AUTHOR: Thomas LaVeist; Marjorie Whigham-Désir

TITLE: TOP 50 COLLEGES FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS

SOURCE: Black Enterprise 29 no6 71-80 Ja '9

When Lisa Hollingsworth was searching for a college three years ago, she could have gone just about anywhere she wanted. The Los Angeles native had a3.47 grade point average and 1050 SAT score. Hollingsworth thrived on academic achievement. Always in the top 15% of her class, taking advanced placement (AP) and honors classes, she'd taken SAT prep courses during her junior year of high school, along with college-prep classes at the University of California at Irvine. Therefore, when it was time to apply to college, she was more than prepared. Going to college was never in question, only where. "First I wanted to exhaust all possibilities, so I applied to schools in California that were large, predominately white public universities in the University of California system -- UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC Irvine," explains the 20-year-old, whose mother is a regional sales manager for BLACK ENTERPRISE. "Then I applied to Spelman and Xavier. I had always wanted to go to Spelman since it had good research programs and a reputation for producing strong black women. I applied to Xavier based on a summer program experience I had there. I was accepted at all five schools, but [because of] my interest in medicine and Xavier's reputation for placing the largest number of African American pre-med students going on to medical college, I decided to come here."

Whether considering historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) or the Ivy League, private or public schools, small regional or large national research institutions, African American students cast their achievements, applications and aspirations across a broad academic landscape. Today's potential entrant has more than 3,200 colleges in the United States from which to choose.

But how do black students and their parents make the right choice about what is often the most critical and costly step in a teenager' future? What factors should be considered--grades, test scores, location, reputation of the institution and/or its ethnic composition? And, is it possible to predict whether that child will obtain a college degree in four years?

These were the questions that prompted Thomas A. LaVeist, Ph.D., associate professor of health policy and management and sociology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and CEO of DayStar Research, to conduct research targeted specifically for African Americans. The result? The first ever listing of the BLACK ENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 COLLEGES FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS.

For a school to be included on the list, it had to be an accredited four-year institution with a black student enrollment of at least 1.5% and/or be a large or well-known university that would be of interest to black students. The list and its ranking was developed by LaVeist, who surveyed 1,077 African American higher education professionals in the academic and social environments of colleges and universities around the country. (For more on research methodology, see sidebar, "How We Crunched The Numbers.")

WHY DO THIS SURVEY?

Now, school rankings aren't new; there are lists for the best colleges, colleges with the best value and the best business, medical and law schools. But none of those lists are focused on black students, except for one published by Black Issues in Higher Education, which ranks schools based solely on the number of black graduates. It was this lack of information and his earlier experiences as a graduate student teacher at the University of Michigan that suggested to LaVeist that such a list may be necessary.

"I met a number of African American students that weren't doing as well as they could have been," he explains. "And, I was talking with teachers at other universities and they were experiencing the same things. I couldn't help but think the reason for the poor performance was just that many black students are making the wrong choices in trying to select an environment in which they can flourish."

An increasing number of high school students are being confronted with that choice. The latest report by the College Board, sponsors of the Scholastic Assessment Test, found that the number of students taking the SATs has risen to nearly match the number of incoming college freshman at accredited four-year institutions--1.2 million. It also found that in 1997-98, 11% of those who took the SAT were African Americans.

The College Board also reports that more students are taking the Advanced Placement Examination. By taking AP exams, college bound students hope to increase their chances of gaining admittance to the country's most selective institutions. Last year, 635,000 high school students took the test. Among them 321,000 were seniors who were college bound this school term.

While 70% of all colleges and universities are not as selective in their admissions requirements, according to Donald M. Stewart, president of the College Board, it's the competition for that 30% of schools--including many HBCUs--where test scores, GPAs and the difficulty of high school courses taken come into play. A degree from one of these schools often translates into higher starting salaries, faster career advancement and acceptance into graduate-level professional programs.

