The relative cognitive impacts on Black students' attendance at historically Black versus predominantly White colleges were investigated. Controlling for individual precollege ability, average precollege ability of the students attending each institution, gender, socio-economic origins, academic motivation, age, credit hours taken, work responsibilities, place of residence, and types of coursework taken, Black students attending the 2 Black colleges did as well or better than their counterparts at the 16 predominantly White institutions on standardized measures of writing skills and science reasoning administered at the end of the second year of college.