3. Campus Population
This is a factor that I didn’t consider as thoroughly as maybe I should have, although, to be honest, there are nuances that you just don’t pick up on until you are there—and sometimes for awhile (more than just one visit). The obvious types of student bodies available are: coed versus single sex (I think just all women, at least officially), multi-racial/“diverse” or all Black (although I would argue that there are a lot of unofficially all you-fill-in-the-race or ethnicity colleges), and religious affiliation.
I would strongly, STRONGLY recommend looking beyond brochures and published numbers, especially if you’re looking for a campus that bills itself as coed and diverse. A campus visit is a must. Also, asking people from a similar background to yours will give you feedback that will likely be closer to how you would perceive the campus than what you would get from an admissions officer or campus rep, since they are agents for the college they represent.
Let me give you two examples:
Example A.
When I found out where I was accepted, I went to visit the universities and colleges that were too far away for me to visit before I was the one making the decision. I am from California, born and raised in the Bay Area. My family is from back East (New York City, not New England). When I went to visit New Haven, Connecticut (where Yale is located), I naively thought that, since I saw other Black people and a few Asians, in addition to White people, that the city was integrated and “diverse”.
It wasn’t until I was a student that I learned how racially and ethnically tense the city was. It was the first time that I experienced that level of socioeconomic segregation and self-segregation. It was also the first time that I encountered so many different types of Caucasians at each other’s throats (Italians versus Irish versus WASP, etc.). Needless, to say, that was something I did not enjoy, but to be honest, the experience opened my eyes, made me appreciate things and people, and shaped how I looked at our nation as a whole.
Example B.
I spent a semester at UCLA when I was researching film schools and deciding where I wanted to apply to grad school. I loved how many other middle-class students of color I saw and made a lot of friends while I was on campus. One day at work (I was a waitress at the Chart House in Westwood); one of my coworkers said to me what a shock UCLA was for her and jokingly called it “University of Caucasians Lost among Asians”. I was taken back a bit by her racist joke but tried to listen to the message behind her statement.
Jokes aside, she was communicating that she had come from a very homogeneous background and that the diversity overwhelmed her. For the first time in her life, she was experiencing what it was like to be a minority. Her humor was insensitive and inappropriate, but her reaction was honest and genuine. (By the way, there was a lawsuit filed by Asian rights activists around that time—the 1990s—about discrimination against Asians, so I guess, it’s all relative, right?)
The moral of the story is that your background will likely shape your reaction to your college experience. However, for some, going someplace completely different from where you grew up will be great, especially if you hated where you grew up and currently live. This was the case for one of my good friends in college, who was from a small, one-horse town and had never watched TV (no, I am not kidding). She loved living in a mid-size city like New Haven and has ended up making New Haven her home for more than 10 years now.