In their recent book, The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions, William G. Bowen, Ph.D., and Derek Bok, Ph.D., the former presidents of Princeton and Harvard respectively, compared the success of black and white college students entering the classes of 1976 and 1989. They found a direct correlation between acceptance into selective colleges and a student's GPA and class rank at graduation from college with the amount of money that graduate earned and how high they rose in their careers. According to the authors, "for women and men, blacks and whites, average earnings were highest for those who attended the most selective schools, putting them at about $20,000 more on average than their peers going to less selective institutions."

The goal of the BLACK ENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 list is to help African American parents and students make the most enlightened choices about where to attend college and identify where students are most likely to be successful. We also provided four smaller lists of the top five schools within the following categories, as defined by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching: national universities, national liberal arts colleges, regional universities and regional liberal arts colleges. (These smaller lists exclude the HBCUs, which, by virtue of their scores, would dominate each category as they do the top 50 list.)

Adds LaVeist: "People are going to look at the list and focus on where they are placed, but that's not what this is about. This list says that out of a universe of more than 3,000 schools, these 50, plus the honorable mentions, have fostered a great reputation among black educators and have done a good job of graduating students. Any school on this list should be proud--no matter where they are on it."

WHO'S NO. 1?

When Audrey Forbes Manley, M.D., was inaugurated as president of Spelman College this past October, officially taking the reins of the all-woman's college in Atlanta, she knew she'd become guardian of one of the most respected institutions of higher learning in America. After all, she is a graduate of Spelman, has served as a trustee on its board and is the widow of its fifth president. Now, the former U.S. Assistant Surgeon General has come home to serve as the bridge from Spelman's past into its future and as its first alumna president.

"Spelman has changed in significant ways since I was a student. The student body is larger, there's more diversity of interests and involvement of the students and the city of Atlanta has changed too," says Manley. "But in all that, the Spelman woman has not changed. The same kind of bright, talented and intelligent women that were attracted to Spelman 50 years ago are still attracted today."

As a testament to that interest, the college received 33,000 inquiries last year; it selected only 550 for its 1998-99 incoming freshman class from more than 4,000 applicants. Women in its entering freshman class boasts an average GPA of 3.4 with a composite SAT score of 1106. Today, 37% enter Spelman majoring in the sciences.

Cited by other surveys as one of the top regional liberal arts colleges in the country, Spelman is the No. 1 school on our list. The school's reputation has been enhanced over the past 10 years by Manley's predecessor, Johnnetta B. Cole, Ph.D. Under Cole, the school's endowment increased to $156.3 million over 10 years, the second largest of any HBCU. She added to its infrastructure with the Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby Academic Center and obtained funding to build a new science building which broke ground this past October.

But Spelman is not alone. HBCUs claim nine of the top 10 spots on our list. In addition to Spelman, two other Atlanta University Center schools--Morehouse College, Spelman's all-male counterpart, and co-ed Clark Atlanta University--join Florida A&M University in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C.'s, Howard University to round out the top five schools on the BLACK ENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 list.

The competitiveness of HBCUs is underscored by one of the most impressive finds of this effort: while HBCUs were only 10% of all the colleges surveyed by LaVeist, they represent nearly 50% of the schools on the BLACK ENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 list.

While 35% of black students go to HBCUs, most attend predominantly white colleges and universities. When she was looking for a college to attend, Samanthia Sanders of Fort Washington, Maryland, says she was looking for one with name recognition and racial diversity. "I didn't want my degree to be questioned. I wanted people to know what school I went to. I also wanted something that would prepare me for what the world is actually like, because the world is not all-black," says the 20-year-old Florida State University business major. "As college boards report, FSU is the only university in the country in the top ten for white and black students," says the school's provost, Lawrence Abele, Ph.D.

However, FSU, No. 26 on the BLACK ENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 list, is not the top representative of the Sunshine State. That honor goes to Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. Better known as FAMU, the public school was also named "College of the Year" by Time magazine/Princeton Review for 1997. Like other schools on the BLACK ENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 list, the college is a favorite among corporate donors and recruiters. It's also giving strong competition to prestigious Ivy League and research schools such as Harvard (No. 28) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (No. 45) for African American National Achievement Scholars. "We have a strong set of academic programs and job opportunities are among the best in higher education. We also have a graduate feeder program which pays for FAMU students with a 3.0 GPA or higher to go to certain grad, medical or law schools," says Fame’s president Frederick S. Humphries, Ph.D.

