Wake Forest University

Overview

Wake Forest University is a private university in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, founded in 1834 near Raleigh on a plantation; it moved to Winston-Salem in 1956 (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education). The university’s distinctive thread is a long, documented arc from slavery to integration: Ed Reynolds, from Ghana, became the first Black full-time student when he enrolled in 1962 and graduated in 1964, and the university observed the 50th anniversary of racial integration in 2012 (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education). In 2020, Wake Forest formally apologized for its historical ties to slavery (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education). Its motto is “Pro Humanitate” — “for humanity” (Expert Admissions).

A plantation college reckons with its past

Wake Forest was founded in 1834 near Raleigh, on a plantation, and remained there for more than a century before moving to its Reynolda campus in Winston-Salem in 1956 (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education). Racial integration came in 1962, when Ed Reynolds, a student from Ghana, enrolled as the university’s first Black full-time student; he graduated in 1964 (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education). The university marked the 50th anniversary of that integration in 2012 — half a century after Reynolds arrived on campus (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education).

That history sits inside a wider regional struggle. Baptist News Global has documented the fight to integrate even progressive Baptist institutions in the 1960s, reporting on the desegregation struggle at Baptist institutions including Wake Forest (Baptist News Global). The arc continued into the present: in February 2020, the university apologized for its historical ties to slavery — an institutional acknowledgment coming nearly two centuries after its founding on plantation land (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education). From plantation origins in 1834, to a first Black student in 1962, to a formal apology in 2020, the institution’s own record traces one of the longer documented reckonings in American higher education.

The 2008 test-optional move

Apart from its historical reckoning, Wake Forest made a distinctive mark on American admissions policy. In June 2008, the university stopped requiring applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores, “joining the ranks of test-optional colleges,” in the words of Chronicle of Higher Education reporters Eric Hoover and Beckie Supiano (The Chronicle of Higher Education). The Chronicle called Wake Forest “one of the most prominent institutions with a ‘test optional’ admissions policy,” and noted that the university — located in Winston-Salem, N.C. — had accepted 42 percent of undergraduate applicants the previous year (The Chronicle of Higher Education).

The decision gave the university a second identity in the higher-education press: an institution simultaneously excavating a difficult 19th-century past and reshaping 21st-century admissions practice. The test-optional move broadened the profile of Wake Forest beyond its Southern Baptist and regional roots, placing it in a national conversation about access — while its integration history and 2020 apology anchored a separate conversation about institutional accountability.

What this profile does not claim

• It does not call Wake Forest the “first top-30 national university to go test-optional.” That superlative was not verified from a fully-read independent source; The Chronicle’s wording was only “one of the most prominent institutions” with a test-optional policy.
• It does not state rankings, current acceptance rates, or enrollment figures. The only admissions figure given is the 42 percent acceptance rate reported by The Chronicle in 2008.
• It does not characterize the contents or terms of the 2020 slavery apology beyond the fact of the apology itself, which is all the cited source confirms.
• It does not state details of Ed Reynolds’s life or career beyond the verified facts: from Ghana, the first Black full-time student, enrolled 1962, graduated 1964.
• It does not assert the reasons or internal deliberations behind the 2008 test-optional decision, which the cited reporting does not detail.