Recruitment and Admissions Strategies for
Diversifying the Student Body
Elizabeth Flanagan, M.A.
Carolyn Howard, Ed.M.
Dean Whitla, Ph.D
April 2004
Two of the defining goals for National Campus Diversity Project are intrinsically related:
1) the identification of model diversity programs and what makes these models effective; and 2) examination ofadmissions policies and practices of colleges that have been successful in increasing numbers of under-represented minority (i.e., URM), students. This report presents key findings that describe how recruitment and admissions efforts at specific colleges employ creativity and flexibility to achieve a desired level of diversity among their student bodies.
Model diversity programs cannot occur on an ethnically homogeneous campus; therefore, a basic common element among schools selected for investigation was a sustained campus presence of students of color – a presence representing a certain percentage of the student population. This percentage ranges among our schools from slightly under a quarter of the campus population to slightly over half of the population. As researchers note, increasing the structural diversity of a school, or the ethnic/racial diversity among a school’s staff, students, administrators and faculty is an integral first step toward achieving a healthy, warm and welcoming campus climate for all students (Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Pederson and Allen, 1999; Smith et al., 1997).
Increasing campus ethnic diversity lowers minority student stress, decreases ‘tokenism’ of minority students on campus (Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Pedersen and Allen, 1999), and gives White students many more opportunities for mixed peer interaction. Research suggests that mixed peer interaction decreases White student bias and in some cases, improves White student critical thinking skills (Hu and Kuh, 2003; Pascarella, Moye and Pierson, 2001). In their survey of 53,756 college students at 124 American college campuses, researchers Hu and Kuh (2003) note that interactional diversity on campus (e.g., the interactions with peers from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural and social backgrounds) has positive effects on all students, regardless of race or ethnicity. Furthermore, these researchers found that White students tend to benefit slightly more from such interaction than did students of color.
The Supreme court’s decision allowing that race may be considered among many factors when admitting college students gave many admissions officers the chance to breathe a sigh of relief when recruiting students for their incoming classes. Indeed, most admissions officers understand the inherent educational benefits of a diverse campus for all students: as Daryl Smith (1997) noted, campus diversity is needed today to ensure success in our increasingly global society just as technologically primed campuses were needed for success fifteen years ago. The next few sections in this brief paper will give examples of successful recruitment and admissions strategies among schools visited by the Harvard National Campus Diversity Project (NCDP). While this is by no means an exhaustive list of strategies, we offer the experiences from a few schools to illustrate a variety of methods for improving URM student recruitment.
Recruitment
We found three approaches that a school can take to minority recruitment. In one approach, URM student recruitment duties are assigned to one or a few specific individuals who travel to and recruit in communities with high concentrations of potential URM students. The minority recruiter is generally the point person in the admissions office for inquiries from prospective applicants about URM student admissions and undergraduate life. This method can be successful in smaller schools that have well-funded recruitment programs, such as Amherst and Williams Colleges. Mt. Holyoke recently changed their model from one minority recruiter on campus to three recruiters who share the responsibility for recruitment in communities with high representation of URM students. The impetus for this change served to reinforce the message to all officers that diversity is a common goal.
In a second approach, admissions officers, such as those at Agnes Scott, UC Berkeley, UT Austin, and Yale, work on the premise that everyone in the office is responsible for minority recruitment.
Minority recruitment staffing at Stanford University offers a third approach. Stanford designates a recruiter for each ethnic community applying to Stanford, and these staff members coordinate recruitment activities for their respective communities. In addition, there is a Multicultural Recruitment Committee that meets twice a month. This group consists of the ethnic recruiters and other officers and reports to the entire staff on a monthly basis.
Beyond these three general approaches, it is helpful to view specifically how schools employ students, alumni, and college preparatory programs in the recruiting process.
Student Recruiters. Harvard’s Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program (i.e., UMRP), directed by senior admissions officer Dr. Roger Banks, has a specific mission to maintain and develop diversity in the undergraduate applicant pool. Ten undergraduate students work with Dr. Banks, with two students representing each of the five campus ethnic groups: African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and other Latino students. These students facilitate all of UMRP’s programs, including promotional mailing, phone outreach, personal correspondence, and hosting. However, the most ambitious aspect of UMRP’s programming sends these students out to spend a week sharing their experiences at Harvard with students in middle and high schools across the country. The demanding schedule requires that the students recruit just as an admissions officer would: preparing their own presentation, and working five days a week, visiting at least three schools a day. The admissions office realizes that this is a major commitment and the travel is on a volunteer basis.
