Once again, the time of year when high school seniors are frantically finishing college admissions applications and rounding up their supplementary materials has arroved. With a large number of application deadlines just over a month away, including Johns Hopkins, recommendations, transcripts, and essays are being compiled quickly.
Yet there is another factor in admissions that is often shyed away from by applicants and admissions officers: the contribution of each student to the economic, social, racial, or gender diversity of the campus.
Higher-tier universities are occasionally criticized for being overly geared towards the wealthy, or even "reverse-discriminating" by allowing certain amounts of minorities into each freshman class.
Whatever direction the University is leaning towards at present, there is certainly an indication that an applicant's background factors into admission decisions.
In recent years, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has been the subject of multiple law suits regarding their admissions policies towards minorities, fueling a debate that reached the Supreme Court. Ultimately, the university's law school won in court, while the undergraduate admissions process was deemed unfair.
Of the favorable ruling, former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, "student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions."
The Johns Hopkins University Office of Admissions does uphold a traditional equal opportunity policy, disclosed on each year's application. This statement assures the prospective student against any of the possibility for potential discrimination during the admissions proces.
It is part of the Office of Admissions policy that any particular portion of a prospective student's application may be used in part to make a decision.
Yet the official policy of Johns Hopkins is not to make a decision based solely on race, gender, financial status, quotas, or other separating aspects regarding a student's background.
Whether influenced by the aforementioned policy or not, the racial breakdown at Hopkins is heterogeneous, and diversity is present. According to recent statistics, the student body is 5% African-American, 22% Asian, 62% Caucasian, and 5% Hispanic, with less than 1% of students coming from Native American descent.
When asked what it was liked to be thrown into the diveres environment that Hopkins offers, freshman Jared Esopo replied, "It is a little shocking at first to observe the different cultures, representative of the outside world. Its definitely different."
Director of Admissions John Latting said, "Diversity in admissions is important because we are trying to assemble a community of people. At present, Hopkins does not look like the nation."
Latting also mentioned that the admissions process, "would love to see more international students."
Hopkins has a noticeable reputation in the world, easily recognized by the percentage of international students that are accepted each year, usually hovering around 5 percent.
In recent years, the distribution of students attending Johns Hopkins has been wide, with freshman arriving from all 50 states, and as many as 52 different countries.
The diversity of students' academaic interests is also a subject of concern for the admissions office, with a growing interest focusing on attracting quality applicants in majors that do not necessarily deal with the sciences.
While men outnumber women at Hopkins, with statistics coming out to 55% and 45% respectively, gender unsurprisingly does not play an overwhelming role in the undergraduate admissions process.
Although the engineering disciplines hold a large majority of males, there has been gradual progression towards balancing the gender ratio, and counselors are recognizing the importance of not taking overt actions.
As far as the economic breakdown goes, the a significant amount of undergraduate students come from middle class or upper class backgrounds, with a noteworthy mix of enrolled students from lower class families.
Hopkins is known for its generous scholarships, among them the Hodson Trust Scholarship. A full 45% of undergraduate students receive some sort of financial aid, with about 72% of incoming freshman applying for financial aid. Of these applicants, 28% come from annual family incomes of less than $45,000. 10% of incoming applicants reported incomes of $45,000 to $60,000 and 46% cited incomes of $60,000 to $120,000. 16% were above 120,000.
Although a significant amount of students are from very educated and/or wealthy backgrounds, Latting said, "An applicant file with less-educated parents definitely stands out."
However, it is important to note that Hopkins follows a "need-blind" standard in admissions, meaning that admissions counselors making a decision not allowed access to any given applicant's financial information.
As at most colleges, these figures do not vary largely from class to class. As admissions are getting more and more competitive each year however, the one statistic that does vary, and improve, is grades, test scores, activities, and achievements. And that's certainly something that students, alumni, and the public can agree is a good thing.
