“Some students may see those figures and say, ‘there are not as many professors there to mentor me,’” Slater said.

According to Slater, Harvard’s standing among blacks suffered a further setback after former Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74, a prominent scholar in what was then called the Department of Afro-American Studies, left Harvard for Princeton in 2002 following a spat with University President Lawrence H. Summers.

But the blow dealt by West’s exit was softened by Harvard’s positive reputation with regard to race relations, Slater said.

“In the 30 year history of affirmative action, Harvard has been at the forefront,” Slater said.

In March, Summers and Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law Laurence H. Tribe co-wrote a New York Times op-ed declaring their firm support for affirmative action, and the University filed an amicus brief in the recent Supreme Court cases on affirmative action.

McGrath Lewis said that she and other admissions officers worried that West’s exit and the surrounding circumstances would diminish the yield of black students.

In fact, McGrath Lewis said, “We had a better yield [of black students] after that had happened. Maybe we were so concerned about it that we redoubled our efforts.”

The racial disparity in yield statistics may be further explained by the fact that—at least historically—African-American applicants rarely were classified as legacies.

According to McGrath Lewis, “legacies yield at a slightly higher rate.” She noted, however, that Harvard is seeing an increasing number of black legacy applicants.

Although Lewis and her colleagues closely watch yield data, race does not play a role in Harvard’s recruiting strategy, she said.

“We offer a couple of hundred [low-income students] subsidized visits to Cambridge,” Lewis said. Students are selected for the program based on income information discerned from financial aid forms.

“We don’t do things by ethnicity. We don’t think that way,” Lewis said.

Olamipe I. Okunseinde ’04, president of the Black Students Association, said that Harvard should bolster its efforts to reach out to predominantly black public schools.

Black high school seniors, unlike other highly coveted applicants, feel an additional pull from historically black colleges and universities, she said.

“We still have guidance counselors telling [black students] not to go to schools like Harvard and Stanford because those schools ‘aren’t for them,’” said Okunseinde, who is also a Crimson editor.