Perhaps no public higher education system has faced as much scrutiny and vilification as the University of California. Comprised of eight campuses in different parts of the state, the UC system is considered to be the elite level in California's educational system. But the advent of the anti-affirmative action initiative known as Proposition 209 decimated what little thee was of any formal inclusion efforts directed specifically to minorities. What resulted was a steep drop in acceptances, and in the number of students applying. This included those who were admitted and ultimately decided not to enroll. Henry and Catherine Joseph of San Diego said they'd prepared their 18-year-old son Reggie to be rejected by the UC system in the wake of Prop 209's passage, although he had a 3.65 GPA and scored 1180 on his SATs. "That's when we decided that I couldn't just rely on my GPA and SAT scores," the younger Josephs says. "I had to have more leadership and extra curricular activities."

After deciding to stay in state--"there's no place better than California," says Josephs--to pursue his ambition of becoming a filmmaker, he applied to UC schools in Berkeley, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and San Diego. But he hedged his bets and also applied to Cal State Long Beach, the elite private institution of the University of Southern California, No. 30 on the BLACK ENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 list.

Joseph, now a student at UCLA, was accepted at all except Berkeley. And while the Prop 209-era environment for African American students at UC systems schools may be uncertain--only 131 enrolled at UCLA in 1998, down from 219 the previous year--the school made the BLACKENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 list at No. 42.

GAINING ADMITTANCE

Test scores and GPAs aside, what distinguishes successful African American students who gain entrance to highly selective colleges is often their motivation and drive to succeed. Chloe Hilliard, 18, has been in accelerated classes and programs for gifted students since she was in elementary school. While this distinction would be notable for any student, anywhere, it's absolutely attention-grabbing for Chloe, who's spent her entire academic life attending New York City public schools. "Chloe got the best of what New York City public schools had to offer," say her parents, Vincent and Valeida Hilliard. The largest public school system in the country, New York City public schools have been noted primarily for extremes: Westinghouse scholars--usually white and Asian--on one end, and large numbers of dropouts--usually black and Latino--on the other.

Hilliard says she and her parents started discussing colleges during her sophomore year at Manhattan's Murry Bergtraum High School; by that time she had decided on journalism as a career. Just over six feet tall, her extracurricular activities included serving as the school yearbook editor, school newspaper editor-in-chief, member of the student advisory management and a co-captain of the girls basketball team.

Her journalism teacher, Wayne Gagnon, showed her how to take structured courses that would lead to a college major in journalism. When she started the college application process, Hiliard turned to Gagnon and her parents for help. "The college counselors would advise Asian students where to go, but when it came to African Americans, they would just ask 'where do you think you can get into?'" Hilliard recalls. The fact that NYU only offers academic scholarships, was "another reason why I looked at NYU," says Chloe, who scored 1140 on the SATs and maintained a 3.3 GPA in her advanced placement courses. Hilliard found the school also offered one of the top journalism programs in the country. While she applied to and was accepted by five East Coast schools, she chose NYU, No. 43 on the BLACK ENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 list, because she wouldn't be far from her home and parents in Brooklyn.

The determining factor was the amount of scholarship money she could get. Although it would cost about $34,000 a year to attend NYU, Hilliard got a full academic scholarship package from the university, along with a state tuition assistance program (TAP) supplement. She also won two private scholarships, including one from the New York Association of Black Journalists. It was enough. "Price is so significant," says mother Valeida. "Once a child has a dream and you've been stressing it all along, you have to support it. If your child is willing to do the necessary things--grades, applications to school and scholarships essays--there is help out there."

GET AN EARLY START

The process of getting into and being successful in college starts early. Stewart of the College Board suggests students take the right academic courses, "real math, science and English courses and advanced courses, not just general ones. Affluent families spend lots of money on prep courses, but they help only marginally." Stewart points to the PSAT, normally taken during the sophomore year, as the best diagnostic measure of a student's achievement thus far. "It lets them know where they're going their junior and senior year and what courses they'll need to take."

