Racial Divide in College Admissions

Racial Divide in College Admissions August 21, 2013 A newly released Georgetown study points out some information on a racial divide in college admissions (photo credit: Jawed Karim). There is a racial divide in college admissions. We know, stop the presses. But theres a new report released by Georgetown Universitys Center on Education and the Workforce that details how American college campuses are not as diverse as we think that they are. According to the report, since 1995, more than 80% of all Caucasian enrollment has come at the nations most elite 468 institutions, as articulated in a Washington Times piece by Ben Wolfgang entitled Report: Racial divide still exists on college admissions. Keep in mind that we at Ivy Coach dont believe that there are indeed 468 elite universities in America. Thats way too many! There arent that many great schools but the studys point remains the same nonetheless. According to the piece in The Washington Times, By contrast, more than 70 percent of all new black and Hispanic students have enrolled at the nation’s open-access two-year and four-year colleges, a designation that includes community colleges and less-selective universities. This is definitely interesting. The piece in The Washington Times goes on to suggest that application fees may be a cause for this trend. Students from lower income families may not be able to foot the cost of applying to a number of prestigious schools while wealthier students can (application fees can be waived, we should probably state for the record!). The piece suggests that this income divide may be behind the racial divide in college admissions. Why do you think that this racial divide exists? Do you find that this divide does not exist at the truly elite colleges (not the 468 institutions but the universities that we write about every day on our college admissions blog schools like Stanford, Duke, Dartmouth, Princeton, Columbia, Amherst, Northwestern, and others. Let us know your thoughts on the subject by posting a Comment below. We look forward to hearing from you!