the best colleges and universities for aapi students: wrap-up

Over the past two weeks, I partnered with Asian Pacific Americans for Progress to present a special list of The Best Colleges and Universities for AAPI Students. We hope you enjoyed it. Before we officially wrap things up, a couple of things...

First, we want to thank all the people who helped in making the process possible: Mamta Accapadi (OR), Eugenia Beh (TX), Jason Chan (DC), Lily Huang (NY), Sahra Nguyen (MA), Corinne Kodama (IL), and Connie Tingson-Gatuz (MI).

We also want to thank everyone who sent in information about their schools. By no means was this a comprehensive process, but we received applications from 30 colleges and universities from across the country. Some schools had multiple submissions, and as promised, everyone who submitted an application was entered into a raffle for a gift package from Blacklava including a DVD of the documentary Vincent Who? The winners are:

Helen T. (Cornell University)
Andrea L. (Michigan State University)
Shiva R. (Pitzer College)
Leanne K. (San Francisco State University)
Alyssa W. (University of Florida)
Stan T. (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

It was great to see so much happening at so many different campuses across the country. Again, the top ten campuses we recognized:

• Columbia University


• Dartmouth College


• Loyola Marymount University


• Oberlin College


• Pitzer College


• UCLA


• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


• University of Massachusetts, Boston


• University of Pennsylvania


• University of Southern California

We also want to give honorable mentions to:

• San Francisco State University


• SUNY Binghamton


• University of Denver


• University of Florida


• University of Washington

While we congratulate everyone on their ongoing work to represent and organize AAPIs in higher education, we do want to note that it may have been more appropriate to call this project the "Best Colleges and Universities for Asian Americans." Unfortunately, Pacific Islander students remain severely under-represented in colleges. It would be great to see Asian American students learn more about this disparity and partner with Pacific Islanders, as allies, to address these severe educational inequalities.