"The foundation and other groups have worked on making this a community one that the African-American students can feel proud of," he said.

Dionne A. Fraser '99, president of the Black Students Association, credits the administration and the admissions office for the honor.

"Based on my experiences for the last four years, I feel that the administration is very responsive to the needs [of black students]," she said. "The admissions office does a good job making sure that the student body is racially and socio-economically diverse."

Black Issues in Higher Education, a magazine with a circulation of 200,000, publishes the only other list that ranks colleges for black students, according to Black Enterprise.

Cheryl D. Fields, executive editor of Black Issues in Higher Education, said rankings such as these are valuable for creating discussion in the higher education community.

"This is going to stem a great deal of debate on colleges," she said, noting that rankings also force colleges to make themselves more hospitable to black students.

Harvard has been included on Black Issues' Top 100 list because of its highgraduation rate among black students, Fields said."Harvard has demonstrated the ability to graduatethe students who it admits at a rate that is highand that is encouraging," she said.

Fields said black students may even haveexperiences at Harvard that are similar to thosethey would find at traditionally black colleges.

"In any institution that has a critical mass ofAfrican-American students, there are opportunitiesfor students to have some of the same kinds ofexperiences that they would have on a historicallyblack campus," she said.

Black Enterprise's January issue, whichfeatures the rankings, will be available December29