Diversity of background of both the students and the faculty broadens and strengthens an education. I loved the diversity of the student body at the University of Maryland and would want a college that could offer this and also offer a wide diversity of professors.

For the measure of student diversity, I also consider all international students to add to the diversity–regardless of race–so they are included. Below are the schools for which the percentage of students who are non-Caucasian and/or international is 50% or higher. I give all of these schools with 50% or higher an equal score of 50–for me, anything above 50% is more icing on the cake rather than added value. Then, in order to put this on a 100-point scale, I simply doubled the percentage for them (so all on the list below score 100) and all those under 50%, as well.

UC San Diego

UC Berkeley

CalTech

Carnegie Mellon

MIT

Harvey Mudd

NYU

UC Los Angeles

Stanford

Rice

U Southern California

UC Santa Barbara

Swarthmore

Brandeis

U Chicago

U Pennsylvania

Emory

U Texas–Austin

Pomona

Harvard

Boston U

Cornell

Yale

Claremont McKenna

Princeton

Amherst

Case Western

Northwestern

U Illinois

Franklin W. Olin

Johns Hopkins

Duke

Brown

Vanderbilt

Northeastern

U Miami

U Maryland College Park

Santa Clara U

Rensselear

Occidental

Tufts

Wellesley

Barnard

U Washington

To measure faculty diversity, I looked at both the percentage of faculty who are women and the percentage who are members of minority groups. As with the student population, I considered any percentage of 50% or higher to be of equal value (maximum score of 50), and then added the score for the two measures together to place it on a 100-point scale.

Here are the colleges that have reached parity for women and men, along with the percentage of women professors at each school. The first six should be no surprise.

Barnard

Bryn Mawr

Wellesley

Mt. Holyoke

Smith

Scripps

Macalester

Pitzer

Bates

Haverford

Oberlin

Bowdoin

Colorado College

Hamilton

Amherst

Occidental

Swarthmore

Carleton

Davidson

Franklin W. Olin

Grinnell

65%

65

62

62

60

57

57

56

55

55

54

53

53

52

51

51

50

50

50

50

50

And here’s the list of colleges that have gotten to the point where 25% or more of their faculty are members of a minority group.

U Miami

Pomona

Scripps

U Southern California

Georgia Tech

UC Davis

Mt. Holyoke

Bryn Mawr

Occidental

Rensselear

U Illinois

Santa Clara U

Carleton

Colorado College

Wesleyan

U Texas

Emory

Williams

SUNY Binghamton

Purdue

U Maryland College Park

Haverford

Trinity U

Harvey Mudd

UCLA

Ohio State

Grinnell

Wellesley

Macalester

Pitzer

George Washington U

Davidson

U Pennsylvania

Vassar

Yale

Barnard

UC Berkeley

UC San Diego

Claremont McKenna

Stanford

U Michigan

Amherst

Bates

Florida State

38%

37

36

36

35

35

34

33

32

32

31

31

30

30

30

30

29

29

29

29

29

28

28

28

28

28

28

27

27

27

27

27

26

26

26

26

26

26

25

25

25

25

25

25