Likewise, William Bowen, president of the Andrew Mellon Foundation, which focuses on higher education issues, says parents and students should really think through how hard the student wants to work. "People have to be honest with themselves. How interested are they in academics? Our study shows that while some students have lower test scores and coming in [to college], they took advantage of the opportunities they were given once they were admitted."

Most colleges and universities practice some kind of "diversity" that's not limited to just SATs, ACTs or GPAs. "We reserve 10% of our freshman class for students who show potential [to succeed in college], but may not have met the traditional admissions requirements," says William Harvey, president of Hampton University in Virginia, No. 7 on the BLACK ENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 list.

The average SAT score is 1050 with a 3.2 GPA; Hampton requires a minimum score of 920. Harvey says they would consider a student with a 900 SAT score on the strength of his or her transcripts and a good recommendation by a guidance counselor. "The theory here is that all of us have had some help in our lives, or we would not be where we are today," he explains. "But once they're in, they have to perform like everyone else."

However, the key to performing well in a competitive environment is ensuring that the student is within an academic range of his peers. "You must look at the personality, temperament and experience of the student in helping to determine the environment that's right for him or her," says DayStar CEO LaVeist.

Experts suggest students and their parents look at the school's strengths and how it fits with what the student wants to study. Joyelle Johnston, currently a senior at Union High School in Union, New Jersey, plans to major in premed/psychology when she starts college in the fall of 1999. With solid SAT scores, 1150 on the first try and 1270 the second, Joyelle is looking for a liberal arts college on the East Coast and seems sold on Cornell University in upstate New York, No. 50 on

BLACK ENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 list. "I want good courses and teachers, with a diverse student body at a highly selective school, but not on too large of a campus," says the captain of her high school color guard. Her other choice is Duke University (No. 20 on our list) in Durham, North Carolina. Both schools have over 11,000 students (not exactly small, but not the largest either), cost around $30,000 (including tuition, room and board) and have notable science and pre-med programs.

"She's sold on Cornell, but I'm pushing other interests," says her mother, Joyce. "Support is a big issue with me. I want to know that they're concerned about her." Ithaca's cold weather and Cornell's geographic isolation are also issues. Physical comfort and location are two key factors that are often not given enough consideration when choosing a college.

Ultimately, where a student chooses to attend college--social and academic factors and personal goals considered--will result from a gut feeling. "I think it takes only three things for someone to succeed in college: average intelligence, good study skills and motivation," says LaVeist. "If a child is motivated to learn, they'll succeed."

ADDED MATERIAL

Thomas LaVeist, Ph.D. & Marjorie Whigham-Désir

--additional reporting by Keisha Anderson, Kevin Anderson, Tomika DePriest and Kellye Garrett

TOP 5 REGIONAL LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES*

DayStar Ranking Name (Location) Rating

1 State University of New York-Old Westbury 2,179

2 Ramapo College (Mahwah, NJ) 2,176

3 University of Houston-Downtown (Houston, TX) 2,125

4 Marymount College (New York, NY) 2,120

5 Mercy College (Dobbs Ferry, NY) 2,114

TOP 5 REGIONAL UNIVERSITIES*

DayStar Ranking Name (Location) Rating

1 College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, VA) 2,303

2 University of Dayton (Dayton, OH) 2,286

3 City University of New York (New York, NY) 2,214

4 DePaul University (Chicago, IL) 2,188

5 California State University (Long Beach, CA) 2,188

TOP 5 NATIONAL LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES (FN*)

DayStar Ranking Name (Location) Rating

1 Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH) 3,822

2 Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, PA) 3,815

3 Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY) 3,782

4 Amherst College (Amherst, NY) 3,717

5 Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) 3,664

*FOOTNOTE- Excludes historically black colleges and universities

TOP 5 NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES (FN*)

DayStar Ranking Name (Location) Rating

1 Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA) 3,842

2 Georgetown University (Washington, DC) 3,839

3 Columbia University (New York, NY) 3,757

4 Emory University (Atlanta, GA) 3,752

5 University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC) 3,699

*FOOTNOTE - Excludes historically black colleges and universities

Hollingsworth was attracted to Xavier's reputation for preparing African TOP 50

HOW WE CRUNCHED THE NUMBERS

In order to come up with the BLACK ENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 COLLEGES for African Americans, DayStar Research CEO Dr. Thomas LaVeist screened more than 3,000 colleges and universities for at least one of two characteristics. First, accredited four-year institutions with an African American student enrollment of at least 1.5%. Second, well-known colleges that don't meet the first criteria but would be of significant interest to African American students. The result was a pool of 987 colleges and universities in the U.S.

