Diversity in the Ivory Tower, after all

BY ANNA ARKIN-GALLAGHER

The Yale Class of 1941 was an amazingly homogeneous group. Nearly all the students were white and male—women were not admitted, and Yale neither attracted nor admitted many minorities. Thirty percent were legacies—the sons of Yale alumni. Ten percent came from one boarding school—Phillips Academy Andover. And the top six boarding schools sent more students to Yale than all of America's public schools combined.

The Class of 2001, which graduated in May, better reflected the diversity of America. Half the students were women. Thirty percent of the class identified themselves as minorities. Ten percent were legacies. And over half the students came from public high schools.

The past 60 years have been a time of incredible change for Yale. By increasing the diversity of its student body, Yale has transformed itself from an elite finishing school for boarding school graduates to an international research university. And while some of Yale's conservative alumni fiercely opposed these radical changes—William F. Buckley, DC '50, complained to The New York Times in 1966 that "The son of an alumnus, who goes to a private preparatory school, now has less chance of getting in than some boy from P.S. 109 somewhere"—the vast majority welcomed these changes.

Of course, the student body at Yale today is still far from a perfect representation of the larger American population. For example, only 54 percent of the Yale class of 2001 attended public school, while nearly 92 percent of American high school students did. Likewise, while African-American students comprised under eight percent of the Class of 2001, and Hispanic students only slightly less than five percent, the 2000 United States Census placed these groups at 12.3 and 12.5 percent of the overall population, respectively.

Ethnic and Cultural Diversity

Walk into the Yale Admissions Office and almost the first thing you see is a table full of pamphlets describing the ethnic diversity of the Yale campus. Students of different races smile out at the viewer from the pamphlets' glossy pages. The admissions office's commitment to attracting minority students and improving the diversity of the Yale campus is clear. Indeed, in an age when the United States is more ethnically diverse than ever, one would expect to see this diversity reflected at one of the top universities in the country.

According to Dean of Admissions Richard Shaw, the admissions office has long recruited minorities through their director of minority recruitment, who travels around the country encouraging minority students to apply. While Shaw feels that the University has been fairly successful in this regard, he expressed some regret about the low number of minority students and added that the increased importance of early admissions has not helped; since many minority applicants require financial aid, they are hesitant to lock themselves to a school which may not provide them with enough aid by applying early.

Once minority students get to Yale, there are many organizations that attempt to make the transition as easy as possible. Yale's three cultural houses, the Afro-American Cultural Center, La Casa Cultural (the Latino Cultural House at Yale), and the Asian-American Cultural House, serve as places where students of different ethnicities and cultures can congregate. All three have libraries, kitchens, and computer rooms and often host parties, lectures, and film festivals. These sites foster a sense of community within ethnic groups. According to Valerie Idehen, SY '04, library coordinator for the Afro-American house, "the Center serves as a support network for Black students at Yale... [By] housing various residential groups...it provides an outlet for black students to unite and encourage each other in a way that Yale's structure may not."

A number of different organizations also exist to appeal to almost any ethnic or cultural group on campus [a complete list can be found on page 43]. These organizations allow students to explore their own cultures, and also raise greater campus awareness about many cultures and ethnicities.

Socio-economic Diversity

The diversity of the student body is clearly related to Yale's financial aid policies. The Yale tuition is expensive, and without financial support from the school the vast majority of parents in the country would never be able to afford to send their children to college here without some help.

The University does make an effort to accommodate those students who cannot pay for Yale. Thirty-five percent of the Yale class of 2004 receives financial aid, and, according to Shaw, Yale constantly tries to make it easier for all students to attend. For example, the University formerly used any outside scholarships that a student received to replace Yale grants. Now the admissions office has changed this policy so that outside scholarships are substracted from a student's self-help but do not detract from Yale grants. "We don't want to penalize students for getting scholarships," Shaw said. Shaw also explained that other schools might appear to have much better financial aid programs than Yale because they consider any student who receives an outside scholarship or loan as receiving aid. "If we calculated financial aid in the same way that many other schools do, almost 60 percent of Yale students would be getting some form of aid," he said.

Financial aid has been in the news quite a bit recently with Princeton's much-touted decision to convert all of its financial aid from loans to grants. Although Shaw maintains that adopting this system would take aid money away from many students who require it, the financial aid committee will meet this summer to discuss how they will respond to Princeton's decision. "We'll certainly make some recommendations," Shaw said.

Of course, Yale's financial aid system is far from perfect. Almost half of those students who apply for financial aid are denied, and even Shaw concedes that "sometimes parents haven't saved up enough and just aren't able to meet the contribution that Yale expects from them."

Geographic Diversity

In your first days at Yale, you will likely meet a staggering number of students from the Northeast—especially from metropolitan centers like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. This is only fitting, since students from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic comprise nearly half of every incoming class. Part of this is due to Yale's location halfway between New York and Boston. Of course, this also creates a more homogenous student body.

Yale has long tried to increase the geographic diversity of its student body. According to Shaw, recruiters travel around the country trying to encourage students from other parts of the country to apply to Yale. These efforts have been largely successful—there are 162 students from California, 60 from Texas and 43 from Illinois in the class of 2004.

The Administration has also been trying to increase the number of international students who attend Yale. The admissions office recently created a new position, director of recruitment, whose job consists primarily of reaching out to potential applicants from different parts of the country and the world. "Our admissions officers do some outreach, but they also have thousands of applications to read," Shaw admitted, "so our hope is that the director of recruitment can really help to spread Yale's name."

Shaw praises the increase in international students in recent years, a situation he attributes largely to the recruitment visits Yale representatives make to locations around the world, such as East Asia, Latin America, and Europe. "Just in the last three years, we've really increased the number of students who are coming to Yale from Central and South America," Shaw said. "We've been dong a lot of recruitment visits down there where previously we were doing nothing."

But even as Yale becomes more internationally diverse, Shaw admits that there is still room for growth. "Africa is completely open. We haven't really travelled there, and although we have some great students from Africa, they usually find us—we don't find them." Zander Dryer contributed to this article.

Graphic by Zander Dryer.

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