With black students comprising 8.8 percent of the Class of 2011, Bowdoin has moved toward the top of an annual survey of enrollment of black students at top-ranked liberal arts colleges.
The 476-student first-year class comprises 42 black students, which moves the College into fifth place for black percentage of first-year classes among the 30 highest-ranked liberal arts colleges, according the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE).
Bowdoin also achieved the second-highest yield of the 30 colleges surveyed (though two schools did not provide data for the survey), with 40.0 percent of admitted black students choosing to enroll. Bucknell University took top honors, with a yield of 44.3 percent.
The rankings will appear in the JBHE this fall as part of its annual report, "The Progress of Black Student Enrollments at the Nation's Highest-Ranked Colleges and Universities."
"Considering Bowdoin's location in Maine and considering the black population in Maine is only about one percent, Bowdoin's performance in attracting a freshman class that's almost nine percent black is outstanding," Bruce Slater, JBHE's managing editor, told the Orient.
The fifth-place ranking marks a significant improvement from last year's 26th-place ranking, when Bowdoin's first-year class was only 3.2 percent black.
"Last year was an aberration on the low side," said Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William Shain.
Shain, who is in his second year as head of admissions, said that former admissions deans at the College deserve credit for this year's strong showing among peers.
"We've been in this for the long haul, and so what happens in one year is the product of many years of carefully building relationships," he said. "Bowdoin has always had a commitment to diversity."
Amherst College, with 11.8 percent black first years, finished first in the rankings, followed by Pomona, Williams, and Haverford colleges. Maine peers Bates College and Colby College finished 22nd and 27th, respectively.
Associate Dean of Multicultural Student Programs Wil Smith said he was pleased with the results, explaining that diversity benefits the campus as a whole.
"The more perspectives you can get in the classroom, the better," Smith said.
One way Bowdoin attracts so many black students is through two Admissions-organized weekends: the Bowdoin Invitational and the Bowdoin Experience.
The November Invitational introduces prospective minority applicants to Bowdoin. (See story, page 3.)
April's Experience weekend gives accepted minority students the opportunity to explore the College with other minorities. Sixty to 65 percent of attendees usually matriculate.
Tony Thrower '09, head proctor for Maine Hall, explained that the Bowdoin Experience and Bowdoin Invitational introduce minority students to all of the College's offerings.
"Bowdoin, itself, has the resources available to make this school accommodating to students of any cultural background," Thrower wrote in an e-mail to the Orient. "However, these resources aren't always accurately represented from a Web site, brochure, or even an interview with a representative."
First year Justin Foster, who attended last year's Bowdoin Experience, said that the weekend's activities introduced him to the students at Bowdoin.
"The Invitational and Experience weekends were good previews of the type of class I would come into," Foster told the Orient. "When I arrived on campus, I had more reunions than introductions."
Thrower, who is also a member of Bowdoin Student Government (BSG), said that Bowdoin has done a good job of introducing prospective minority students to the academic and social life of the College.
"Every year I believe the Experience Weekend gets better, in terms of how many aspects of the campus the prospects are introduced to," he said.
Bowdoin's black student yield of 40.0 percent is considerably higher than last year's 18.5 percent, but actually lower than the Class of 2009's 40.6 percent yield.
"Our hope is to be over 40 percent this year," said Shain.
Colby's yield for black students was 30.0 percent, while Bates's stood at 30.4 percent.
Black students during last year's admission cycle also benefited from a high acceptance rate: 41.3 percent of black applicants were accepted, the fifth-highest acceptance rate of the 28 responding colleges.
Shain said he does not consider Bowdoin's practices to be affirmative action.
"I don't think in those terms," he said.
"We look at everybody in context. What's a fair way to evaluate somebody in terms of the opportunities they've had," Shain added.
Bowdoin's overall acceptance rate was 19.0 percent, the sixth-lowest of the 28 colleges. In 2006, the acceptance rate for blacks was also 41.3 percent, and in 2005, the rate was 46.3 percent.
"Nobody gets in here because of their background," said Shain. "On the other hand, we're not neutral about diversity."
If a student is obviously qualified for Bowdoin, Shain said, he or she will get in independent of race. Five to 10 percent of applicants are accepted in this way, he explained, while about 30 percent of applicants are just as quickly rejected. The students who are left, though, may be judged with race in mind.
"In that middle group, you may tilt it toward population groups that make your campus become the community you want it to be," said Shain.
Smith noted that while more black students would certainly be good for Bowdoin's diversity, further increasing the College's black student yield may no longer be a priority.
"I'm not sure that doing more to attract black students to Bowdoin is in order," said Smith. "But I do hope Bowdoin is able to maintain the initiatives it has in place while adapting to new challenges as the need presents itself."
Elmer Moore, coordinator of multicultural recruitment in Admissions, said he thinks that the Admissions Office should always aim higher.
"There's never going to be a point, as long as I'm breathing, that we say, 'OK,' [that's enough]," said Moore.
"You want to do better than last year," Shain added. "You can't have either targets or quotas."
The Admissions Office plans to step up its multicultural recruitment even further by more effectively communicating with prospective students on an individual basis.
"We will be doing more to stay in touch with students of color," said Shain. "We're going to develop communication protocols [that are] increasingly sophisticated, starting with direct mail and building a relationship with students that is more consistent and more individualized."
Shain and Moore suggested that this year's diversity can become a selling point for prospective black students, but that the Admissions Office still needs to make a strong effort in order to continue to attract black students to the mostly white state of Maine.
"We have momentum, but it's not self-sustaining," said Shain. "If we stopped trying, the numbers would drop."
"It is inertia, but we're not at the point where we can rest," added Moore.