This universe of schools was then grouped by a modified version of the classification developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The classifications are based upon the size of the student body, national reputation and whether the majority of its students are drawn from across the nation or from a particular region. The five groupings used for the purposes of this study are:

NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES--large, nationally known schools with active research programs. These schools tend to draw students from across the country.

NATIONAL LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES--nationally known small colleges primarily with a teaching mission; these schools also tend to draw students from across the country.

REGIONAL UNIVERSITIES--large to midsize universities with more modest research programs than the nationals; these schools draw their students mainly from within their region of the country.

REGIONAL LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES--small colleges that draw their students primarily from within their state or region of the country.

HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES--DayStar modified the Carnegie categories to analyze HBCUs separately from other colleges and universities because of the high proportion of African American students.

DayStar then compiled a list of 1,077 African American professionals in higher education, including college presidents, faculty members and admissions administrators employed by the 987 schools in the study. Each was asked to rate each school within the classification of their institution on the following scale: Strongly recommended (5 points); Recommended (4 points); Neutral/no opinion (3 points); Not recommended (2 points); Strongly not recommended (1 point).

They were asked to rate the schools they had some knowledge of on their academic and social environments for black students. Of the 1,077 questionnaires sent to participants, 506 (or 46.9%) responded with a completed survey providing usable data.

The actual rating was computed according to a weighted and multiplied model that gave assigned values to four measures: the average academic rating from the survey, average social rating, the percent of black undergraduates in the student body for the 1996/1997 academic year and the percent of black students in the graduating class of the same academic year.

In computing the scores, HBCU's were individually weight-adjusted to compensate for their overwhelming advantage on the measure of proportion of African Americans in the student body, which routinely exceeds 95%. (The weights and assigned values used in our study are the proprietary information of DayStar Research).

The result is the BLACK ENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 COLLEGES--an index of the 50 schools with the best scores, on a scale of 0-5,000, for each of the 987 schools.

