The total number of Black students from California admitted to one or more undergraduate campuses of the University of California increased to 3,464 this year from 2,653 a year ago. This is a major increase of more than 30 percent.
Preliminary data for fall enrollments project a 5 percent increase in total enrollments from a year ago. The number of first-year students who have indicated their intention to enroll is up a significant 30 percent from 2015.
Applications are up 74 percent from last year. The university also reports that at this time, the number of confirmed new students is up 145 percent from a year ago.
Black students make up 11.4 percent of all students in the Class of 2020. This is the highest percentage of Black students in any entering class in Harvard’s 380-year history.
Recently, the nation’s highest-ranked colleges and universities informed applicants if they had been accepted for admission. Some of the nation’s most selective institutions provided acceptance data broken down by race and ethnic group.
The goal of the initiative is to increase the number of Black students and faculty on campus and to make the campus environment more welcoming to African Americans. The latest Education Department data shows that Blacks make up just one percent of the undergraduate student body.
A full quarter of all applicants to Harvard this year had their application fee waived due to financial hardship. Some 10.6 percent of all applicants are African Americans.
The Achieve UC program targeted 12,000 students at high schools with large underrepresented minority student bodies with programs to guide them through the admission and financial aid processes. The program is being expanded this year to target 60,000 minority students.
Yale reports that over the past four years, the number of applications it has received from all U.S. high school students has increased by 5 percent. But during the same period, the number of applicants it has received from African American students is up 36 percent.
This year, 6,589 African Americans applied to one or more University of California undergraduate campuses. They make up 6.3 percent of all students who applied for places at the university. This up from 6.1 percent last year and 5.9 percent two years ago.
The data shows that the number of Black applicants to U.S. dental schools has declined by 7.5 percent over the past four years. In 2014, Blacks were 4.3 percent of all new students enrolling in U.S. dental schools. This is down slightly from recent years.
Several of the nation’s highest ranked colleges and universities have reported data on students they have accepted under early decision or early action admissions plans. Some have provided data broken down by race.
In 2014, there were 2,726,098 African Americans enrolled in U.S. higher education. They made up 13.2 percent of all enrollments. There were nearly a quarter million fewer African American students enrolled in higher education than was the case in 2011, a decline of 8 percent.
In the 2013-14 academic year, there were 31,113 students from sub-Saharan Africa enrolled at colleges and universities in the United States. They made up 3.5 percent of the 886,052 foreign students at U.S. colleges and universities.
In October 2014, there were 1,802,000 Black women enrolled in all levels of higher education in the United States, compared to 1,132,000 Black men. Thus, women made up 61.4 percent of all African American enrollments.
African American students make up 5.1 percent of the entering first-year class this fall. But in order for racial parity with the state’s population to prevail, the number of Black students in the entering class at the would have to nearly triple.
In 2015, the number of Black applicants to U.S. medical schools was up a whopping 16.8 percent from 2014. Blacks were 7.6 percent of all medical school matriculants in 2015. This was up from 6.9 percent in 2014.
More than 30 percent of African Americans over the age of 3 are enrolled in school at some level compared to 22 percent of Whites. But Whites still hold an edge in college enrollments, particularly among men.
There are 165 second-year students on campus this year who matriculated last fall. This is 60.2 percent of last year’s entering class of 274 students. A year ago the retention rate was 43.7 percent.
The Rutgers University campus in Newark, New Jersey, was deemed to have the most diverse student body in the country among large national universities. Blacks make up 18 percent of the enrollments at the Newark campus.
Blacks are 5.3 percent of the first-year class at the University of Texas at Austin, up from 4.2 percent a year ago. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, the number of African American undergraduates students is up 8 percent from a year ago.
The African American Male Initiative aims to connect its more than 40 students to academic support services on campus. It also is working in tandem with student organizations, student affairs, and the Athens community to establish a welcoming environment that young Black males can call home.
Last week a JBHE post reported some good news on enrollments at several historically Black colleges and universities. Since that time, several other HBCUs have also reported some good news on enrollments.
The University of California has announced its new diversity initiative, a comprehensive effort to address the underrepresentation of African American students, faculty, and staff at the university.
Purdue University has initiated the new Diversity Transformation Award program that will enlist current faculty and staff members to come up with strategies to further increase the diversity of the faculty and the student body.
Dr. Brandon Dumas, vice chancellor for student affairs and enrollment management at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has set in motion plans to recruit and retain more students. His efforts have begun to pay off.
The Leadership Alliance Mellon Initiative seeks to encourage students from underrepresented minority groups to pursue graduate studies in the humanities, education, and social sciences.
There were 3,954,120 Black or African American students who were enrolled in higher education during the 2013-14 academic year. They made up 14.2 percent of all enrollments. Black enrollments were down 3.1 percent from the previous year.
This year, 2,653 Black first-year students from California were admitted to one or more University of California campuses. This is down from 2,712 in 2014 and 2,747 in 2013. Blacks were 4.3 percent of all admits from the state of California.
Enrollment data shows that many schools in the PAC-12 have high percentages of students from ethnic minority groups. But, the vast majority of ethnic minority students at PAC-12 schools are either Hispanic or Asian. Very few are Black.
Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida, has seen a huge increase in applications this year. The historically Black college has received more than 3,000 applications, up from 1,800 a year ago.
Blacks are less likely that other racial/ethnic groups in California to graduate from high school, to complete the curriculum needed for admission to campuses of the University of California or California State University, and to graduate from college.
A group of 75 high school juniors attended lectures, participated in bonding exercises, and took a mini-seminar where they were required to work with other students to come up with solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems.
There were 180 Black students accepted at Amherst this spring. They made up 15.3 percent of all students accepted. The 180 Black students admitted to Amherst ties the college’s all-time record.
The authors of the report state that “the University of Virginia must take a lead on issues of diversity, inclusion, and racial equity in order to position itself as a model institution of higher learning.”
In an effort to boost enrollments, Savannah State University and Albany State University, historically Black educational institutions in Georgia, will now offer in-state tuition rates to students from Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina.
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