The Admissions Office is cutting down the number of students who will attend the university in fall 2013.
The university is going to admit about 450 students in August compared to the 500 students who entered in the fall 2012 semester. That number increased to about 600 when transfers and full-time graduate students were included. This brought the total number of students to a little more than 3,000 people, said Director of Admissions Glenn Bozinski.
While the larger class did financially benefit the university, Bozinski said problems arose, including on-campus housing facilities that were unable to comfortably accommodate the large numbers of students. Many had to be tripled – three to a room. Class sizes were also a concern, he said, as were number in certain major programs.
“The thing we learned last year is that we’re maybe a little more popular than we thought we were because we really didn’t count on a little over 500 freshman last year,” said Bozinski. “We were looking for a class of about 440 or 450 freshmen, so we raised our academic standards a little bit to bring in a smaller class.”
Medical imaging and accounting were the two majors in which Bozinski has seen an increase in interest – and growth. Because of the limited numbers of available spaces in health sciences programs, faculty members are working to ensure a manageable number of students will be accepted. So far, the Medical Imaging program has received about 121 applications and has 26 paid deposits. This is an increase compared to fall 2012 statistics, although there is still a cap on the class because of the number of clinical spots available. Chairperson of the Medical Imaging Department Elaine Halesey said there is a restriction on the number of students local hospitals can accept..
“We can take maybe 32 or 33 into that freshman class because there’s always some attrition,” said Halesey, referring to the gradual reduction of students in the program. “Even though there will be some qualified people, we just won’t be able to take them, unfortunately.”
Halesey said the Medical Imaging Department is involved with all of the available hospitals in the area. The program sends as many students to each site as possible for required clinical studies. reach site must have one student to one registered technologist because of accrediting bodies rules, which limit the number of students the program can accept due to hospital restrictions. Halesey is eager to see the high-quality students that the fall 2013 semester.
“I’ve learned that there’s better students coming in,” said Halesey. “We have less attrition coming out of the freshman class, so because we have the luxury of 121 applications, admissions is bringing me better, and so therefore, better students will be most likely to stay here.”
Admissions staff is looking for students who have been involved in other activities, and athletic teams have to be sure they’re going to have athletes who are going to help them have successful seasons.
“You also look at things like diversity, you look at things like extra-curricular,” said Bozinski. “You want students who are interested in art and music and all the other kinds of things that we offer here.”
Instead of the university obtaining students’ applications through the mail, many applications are now submitted online. Prospective students are able to obtain all of the information they need about the location and characteristics of the university by simply looking at the university website.
“It’s more accurate,” said Bozinski. “If someone hand-keys in their email address, we know that it’s accurate and that data then moves right into our database as the student entered it.”
There have been plenty of times when administrators have misspelled names or other information based upon a student’s handwriting on paper copy forms. Online applications enable staff to make decoding students’ handwriting much less of a problem, said Bozinski.
Bozinski said online applications can make marketing to students more difficult. In years past, a student would have to request a visit from the admissions staff, but that has been rare in recent years.
“Now applications just materialize out of the air by students who have been researching us, but haven’t actually talked to us,” said Bozinski. “So it makes it harder to market to students when they’re taking more control of that.”
The university is will send out about 110,000 pieces of mail to students whose names the College Board gave to the admissions staff. Bozinski feels that these mailings are important because it markets the university and students’ families may also see them.
“We know that if we send something in the mail, there’s a good chance the whole family will at least glance at it, whereas if you send an e-mail to a student, maybe only the student sees that,” said Bozinski.