Complementing a professional recruitment staff with student recruiters can produce astonishing results. For example, soon after Governor Jeb Bush’s 2000 “One Florida” law mandated elimination of the use of race in admissions policies, the University of Florida began to feel the negative effect of that legislation. Admissions and administrative executives noticed that despite the university’s success at having the largest number of minority students on campus in the history of the school in 2000, enrollment for African American, Latino, and Native American students dropped precipitously for both the late summer and fall 2001 sessions compared with the previous year. The summer program in particular was hit hard: enrollment for Latinos was down by one third, for African Americans down by half, and for Native Americans enrollment was down by three-quarters.
To counteract some of the damage created by the “One Florida” initiative, both Walter Robinson, Associate Director of Admissions, and Mike Powell, Assistant Director of Admissions and Minority Programs, created ways to increase minority student recruitment and admission. Robinson and Powell made an announcement to all students, regardless of race, that the school would have to take aggressive action in recruiting minority students and asked interested students to become part of an admissions “Outreach Ambassadors” group.
The response from all students, but particularly White students, was surprisingly strong according to admissions officers. These U Florida “ambassadors” took a crash course provided by the admissions office in recruiting minority students from their local communities. The Ambassadors are freshmen and sophomores who visit local schools while at home during vacation, where they hold question and answer sessions, talk about their experiences, discuss why someone might choose U Florida for college, and describe their extracurricular activity participation. In its first year, there were 260 Outreach Ambassadors visiting 83 schools. In 2002, 600 students attended the first orientation session and 180 schools were targeted for a visit, including some outside Florida in the southeastern states, Texas, and Louisiana. According to admissions staff, the students “took the program and ran with it,” organizing themselves as a student organization in order to get student government funding for uniforms. As Walter Robinson put it, the Ambassadors are the best “pitch people” the university has, because “they go out and say that ‘despite what you may have heard about [the] historical reputation of the school, I tried it, I liked it.’” He added, “Our student salespersons handle the business and they do a great job.” (Interview notes from U Florida, 10/29/02).
Alumni support. Minority alumni networks, especially in major U.S. cities like New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Chicago, have been highly effective in the recruitment of URM students in the Ivy schools, mid-sized schools like Emory and Tulane, and in smaller schools, such as Haverford, Oberlin, Wellesley, and Agnes Scott. Minority alumni will host prospective and accepted students in their homes, and conduct evaluative and informational interviews with students and their families. According to the Director of Alumnae Relations at Agnes Scott, African American alumnae are looking to “bond with each other … in the student support side. They would like to be mentors to students, they would like to help more with recruiting.” (Interview notes from ASC, 4/24/2002).
At UVA, both Dean Rick Turner, Director of the Office of African American Affairs, and his Assistant Director, Dean Sylvia Terry have cultivated the school’s African American alumni network to the extent that it is a very effective recruiting arm for the admissions office. The faculty members we interviewed made a point of mentioning UVA’s strong African American alumni association and its participation in all aspects of the university’s administration.
“Although they’ll [i.e, URM students] never be Cavaliers in the same way, there is the sense now that you are building these legacies of black students… Classes out of the70s, we’re seeing their children, the 80s children will be coming soon. You’re getting a larger number of minority alumni who are participating in the alumni association, tailgating, and taking part in the various alumni boards” (transcript quote from UVA administrator). Another administrator at UVA noted that: “the president is a political animal and we’ve got a very strong black alumni. That answers your question. And Rick Turner works very hard at that and all he has to say is, “well, I’ll bring it to the black alumni.” That’s what happens, and Rick responds. He’s a good politician, he says the right things” (transcript quote from UVA faculty member regarding the work of the Office of African American Affairs Director, Rick Turner).
Alumni support at Amherst College has endowed that school with a targeted admissions budget that affords it many opportunities for attracting and hosting URM students. Minority admissions recruiters and Amherst student interns visit identified high schools and school districts across the nation, but predominantly in the New York, Boston, Florida, Washington D.C., Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles regions. Recruiters meet with interested students in all three upper grades, and offer visits to high school juniors in both the fall and spring of their junior year, as well as in the fall of their senior year. Follow-up with interested students is personal and consistent – Amherst’s minority recruiter noted that she had ten student interns regularly phoning interested URM applicants. Family visits also are strongly encouraged and supported. Much of the focus in the Amherst admissions process appears to be on personal contact. As the admissions officer we spoke with noted, “If we can get beyond the name recognition problem (e.g., not being a Division I sports school), then we focus on a fall visit. Failing a visit, we work on the phone. Parents of URM students, in particular, appreciate the support.”
