Racial Diversity In College Campuses

The dominant conceptual and empirical literature on college choice has characterized the college choice process and college choice itself, as most informed by students’ perceptions and expectations related to financial aid and college costs. Despite efforts by researchers to improve college choice predictions for Black and Latina/o students’ by integrating sociological constructs, these analyses are still grounded in the economic theoretical perspective.
Finances are undoubtedly an important factor in student choice, but for competitive students of color, the racial contexts of college campuses are also critically important. Evidence from the empirical review suggests some students have a specific preference for campus racial diversity that is highly consequential in their college choice decisions (e.g., Cho et

The Social Identity Decision Matrix represents the mechanism by which students of color appraise and respond to information (i.e., cues) that convey aspects of a campus context potentially important to their social identities (e.g. race). The full conceptual model can be found in the Appendix.
While there are a number of institutional characteristics that a student may be interested in, included in the figure are those characteristics that have been found to be most important for students of color. The matrix depicts the types of responses that students are likely to have depending on their racial centrality and their interpretation of a particular campus’s commitment to diversity.
I assume that a student is likely to perceive more threatening cues from a campus with a perceived low commitment to diversity. Thus, for a high race central student, the model predicts the student is likely to avoid a campus with a perceived low institutional commitment to diversity, either through application or enrollment choice.
Limitations of Integrating College Choice and Social Identity Theory and