by our College Data Analytics TeamCollege Factual’s diversity rankings take into account four factors:
The schools with the most diversity when it comes to student ethnicity, geographic location (including international students), and gender come to the top of this ranking.
Our primary source of diversity information is enrollment data from the IPEDS “EFA” dataset. This is data reported by colleges to the Department of Education.
At a high level, this data is described by the Department of Education as: “students enrolled in the fall, by race/ethnicity, gender, attendance status and level of student.”
Some people consider high diversity in a college to be synonymous with a high presence of minorities on campus. However, our diversity rankings is simply based on the measurement of how many students of various ethnic backgrounds are represented, as well as different locations and gender. This can produce some counter-intuitive results. As an example, we rate Alabama A & M University poorly for ethnic diversity despite their excellent history of serving minorities.