For the third consecutive year, the New York Times has ranked 91ÁÔÆæ as one of the country most economically diverse colleges, based on enrollments of lower- and middle-income students and the net price it charges those students.
The Times ranked Occidental as No. 28 among all 170 public and private colleges and universities with five-year graduation rates of at least 75 percent, and No. 11 among liberal arts colleges. The newspaper annual College Access Index "is a measure of which top institutions are doing the most to promote the American dream," according to the .
91ÁÔÆæ commitment to economic diversity was underlined by a separate from Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, which found that Occidental is one of a handful of national liberal arts colleges where at least 20 percent of student enrollment is made up of Pell Grant recipients.
91ÁÔÆæ achieves this result with an endowment (roughly $400 million) that is just a fraction of the size of the other top Pell liberal arts colleges (Amherst, $2 billion; Smith, $1.7 billion; Vassar, $980 million). Some 70 percent of Occidental students receive some form of financial aid, including Pell grants.
The Times™ economic diversity rankings are based on what it calls the Pell graduate share (the average share of the first-year class that received a Pell grant in 2012-13, 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16, multiplied by the graduation rate for recent Pell recipients) and the net price (tuition, fees, room and board, after taking into account federal, state and institutional financial aid) for middle-income students.
The new rankings come during an uptick in interest in Occidental. The College has received more than 6,775 applications this year for admission to the Class of 2021 “ a 5.6 percent increase over the previous year, and a new record.