Average 1998-99 Academic DayStar ™ score from rating survey

Ranking Name/Location score from rating survey

1 Spelman College (Atlanta, GA) 4,144 4.85

2 Morehouse College (Atlanta, GA) 4,106 4.75

3 Florida A&M Univ. (Tallahassee, FL) 4,046 4.65

4 Clark Atlanta Univ. (Atlanta, GA) 3,959 4.58

5 Howard Univ. (Washington, DC) 3,957 4.67

6 Xavier University (New Orleans, LA) 3,951 4.65

7 Hampton Univ. (Hampton, VA) 3,915 4.56

8 Tuskegee Univ. (Tuskegee, AL) 3,915 4.53

9 N. Carolina A&T Univ. (Greensboro, NC) 3,893 4.50

10 Stanford Univ. (Palo Alto, CA) 3,842 4.79

11 Georgetown Univ. Washington, DC) 3,839 4.75

12 Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH) 3,822 4.86

13 Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, PA) 3,815 4.82

14 Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY) 3,782 4.78

15 Columbia Univ. (New York, NY) 3,757 4.67

16 Emory University (Atlanta, GA) 3,752 4.61

17 Amherst College (Amherst, MA) 3,717 4.90

18 Johnson C. Smith Univ. (Charlotte, NC) 3,708 4.15

19 Univ. of N. Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC) 3,699 4.50

20 Duke University (Durhamn, NC) 3,685 4.67

21 Morgan State Univ. (Baltimore, MD) 3,667 4.17

22 Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) 3,664 4.44

23 Fisk University (Nashville, TN) 3,650 4.28

24 Tennessee State Univ. (Nashville, TN) 3,649 4.17

25 Bryn Mawr College (Bryn Mawr, PA) 3,620 4.67

26 Florida State Univ. (Tallahassee, FL) 3,610 4.19

27 Bethune-Cookman (Daytona Bch, FL) 3,600 4.18

28 Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) 3,592 4.75

29 Johns Hopkins Univ. (Baltimore, MD) 3,591 4.50

30 Univ. of S. California (Los Angeles, CA) 3,587 4.28

31 N. Carolina Central Univ. (Durham, NC) 3,585 4.09

32 Morris Brown College (Atlanta, GA) 3,574 3.97

33 Southern Univ. (New Orleans, LA) 3,570 4.09

34 Univ. of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA) 3,564 4.53

35 Williams College (Williamstown, MA) 3,558 4.91

36 George Washington Univ. (Washington, DC) 3,552 4.42

37 Dillard University (New Orleans, LA) 3,551 4.34

38 Jackson State Univ. (Jackson, MS) 3,546 4.03

39 Grambling State Univ. (Grambling, LA) 3,540 4.09

40 Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA) 3,533 4.82

41 Yale University (New Haven, CT) 3,529 4.62

42 Univ. of California LA (Los Angeles, CA) 3,527 4.35

43 New York University (New York, NY) 3,504 4.42

44 Smith College (Northampton, MA) 3,500 4.82

45 Mass. Inst. of Tech. (Cambridge, MA) 3,483 4.62

46 Mt. Holyoke College (South Hadley, MA) 3,471 4.60

47 Lincoln Univ. (Lincoln University, PA) 3,464 4.00

48 S. Carolina St. Univ. (Orangeburg, SC) 3,457 3.89

49 Alabama A&M University (Normal, AL) 3,453 3.91

50 Cornell University (Ithaca, NY) 3,435 4.47

Admissions Office

Bachelors Degrees

Ranking (Black/Total)

