A Record Number Of Latino Admissions To Harvard This Year

Here’s a good indication that not all the news about Latinos and education is dire. This year Harvard University has admitted 12.1 percent Latino students; it’s yet to be seen how many of them will accept the offer of admission. Conventional wisdom says that they’d be fools to decline. But conventional wisdom doesn’t take a lot of things into account.

With the Latino drop-out rate stuck at about 50 percent, and with Latino High School completion rates dismally low it isn’t difficult to see how much of an accomplishment getting into Harvard can be for a Latino student.

According to Hispanically Speaking:

Approximately 35,000 students apply each year to attend Harvard and typically only 6.2% of students applying to the school get in.

And this brings to mind something I’ve been thinking about for a few years, it hits home because I have my two kids in college. We do a lot to get Latinos students into college; there are countless programs and scholarships and agencies that focus on the entrance to college. But there are none, that I know, that focus their energies on making sure that Latinos students stay in college and graduate in four years.

Maybe that’s something that the new Latino students at Harvard can research and solve.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda