Advice for Students and Colleges
Because of the nature of our work, we're often asked to offer recommendations for students seeking to tailor their college search and for institutions that are trying to be more progressive in this area.
For Black college applicants trying to evaluate campus equity and inclusion, we recommend:
- Talk to current Black students who are not connected to the Admissions Office.
- Talk to recent Black alums.
- Ask everyone tough questions about the racial climate at the college.
- Ask what supports exist to protect Black students and ensure they reach their potential.
- Read the student-run newspaper and skim headlines for the prior six to nine months to assess the number and severity of any racially charged incidents on campus.
- Dig deeper into your research on colleges. Go beyond the name of the college, rankings, and statistics to form a genuine understanding of the racial atmosphere at the colleges you are considering.
For colleges and universities that want to effect meaningful change right now, we recommend the following:
- Ask Black students and alums to identify racist policies, curricula, norms, practices, behaviors, and cultural understandings. Then, work to eliminate these until they are gone.
- Design a mandatory workshop to educate everyone connected to the college in any way (including the surrounding community, if possible) about what constitutes inappropriate behavior. Involve Black, white, and other underrepresented minority students in the design and rollout.
- Assume that every Black student might become your pediatrician, heart surgeon, Senator, attorney, or President of the United States, and aim to treat them with the same dignity and respect accorded to non-BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students.
- Ask yourself, “If this student in front of me were white,” or “If this paper in front of me were written by a white student,” would I behave/respond the same way I’m?
- Before every decision administrators make, have them ask themselves, “If we decide to do X or proceed in direction Y, how will this choice affect our Black students?” This quick, free, and accessible practice can prevent an institution from adopting harmful, racist policies.
Final Thoughts
Black students deserve the opportunity to attend selective, private institutions, to be safe there, and to receive the same opportunities, quality of education, and support as their white peers. The private colleges we reviewed are some of the most prestigious and competitive in the country. They offer some of the best educational programs in the world, and they will shape our leaders for decades to come. As such, they have an obligation to continually refine their efforts to safely and fairly educate our most talented students regardless of skin color.
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Special thanks to the following for their generous support for this project:
Ellen Anthony, Member, Racial Justice Provincetown (MA)
Elizabeth Gallo
Christopher Hunt, founder of College Essay Mentor, LLC.
Marcelo Gonzales Montoya