The University of Texas at Austin has a minority alumni student network (the Ex-Students Association) that is extremely active and offers, as an outside agency, specific grants for minority students. This network also acts as a resource for incoming freshmen: it gives students the ‘historical’ or pre-Hopwood [pre-Hopwood needs explanation, as this is the first time it is mentioned.] era lay of the land when it comes to services that were ‘historically’ earmarked for minority students. Minority student enrollment has inched back toward pre-Hopwood levels with the “Top 10% solution” (admissions guaranteed to students in the top 10% of their class from any Texas high school), but critics of the “solution” state that it has negatively affected UT Austin’s minority student yield.
College Preparatory Programs. The Posse Foundation, a K-16 outreach program for minority youth, is charged with the mission of building racial, ethnic and social diversity at some of the most selective institutions in the nation. The Foundation recruits students from the New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago inner cities, prepares them for college-level work, and sends the students to “Posse Partner” colleges in teams of seven to ten. Students are recruited and assessed using founder Deborah Bial’s Dynamic Assessment Process. Students are initially nominated through their school counselors or teachers. Once nominated, a number are chosen from the pool to participate in the assessment process; a process that essentially involves a number of interactive group activities observed by Posse staff. Staff determine ratings for students in areas such as teamwork, high communication skills and problem-solving skills. Roughly sixty percent of the screened students are invited back for individual interviews – of these, a number are chosen for further screening by University partner staff (Fields, 2002). Finalists are awarded full scholarship at the partner school. Despite the fact that Posse has become known for placing primarily minority students at partner schools, the founder states that Posse is open to everyone, it is not a ‘minority scholarship’ funding source, nor does Posse screen for need (Fields, 2002).
Once students are ensconced at their schools they are given regular support through meetings with Posse mentors and weekly meetings with older Posse students. At this time, the Posse Foundation lists its student retention rates at 90% across seventeen campuses. Posse Partner institutions currently include: Bowdoin, Brandeis, Bryn Mawr, Carleton, Colby, Denison, DePauw, Dickinson, Grinnell, Hamilton, Illinois, Lafayette, Middlebury, Trinity, U of Wisconsin, Vanderbilt, and Wheaton. Posse continues to grow and capitalize on its success as it plans to launch a new program site in Washington, D.C. this year.
Prep for Prep, a program based in New York City, seeks talented students from underrepresented communities who would benefit from attending independent preparatory schools. The organization prepares these students for the challenging level of academics at independent schools and oversees their applications. Thirty-six day schools in the New York City area and ten boarding schools commit almost $12,000,000 each year in scholarships by reserving places for qualified Prep for Prep applicants. All Prep for Prep students who fulfill the Preparatory component of the program are guaranteed an independent school placement. The organization’s most recent published statistics, from September 2000, list 609 Prep for Prep alumni/ae as being enrolled in college, and 714 as already graduated. The largest number of Prep for Prep alums are enrolled at or graduated from Ivy League institutions. (General information from the Prep for Prep website,
TRIO:Upward Bound/McNair is a program established in 1965 by the U.S. Congress to improve the educational opportunities of low-income Americans and to help students navigate and overcome class, social, and cultural barriers to higher education. Initially just three (e.g., TRIO) programs, TRIO has expanded to include Upward Bound and the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement programs, which are specifically designed to promote URM student participation in higher education. Upward Bound instructs secondary and high school participants in literature, writing, math, and science on college campuses after school, on Saturdays, and during the summer. (See the TRIO website, trio/index.html). Of the schools that we studied, Occidental College, UC Berkeley, U Florida, University of Maryland, and New York University each run an Upward Bound program for their respective communities.
The McNair program promotes careers in college teaching and preparation for doctoral study to low-income and minority undergraduates. A majority of the schools we visited receive McNair funding to offer research opportunities and faculty mentors to their students.
College Bound. College Bound is an academic enhancement program run locally in communities throughout the country. Pomona College joined the local College Bound program in 1997, and works with inner city students as early as the fourth grade, following them through their senior year of high school. College Bound is a writing-intensive college preparatory program geared to students who show great academic promise, but lack funds for tutoring. Tutoring is offered for reading comprehension, writing, mathematics, sciences and languages. Pomona offers student tutors, classrooms, and local outreach as part of its participation in the program. Students attend classes on Saturdays, and parents are expected to participate in seminars related to the college experience and support their children who are enrolled. Pomona’s current involvement is with 150 children, six of whom have been accepted and are currently attending the college.