Minority enrollment in the class of 2006 is down for the second year in a row at SMU.
While minority recruitment remains 2 to 3 percentage points lower than in previous years, the admissions office and the Department of Multicultural Student Affairs say they are working harder than ever to improve minority recruitment.
Rod Jackson, assistant director of undergraduate admissions, said that the minority makeup of this year’s first-year class is 17 to 18 percent, not including international students. Overall, this number is consistent with the percentage for the class of 2005 but lower than the class of 2004’s 20 percent.
The college admissions process has gotten more competitive over the past several years,” Jackson said, “so the students that aren’t very well prepared are being offered money by large state schools.”
According to the Princeton Review, schools that SMU might compare itself to, such as Vanderbilt and Tulane host 16 and 18 percent minority students respectively, while a state school such as UT Austin has 32 percent. In the DFW area, TCU and UNT have 13 percent and 24 percent, respectively.
The admissions office is putting together a minority-recruiting event called “Striving to Achieve New Goals” for the spring. The event for local high school students aims to educate them about the steps they need to take when applying to schools.
The Department of Multicultural Student Affairs offers the CONNECT Program which matches new minority students with upperclassmen mentors.
While not a new program, the process has changed since last year, when minority students were matched with their mentors when they got to school.
This year, students were matched early in the summer as they decided to attend SMU. Seventy first-year minority students attended an orientation with 41 mentors on Aug. 15. The change was made to give the first-year students an instant connection when they arrived at school.
“We have gotten so much positive response from the student mentors, from the student mentees, and they’re loving it,” said Jennifer Jones, director for the Department of Multicultural Student Affairs. “Our minority students are really connected at this point.”
Senior mechanical engineering major Dean Edwards thinks highly of the revamped program.
“This is my first year doing it, and it’s really positive,” Edwards said. “I know when I first came here I didn’t know many seniors … but with this program, a lot of first-years get to know seniors, and I can give them a lot of help and advice. If the mentor program stays with the school, they’ll be in our position one day and they’ll be doing the same thing, just like a cycle.”
New this year is a brochure sent to incoming minority students welcoming them to the campus and orienting them with the Department of Multicultural Student Affairs. It lets students know about opportunities for involvement and departmental services.
The overall goal is for these programs to grow and eventually include all students regardless of ethnicity.