1 Spelman College 454/469 1-800-982-2411 Atlanta, GA 96.8% http://www.spelman.edu/

2 Morehouse College 507/508 1-800-851-1254 Atlanta, GA 99.8% http://www.morehouse.edu/

3 Florida A&M Univ. 1,242/1,463 1-850-599-3796 Tallahassee, FL 84.9% http://www.famu.edu/

4 Clark Atlanta Univ. 522/525 1-404-880-8784 Atlanta, GA 99.4% http://www.cau.edu/

5 Howard University 1,153/1,333 1-202-806-2700 Washington, DC 86.5% http://www.howard.edu/

6 Xavier University 432-444 1-504-483-7388 New Orleans, LA 97.3% http://www.xula.edu

7 Hampton University 806/841 1-757-727-7328 Hampton, VA 95.8% http://www.hamptonu.edu/

8 Tuskegee University 487/526 1-334-727-8500 Tuskegee, AL 92.6% http://www.tusk.edu/

9 N. Carolina A&T Univ. 957/1,068 1-336-334-7946 Greensboro, NC 89.6% http://www.ncat.edu/

10 Stanford University 132/1,719 1-650-723-2091 Palo Alto, CA 7.7% http://www.stanford.edu/

11 Georgetown University 85/1,593 1-202-687-3600 Washington, DC 5.3% http://www.georgetown.edu/

12 Oberlin College 40/651 1-440-775-8411 Oberlin, OH 6.1% http://www.oberlin.edu/

13 Swarthmore College 21/332 1-610-328-8300 Swarthmore, PA 6.3%
http://www.swarthmore.edu/

14 Vassar College 42/563 1-914-437-7300 Poughkeepsie, NY 7.5% http://www.vassar.edu/

15 Columbia University 81/1,385 1-212-854-2522 New York, NY 5.8% http://www.columbia.edu/

16 Emory University 130/1,437 1-404-727-6036 Atlanta, GA 9% http://www.emory.edu/

17 Amherst College 26/398 1-413-542-2328 Amherst, MA 6.5% http://www.amherst.edu/

18 Johnson C. Smith Univ. 169/169 1-704-378-1010 Charlotte, NC 100% http://www.jcsu.edu/

19 University of N. Carolina 322/3,620 1-919-966-3621 Chapel Hill, NC 8.9% http://www.unc.edu/

20 Duke University 129/1,560 1-919-684-3214 Durham, NC 8.3% http://www.duke.edu/

21 Morgan State University 663/705 1-443-319-3000 Baltimore, MD 94% http://www.morgan.edu/

22 Wesleyan University 64/715 1-860-685-3000 Middletown, CT 9% http://www.wesleyan.edu/

23 Fisk University 150/150 1-800-443-3475 Nashville, TN 100% http://www.fisk.edu/

24 Tennessee State Univ. 560/794 1-615-963-5101 Nashville, TN 70.5% http://www.tnstate.edu/

25 Bryn Mawr College 13/243 1-610-526-5152 Bryn Mawr, PA 5.3% http://www.brynmawr.edu/

26 Florida State University 414/5,279 1-850-255-1401 Tallahassee, FL 7.8% http://www.fsu.edu/

27 Bethune-Cookman College 209/230 1-850-644-6200 Daytona Beach, FL 90.8%
http://www.bethune.cookman.edu/

28 Harvard University 110/1,803 1-617-495-1551 Cambridge, MA 6.1% http://www.harvard.edu/

29 Johns Hopkins University 45/1,005 1-410-516-8171 Baltimore, MD 4.5% http://www.jhu.edu/

30 Univ. of Southern California 215/3,476 1-213-740-8899 Los Angeles, CA 6% http://www.usc.edu/

31 North Carolina Central Univ. 605/669 1-919-560-6066 Durham, NC 90.4% http://www.nccu.edu/

32 Morris Brown College 155/163 1-404-220-0152 Atlanta, GA 95.09% http://www.morrisbrown.edu/

33 Southern University 918/955 1-504-771-2430 New Orleans, LA 96.1% http://www.subr.edu/

34 University of Pennsylvania 105/2,499 1-215-898-7507 Philadelphia, PA 4.2% http://www.upenn.edu/

35 Williams College 34/509 1-413-597-2211 Williamstown, MA 6.7% http://www.williams.edu/

36 George Washington Univ. 64/1,235 1-202-687-3600 Washington, DC 5.2% http://www.gwu.edu/

37 Dillard University 230/236 1-504-286-4670 New Orleans, LA 97.5% http://www.dillard.edu/

38 Jackson State University 627/644 1-601-968-2100 Jackson, MS 97.4% http://www.jsums.edu/

39 Grambling State University 826/855 1-318-274-2527 Grambling, LA 96.6% http://www.gram.edu/

40 Wellesley College 35/610 1-781-283-2270 Wellesley, MA 5.7% http://www.wellesley.edu/

41 Yale University 86/1,291 1-203-432-9300 New Haven, CT 6.7% http://www.yale.edu/

42 Univ. of CA Los Angeles 253/5,644 1-213-825-3101 Los Angeles, CA 4.5% http://www.ucla.edu/

43 New York University 248/3,233 1-212-998-2575 New York, NY 7.7% http://www.nyu.edu/

44 Smith College 15/692 1-413-585-2500 Northampton, MA 2.2% http://www.smith.edu/

45 Mass. Institute of Tech. 43/1,223 1-617-253-4791 Cambridge, MA 3.5% http://www.mit.edu

46 Mount Holyoke College 16/474 1-413-538-2023 South Hadley, MA 3.4% http://www.mtholyoke.edu/

47 Lincoln University 229/240 1-610-932-8300 Lincoln University, PA 95.4% http://www.lincoln.edu/

48 South Carolina State Univ. 679/699 1-803-536-8970 Orangeburg, SC 97.1% http://www.scsu.edu/

49 Alabama A&M University 490/589 1-256-851-5245 Normal, AL 83.2% http://www.aamu.edu/

50 Cornell University 76/1,923 1-607-255-5241 Ithaca, NY 4.0% www.cornell.edu

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Here are 14 additional colleges and universities, along with their admissions office phone numbers and Web sites that did not make the cut but have a score above or around 3,400.

Brown University

Providence, RI

401-863-2378

http://www.brown.edu

Davidson University

Davidson, NC

800-768-0380

http://www.davidson.edu/

University of Maryland

College Park, MD

301-314-8385

http://www.testudo.umd.edu/