Five Questions Every Black Parent Should Ask Before Their Student Commits to a College

Every spring, Black families sit down with a stack of acceptance letters and a May 1 deadline.

The conversation usually goes the same way. Rankings. Name recognition. Financial aid. Distance from home. Where their friends are going.

None of that is wrong. But there is another set of questions — the ones I have asked for over fifteen years — that almost never come up in those conversations. And those are the questions that actually tell you whether your student is going to be supported, seen, and set up to succeed once they walk through those doors.

Here they are.

Question One — What is the four-year graduation rate for Black students specifically?

Overall graduation rates are easy to find. Every institution reports them. Four-year graduation rates for Black students specifically are much harder to find — and that difficulty is itself an answer.

Call the admissions office and ask directly: "Can you share the four-year graduation rate for Black or African American students?" If they stumble on that answer, or if the number is significantly lower than the overall graduation rate — that tells you everything you need to know.

Admitting Black students and graduating Black students are two very different things. You want to know which one this school is actually good at.

Question Two — What programming exists specifically for Black student retention — and who funds it?

DEI offices have been eliminated or severely reduced at many institutions right now. That means programs that used to exist may no longer exist — or may exist in name only, with no real resources or staff behind them.

Ask: "What retention programming exists for Black students beyond general advising? How is it funded, and has that funding changed in the past year?"

And remember — first-generation programming is not the same thing as programming designed specifically for African American students. Make sure you are asking about the right category. The institution will know the difference even if they hope you do not.

Question Three — What happens when a Black student reports a bias incident?

Ask this one directly. You can keep it simple: "If a student experiences a racial bias incident — from a peer or from a faculty member — what is the formal process for reporting it, and what happens after a report is made?"

A strong answer has a specific process, a designated person or office, a response timeline, and some sense of what accountability looks like. A weak answer is vague, redirects to general student conduct, or suggests these incidents rarely happen.

The question is not whether bias happens on that campus. It happens on every campus. The question is what the institution does when it does happen.

Question Four — Who are the Black faculty in my student's department?

Ask for names. Then look them up.

This matters for two reasons. Black students benefit from seeing themselves represented in the people who teach them — it communicates something no diversity brochure can replicate. Black faculty also tend to serve as informal mentors, advocates, and navigators for Black students in ways that go far beyond their job descriptions.

If a department has no Black faculty at all, that is real information about what four years of classes, advising meetings, and recommendation letters is going to look like for your student.

Question Five — What does the institution do to prepare white students to engage across difference?

This is the one that surprises families most. But it matters enormously.

Black students at PWIs spend a significant amount of energy managing the discomfort, ignorance, and sometimes outright hostility of peers and professors who have never had to think carefully about race. Institutions that take this seriously have programming, curriculum, and expectations built around it. Institutions that do not put that burden squarely on their students of color.

Ask what the institution does — not just for Black students, but for everyone. Their answer will tell you a great deal about the campus culture your student is walking into.

May 1 is coming fast. Before your student commits, make sure you have real answers to the real questions.

Their success depends on it.

Help has arrived.