Brown announced new initiatives aimed at maintaining diversity in the University’s student body following a sharp drop in the share of Black and Hispanic students enrolled after the termination of race-based affirmative action in college admissions.
In Brown’s first-year class of 2028, the share of Black students dropped 40% while the share of Hispanic students dropped 29% compared to the class of 2027.
Brown’s efforts to sustain racial diversity target “recruitment, matriculation and retention of a diverse community of students,” wrote Provost Frank Doyle and Interim Vice President for Institutional Equity and Diversity Patricia Poitevien in a Today@Brown announcement.
At a Wednesday meeting of the Brown University Community Council — a forum of administrators, faculty, staff, students and alumni — President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 said that she believes “all of these programs will be covered by new fundraising, so it won’t impinge on the rest of the University’s budget.”
The University will establish five new regionally-based admissions positions to enhance collaboration with high schools. Paxson said that Associate Provost for Enrollment and Dean of Undergraduate Admission Logan Powell is still determining what cities will house the new officers, though Detroit and Atlanta are being considered.
Brown will also offer new programs for guidance counselors to better understand the admissions process, Doyle and Poitevien wrote in the announcement.
At the BUCC meeting, Paxson said that yield rates for students of color are currently lower compared to white students. “If we could simply bring all those yields up, we would be in a much better place right now,” she said.
Several initiatives plan to rely on Brown’s alumni network to reach more students with underrepresented backgrounds, such as creating a new alumni relations position to support alumni volunteers in recruiting students from underrepresented backgrounds, expanding collaboration with alumni affinity groups. Supporting these efforts would involve recruiting at least 750 alumni.
The University will also increase its participation with QuestBridge — an organization that matches students from low-income backgrounds with top universities. Paxson said that the University increased the number of QuestBridge matches by 25 this fall. In the class of 2028, 64 students were admitted through QuestBridge matches.
The announcement reiterated and expanded upon previously announced strategies for sustaining diversity, including plans to expand travel grants for students to visit campus, collaborate with community-based organizations and increase funding to match students’ need-based financial aid offers from other institutions.
According to Paxson, Brown is very competitive in terms of aid for students from families that make under $60,000 per year. But, she acknowledged that in the $60,000 to $150,000 range, the University “sometimes fall(s) behind.”
BUCC member Daniel Newgarden ’25 asked Paxson about how the new funding to match financial aid offers could impact the early decision applicant pool. “Early decision students might not be getting a broad array of other financial aid offers,” he said. Those students would have “less market power” to negotiate their aid packages, he added.
A report by the Ad Hoc Committee on Admissions Policies found that students who apply early tend to be less racially and socioeconomically diverse in comparison to the rest of the applicant pool.
Poitevien said that recent challenges with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid have been an “external pressure” on ED applications. She added that discussions about the FAFSA are “driving a lot of the conversation” around whether students have “the market strength” to consider Brown.
Paxson said the University would try to inform students “in a targeted way” that they are able to negotiate their financial aid packages.
“We anticipate that with time, hopefully, the FAFSA process will also smooth out, and that would help to facilitate providing more flexibility for those students who are interested in early decisions but also requiring financial aid,” Poitevien said.
Though the Supreme Court’s ruling did not bar applicants from discussing their race in their application, it did prohibit universities from considering “race for race’s sake.”
In the wake of the Court’s decision, Brown’s essay questions included the prompt “share how an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you, and what unique contributions this might allow you to make to the Brown community.”
In Sept. 2023, Paxson charged the Ad Hoc Committee on Admissions Policies to reconsider Brown’s use of legacy preferences in admissions, the early decision application round and standardized testing requirements. Paxson ultimately adopted the group’s recommendation to keep early decision and legacy admissions in place and reinstituted the University’s mandatory test score submission policy.
Doyle emphasized that the efforts outlined in the announcement were the “immediate plan,” but that Brown is “open to learning about other approaches.” Paxson said the University will be pursuing “monitoring and strategy assessment along the way so that we can fine tune what we do.”
Owen Dahlkamp is a section editor overseeing coverage for University News and Science and Research. Hailing from San Diego, CA, he is concentrating in Political Science and Cognitive Neuroscience with an interest in data analytics. In his free time, you can find him making spreadsheets at Dave’s Coffee.
Ciara Meyer is a section editor from Saratoga Springs, New York. She plans on concentrating in Statistics and English Nonfiction. In her free time, she loves scrapbooking and building lego flowers.
