Editor's Note: This article has been corrected. Please find the correction here
According to the University's Dean of Admissions Lee Coffin, last year's Asian-American applicants bore the brunt of Tufts' admissions inability to make the leap from "need-sensitive" to "need-blind" admissions.
"The neediest individuals within the Asian-American category were ultimately denied admission," Coffin said.
At the weekly faculty meeting with arts, science and engineering professors yesterday Coffin presented statistics suggesting that the total percentage of minorities at Tufts has decreased due to the University's admissions policy.
Overall, minorities demonstrate more need than Caucasian students, and Asian-Americans demonstrated significantly more financial need than did the neediest students of other minorities, resulting in the largest overall shortfall.
"This is bad news for diversity," History Professor Steven Marrone, a member of the Oversight Panel on Race (OPR), said. "What this means is that only middle-to-upper class - mainly Chinese, Japanese, and Korean - Asian-Americans will be represented in the student body. Entire sections of Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laotian, or other generally socio-economically disadvantaged ethnicities will not have a chance here."
Showcasing the profiles of various exceptional and well-rounded students, Coffin said their ultimate rejection from the University because of their high financial need in the face of limited financial resources.
After trying to provide more aid to the Class of 2007, the University hit a low last year in the aid pool available to the Class of 2008. Instead of the usual $10 million available to incoming students, there was only $8 million available.
"What we try to do is cut from the minority pool that already has the most representation before the final round of decisions," said Coffin. With more applicants represented in the pool than African-American or Latin-American students, the greatest numbers of Asian-American students were denied.
Of the 79 students of color eliminated from the pool, 46 of them were Asian-American, resulting in an approximately four point percentage drop (from 14 percent to 9.5 percent) in Asian-American students in the freshman class compared to previous years.
African-American and Latin-American populations remained within a 0.5 percentage point range. The total minority proportion of the Class of 2008 dropped from 27 percent to 24 percent from the Class of 2007.
While 59 percent of accepted applicants also applied for grant aid, only 34 percent received any, compared to the average rate of 43 percent among Tufts' peer institutions, including MIT, Washington University in St. Louis, and all the Ivy Leagues.
Coffin attributed much of the Asian-American drop to low matriculation rates (from 28 percent to 22 percent), which also revealed that most of the Asian-American students provided with some amount of financial aid instead matriculated at one of the peer institutions mentioned above.
"If you look at where students who applied to Tufts and didn't matriculate ultimately ended up, you see that the overwhelming majority of them went to these major competitors, all of which are need-blind," Coffin said. "There is no reason to believe that a reversal will not happen this year and my colleagues in admissions are committed to that outcome."
While Coffin recognized the various socio-economic classes that make up the category of Asian-Americans, he said that unless admissions had sufficient funding this year, they would again have to consider financial need before such diversity concerns.
"The pool of Asian-American applicants continues to grow stronger each year," he added.
Ultimately, 193 qualified candidates for the Class of 2008, already pre-approved for admission, were denied because their financial need was deemed "too high" (over $25,000 a year) for Tufts to support.
The admissions selectivity was broken into two categories - a 32 percent admissions rate for those without financial need, versus 24 percent for those with need.
Need-blind admissions has been a major focus among University President Lawrence Bacow and the University's Board of Trustees, and will play a role in the University's Capital Campaign, which is now in its initial "silent" stages.
According to Bacow, the campaign aims to raise the $200 million necessary to support need-blind admissions at Tufts, the details of which are not yet available.
Bacow also announced an anonymous gift made to the School of Arts and Sciences of $10 million - $4 million of which was designated to undergraduate financial aid.
"We have an obligation to make the Tufts education open to as many people as possible," he said.
When asked at the faculty meeting if there would be enough funds this year to ensure better diversity, Bacow said that such figures were not yet available and would not be until after acceptance decisions had been made.
