University Times

After two years of de- clining enrollments of African American freshmen, Pitt admitted its second-largest class of black freshmen (328 students) this fall.

Pitt's largest-ever class of African American freshmen (336) was enrolled in fall 1995. That same year, the Board of Trustees set the University's highest institutional goal as pursuing excellence in undergraduate education.

At the time, some people raised "understandable and appropriate questions"about whether raising academic standards would conflict with Pitt's diversity goals, Chancellor Mark Nordenberg told the trustees' affirmative action committee yesterday. "We did stumble during the last two years, but with fall 1998 we think we have really put things back together again,"Nordenberg said.

This fall's black freshman class boasts "markedly higher academic credentials,"including better SAT scores and high school class rank, he said.

But Wendell G. Freeland, community representative on the affirmative action committee, noted that African Americans made up 13.9 percent of Pittsburgh campus freshmen in fall 1995, compared with 10.6 percent this fall. "That represents a substantial decrease, percentage-wise, and it seems to me that that should be disturbing,"Freeland said.

Actually, Pitt admissions staff consider the fall 1995 black freshman class to have been "a one-year anomaly,"said Betsy A. Porter, director of Admissions and Financial Aid. "Fall '93 and fall '94 were more representative,"she said. During those terms, blacks represented 10-10.5 percent of freshmen here.

Despite stiff competition with Ivy League universities and others, the University is pushing hard nationally to recruit African Americans who would qualify for Pitt's Honors College, targeting counties with proportionately large concentrations of such students, Porter said.

Academically elite black high school seniors tend to be more willing than their white counterparts to travel across the country to attend college, she stated.

Recruitment of Pitt's fall 1998 freshman class began about 18 months ago, when the University bought a list of names and addresses of 334,399 students who met its admissions standards.

Twenty percent of those students (67,154) indicated interest in enrolling here; 20 percent of those 67,154 (13,580) applied – capping a 74 percent increase in Pitt applications over the last four years. Of those who applied, 68 percent (9,234) were offered admission; 34 percent (3,105) paid deposits. These 3,105 represent a 28 percent increase in Pitt's freshmen enrollment over four years ago.

– Bruce Steele