50 best colleges for African Americans: a solid education, matched with the right opportunities, creates successful collegians: here are some strategies students should employ as they move from the college campus to the corner office and beyond

Black Enterprise, Oct, 2004 by Tanisha A. Sykes

The goal was to be as inclusive as possible while targeting schools that would be of interest to black students.

We surveyed 1,855 African American higher education professionals with titles such as president, chancellor, and provost, for their assessments of the social and educational environments of the nation's colleges and universities for African American students. Each school received a rating from 2 (strongly recommended) to -2 (strongly not recommend ed) with 0 being neutral. Schools were categorized according to the college classification protocol developed by U.S. News and World Report, which is a modified version of the protocol developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Survey respondents were asked to rate only schools that they were knowledgeable about.

The BE top colleges list was developed by Thomas A. LaVeist, Ph.D. professor of health policy, management, and sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and CEO of DayStar Research, LaVeist is the author of DayStar Guide to Colleges for African Americans (Kaplan/Simon & Schuster; $20) and co-author of 8 Steps to Help Black Families Pay for College (Princeton Review; $13). The list, based on the DayStar rating, was calculated by developing a regression-based. weighted, multiplicative index combining four variables:

1 The school's five-year graduation rate for African Americans

2 The school's percentage of African American undergraduate students

3 The school's average survey score for the school's academic environment

4 The school's average survey score for the school's social environment