Forget standardized test scores and alumni giving rates: In a recent survey by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the only number that mattered to Penn's ranking was 8.8.
That's the percentage of black students in Penn's Class of 2010, and it landed the University eighth place in the publication's annual survey of black enrollment progress at top colleges.
Penn's ranking places it behind several of its Ivy League peers, including Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and Yale universities. Columbia was first among the Ivies, with blacks composing 9.4 percent of its freshman class.
The University of North Carolina topped the list at 12.3 percent.
Last year, Penn tied for fifth place with Dartmouth College - but won that spot with a lower percentage of black students. Only 7.6 percent of the Class of 2009 is black.
The survey was based on admissions data collected by the journal, according to the publication's managing editor, Bruce Slater.
Slater said that more black students enrolling in the nation's top colleges can show how blacks are faring in other areas of society.
"We think it mirrors progress generally in society as a whole," Slater said.
The journal has ranked black enrollment rates in elite schools since 1992. They include the top 30 schools as ranked by U.S. News and World Report.
Karlene Burrell-McRae, the director of Penn's black cultural center, Makuu, called Penn's ranking a "wonderful accomplishment."
"I think eight is a not-so-bad number," Burrell-McRae said.
Slater said that almost all schools have shown progress in black enrollment over the past 15 years. He added that the current percentage of black freshmen is the highest the magazine has ever recorded for Penn.
These days, all schools are interested in racial diversity, according the Slater. But "we've brought the issue to the forefront," he said.
The survey also examined elite schools' yield rates for black students. Yield rates measure the percentage of accepted students that choose to enroll in a particular college.
Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led the pack with 70.9 and 66.4 percent yield rates for black accepted students, respectively.
Penn's yield for black students was 52.2 percent, the sixth highest in the survey. But several universities, Yale and Princeton among them, declined to provide their black student yield rates.
According to Slater, the comparative yield rates reflect that the nation's top colleges are all competing over the same group of high-achieving black students.
Burrell-McRae said that it's important that Penn look to expand its applicant pool beyond this relatively small group by stepping up high-school outreach.
Rachelle Winkle Wagner - a professor in the Graduate School of Education who specializes in the sociology of higher education - said that the attention given to the issue of black student enrollment is particularly important in light of debate over affirmative action.
If a state's overall percentage of minorities is much higher than the percentage of minorities enrolled in a university in that state, "that may be an indication that we need to work harder," Winkle Wagner said.
