Despite a recent study which found that the majority of students who check "other" on college applications are in fact white, Dean of Admissions Lee Coffin asserts that Tufts actually underreports the amount of diversity on campus.
The study, conducted by the James Irvine Foundation, examined three private California campuses. The Foundation reported that in the decade between 1991 and 2001, the amount of "other" responses increased from 3.2 percent to 5.9 percent, and that most of the applicants checking "other" were actually white.
As part of the study, students who defined themselves as "other" in applications filled out a survey after matriculation, in which many of them reverted back to describing themselves as white.
The study concluded that "A campus may have 50 percent students of color according to enrollment data, but may [really] only have 28 percent students of color." Dean Coffin, however, said that no such problem would occur at Tufts because "we count non-responders as among the Caucasian/other category."
But Coffin said that "there's definitely a change in the way students are describing themselves.
"The numbers are only as accurate as the students who check the boxes are," he said. "And an increasing number are choosing not to."
Coffin said that when the Admissions office can define the ethnicity of students who check "Other," it does.
For instance, he said, some people check "Other" and write in Irish, in which case the student is put into the Caucasian category-or they write "Indian," and are put into the Asian-American category.
The same goes for students who leave the entire field on race blank, but indicate their race elsewhere in their application - for example, they write an essay about growing up in a Korean-American family.
Among the 4003 individuals accepted into the class of 2010, 530 are students who are applying from within the United States and whose race is unknown. This 13 percent will be classified as "Caucasian/other."
"The numbers that we report are under-representing the percentages," Coffin said. "30 percent of students admitted this year are people of color - that does not include people who didn't self-identify as people of color."
Coffin did acknowledge that most of the students of unknown race are indeed white. He also indicated that many students of unknown race seem as if they would be counted as people of color from their names and information.
He said that besides whites, the largest group that seem to not identify a race is Asian-Americans. "The Hispanics and the African-Americans tend to self-identify," he said.
But Asian-Americans who avoid the question, "particularly ones from the West Coast, and the Cal system, probably don't identify themselves out of the worry that it might be used against them," he said. "But it won't be at Tufts."
Coffin picked up six applications at random from accepted members of the class of 2010. Among those six, one was from a woman who left the race field blank, but wrote that she spoke Spanish at home.
Two were from students who checked both "Asian-American" and "other," and, later in the application, specified that they were Pakistani.
This attests how difficult it is for some students to describe themselves. Coffin noted that Arabs or Iranians may have difficulty defining themselves according to the narrow definitions.
He cited other difficult examples, such as European Jewish students whose families lived in South America and spoke Spanish.
Today's students "look at themselves much more pluralistically than the statistics that are created," he said. "And it's becoming harder and harder to take any individual student and put them into categories."
"We see an increasing number of students who are biracial, multiracial, from blended families of all sorts," Coffin said.
Students who are of two or more ethnicities are classified by whichever racial group is listed first, unless that first race happens to be Caucasian.
Coffin said that there was certainly a "group among the white kids" that check all ethnicities that apply to them, even if they are in extremely small fractions, or who might check other.
Another group of kids "don't like the idea that racial categories matter," Coffin said. "They're the ones that usually write 'human.'"
Profile of Class of 2010 Acceptances:Applications: 15,280Acceptances: 4001Acceptance rate: 26 percentMen: 1837Women: 2163
SAT-Verbal (mean): 715SAT-Math (mean): 718SAT-composite: 1433 (highest ever)SAT-Writing (mean): 710ACT (mean): 31mid-50% verbal: 680-760mid-50% math 680-760mid-50% writing: 670-760
SCHOOL TYPEIndependent 33%Public 57%Religious 5%Undesignated 4%
Financial Aid IntentYes 55%
RACEAsian 601Black 221Caucasian/Unknown 2,634Hispanic 285Native American 11Foreign 249International 253
