<p>You’ll get more responses on the parents’ board or by posting on the schools’ boards. But even if you specify that you want comments from black students/parents, you’re likely to get a lot of well-meaning posts, of dubious accuracy, from white posters insisting insisting that black students at school X are happy and would be fully intergrated into the school but for the fact that they self-segregate. </p>
<p>I have not even investigated most of the schools on OP’s list, but D1 (now a soph) considered F&M, but ultimately found it to be too small and too white. When D1 was applying, the black enrollment at F&M was less than 3% - - not much worse than a number of other schools, but with an overall enrollment of 2000 that meant only 60 black students on campus. D1 felt this was too small of a pool for her to count on making friends w/ students who shared interestsl, some of whom were also black. We dropped Muhlenberg from D2’s list for similar reasons (2500 students about 2% black = 50 black students on campus).</p>
<p>For us, the numbers were often enough of a reason to say “no thanks.” Neither of my Ds - - both of whom have attended predomintely white schoools and have diverse circles of friends - - felt she could be comfortable at a school with such a small black population. And that’s without even factoring the dating issue (of the 50 black students a M’berg, for example, no more than 16-20 are male, and since most students date in-race, those are terrible odd for a hetero black girl).</p>