Heights in Black Enrollments

This year there are 210 black freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania. They make up 8.8 percent of the first-year class. This is the highest level of black entering students since JBHE first conducted its annual survey of black freshmen 13 years ago.

Like Notre Dame, Penn’s success can be largely attributed to a high black student yield of more than 50 percent. Penn conducts its Multicultural Students Weekend each April when it invites to campus all black and other minority students who have been accepted but have not yet decided to enroll. These students are paired up with a host student for the weekend to give the prospective enrollees a personal perspective on life at Penn as a minority student. Penn reports that 80 percent of the students who participate in Multicultural Students Weekend decide to enroll.

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