Bowdoin's effort to attract minority students has led it to an admissions yield of over 40 percent among black students.
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported Tuesday that Bowdoin's black student yield of 47.8 percent is the highest of the 24 liberal arts schools that the Journal investigated.
Though Bowdoin finished with the top black student yield among liberal arts schools, the Journal ranked Bowdoin 17th out of 24 liberal arts schools in their total "success in integrating African Americans." The rankings consisted of 13 objective indicators of integration, including percentage of blacks in the student body, percentage of total faculty who are black, and the black student graduation rate.
Of the 21 schools that submitted data on the percentage of black tenured faculty, Bowdoin ranked the lowest at 1.1 percent. Colby College, ranked second lowest in this category, boasted a percentage nearly three times that of Bowdoin.
Dean of Admissions Dick Steele explained Bowdoin's high black student yield as a product of campus programs. He specifically noted the Bowdoin Experience, a weekend when accepted minority students can visit the College, as a major factor in convincing accepted students to matriculate at Bowdoin.
"There's a campus-wide desire to have greater diversity," Steele said. "It isn't just admissions making this happen, it's the College community."
Steele, Bowdoin Dean of Admissions from the fall of 1991 to the summer of 2001, came out of retirement to take the position again for the year.
"Having been away for four years, I'm very impressed with the progress; I'm very pleased with how diverse the student body has become," Steele said.
Director of First Year and Multicultural Student Programs Stacey Jones '00 credited Bowdoin's recruiting efforts as the main force of attraction for black students. However, she also noted that as black students increase their presence on campus, the College should become more diverse.
"Black students are more apt to come to Bowdoin when there is already a community of black students in place."
Of the 478 students in the first-year class, 132 are students of color, with 57 Asian Americans, 37 Hispanics, 28 African Americans, and ten Native Americans. Though there are 28 black first years this year, in 1994, according to the Journal, there were only eight.
Jones, who graduated from Bowdoin five years ago, said of her school years, "At any time I felt like there were maybe 20 to 25 of us on campus."
She pointed to black alumni reaching out to prospective black students via telephone as another factor in Bowdoin's popularity among black students.
Both Jones and Steele noted Bowdoin's financial aid program as a reason for Bowdoin's popularity.
"We have wonderful financial aid," Steele said. "We've been very successful reaching students from different socio-economic backgrounds."
Jones noted that because Bowdoin pays for trip expenses for financially-challenged prospective students, less affluent students can afford to visit Bowdoin.
Tony Thrower '09 said that although he participated in the Bowdoin Experience, it wasn't Bowdoin's diversity that attracted him, but the admissions staff's attention to every one of its prospective students.
On his way to the Bowdoin Experience, Thrower encountered a flight delay in Atlanta. The admissions staff helped him get on a flight to New Hampshire, where he arrived at midnight. At 2:00 a.m., then Directors of Multicultural Recruitment Erby Mitchell and Fumio Sugihara personally picked him up from Manchester, New Hampshire, and drove him to campus, arriving at 4:00 a.m.
"It really convinced me that Bowdoin cares about its individual students," Thrower said.
For a small-town Maine college, Bowdoin's diversity is sometimes unexpected, students say.
"There are actually more black freshmen that I would have expected for a school in Maine," said Damon Hall-Jones '09. "I have to say I was pleasantly surprised, but I still think there could be more diversity here on campus."
According to the Journal, the top five liberal arts colleges most successful in integrating African Americans were Amherst, Williams, Colgate, Wellesley, and Haverford. Middlebury, Bates, and Colby all finished behind Bowdoin, respectively at 20th, 21st, and 23rd out of 24. Amherst, Williams, and Wellesley did not submit black student yields to the Journal.