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More freshmen, more challenges
By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor
Sean Sullivan calls the situation "an admissions and enrollment officer's dream."
Sullivan, vice provost for enrollment and planning, and Patricia Armstrong, director of admissions, and their staff are in the enviable position of seeing a tremendous increase in the number of applications for spots in the 2003 freshman class and having 600 more students than expected send in deposits—students who are among the most talented on the selectivity matrix.
That huge incoming freshman class, though, also poses challenges for the university's student-services infrastructure, from housing, food service and orientation to security, parking and busing.
It has made for more work as well on the academic side—particularly in the College of Arts and Sciences—which is scrambling to ensure there are enough instructors and course sections to accommodate the additional students.
"More is good, but more is more," says Dennis Black, vice president for student affairs.
The size of the freshman class came as somewhat of a surprise to UB admissions staff. The SUNY goal for incoming freshmen for Fall 2003 was 3,000, and with a yield assumption based on applications and admitted students, staff expected a class of around 3,200. The yield—the percentage of accepted students who actually enroll—was much better than that, with 3,808 students actually sending in deposits as of last week.
"The kind of applications we're getting are from the most talented students—those students who are admissible under almost any criteria we would develop," Sullivan says. "The application-rate growth showed itself late in the year, and the yield growth showed itself very late in the year, so we couldn't make adjustments in admissions decisioning by the time we really knew we had a great response from the market."
He explains that based on history, the admissions office makes assumptions about where to "draw the line in terms of who is admissible."
The office developed its methodology and applied it all year. "But with the increase in applications—all good, talented students—we ended up probably admitting more students than we needed to admit to meet the class size," Sullivan says.
He offers statistics showing that UB this year received 4,776 applications from students in the top selectivity group—those with a minimum high school grade-point average of 94 and a minimum SAT score of 1400—an increase of 827 over the 3,949 applications received last year from students in that top group.
"All the application growth was at the high end of the (talent) pool, which is what we're always hoping for" he adds. "We've spent six years creating and delivering the message that we are a place for talented students. We've developed financial strategies, scholarship strategies, student-support strategies that have really responded to what the talented students are looking for; it's paying off.
"That's where UB wants to be; we want to be a first-choice institution for the most talented students out there," he says.
Armstrong notes that UB's increasing popularity with the most talented students also is evident when one looks at the quality indicators. "Not only was there an appreciable increase in numbers of applications, but also an increase in the yield," she says. "That's usually the most difficult group to enroll-the more highly talented the student, the more sought after they are by other institutions. We experienced wonderful growth in our yield."
She and Sullivan point to preliminary figures indicating that the yield for the incoming freshman class jumped to 35 percent this year, compared to 31 percent for the entering class of 2002 and 29 percent for the entering class of 1998.
Sullivan also stresses that UB has increased as well the geographic diversity of the entering class in 2003 from 2002 and before, garnering more applications, acceptances and enrollees from all parts of the state, as well as out of state. In particular, the number of enrolled students from Metro New York—a target area for admissions staff—is up about 50 percent from last year, and out-of-state enrollments also are up by 50 percent. "We're trying to be much more of a regional, rather than just a statewide, university, and ultimately, to be a national university," he says. "We're making steps in that direction."
Sullivan and Armstrong attribute the tremendous increase in applications—and ultimately admitted students—to a number of factors. Among them Armstrong cited an expanded University Honors Program and UB Scholars Program; the Alumni Ambassadors program in which alumni attend college fairs to sing the praises of UB to prospective students, and hard work by admissions staff, who completed 25,000 telecounseling calls to prospective students, used instant messaging—sometimes until 11 p.m.—to contact high school students, and developed better relationships with high school counselors, many of whom were flown and bussed into campus to see for themselves what UB has to offer.
Sullivan says it's hard at this point to assess the impact on student recruitment of UB's exposure on MTV. "Fraternity Life" and "Sorority Life" probably aired too late in the year to have an impact on applications, he says, although the programs might have had a slight impact on yield.
While the larger-than-expected freshman class is good news for UB, it will provide some challenges for those at the university who provide the services to support these students.
"Finding out in June that we will have more students (than expected) is a little harder than finding out in January," Black says, pointing out that the late notice makes options more limited.
Staff in the Office of Residence Halls and Apartments in particular will feel the heat, according to Black, who notes that all students, including incoming freshmen, transfer and continuing students who desire on-campus housing and submitted their deposits by May 1 will be guaranteed a bed.
Staff will reclaim as bed space all areas on campus that formerly were used as residence space but now are being used as office space, he says. That means space will be "recaptured" in the Ellicott Complex on the North Campus and in Michael, Goodyear and Clement Halls on the South Campus.
Rooms also will be "tripled," and while that practice has been done in the past in the short term, it likely will be a yearlong proposition this year, he says.
Moreover, contracts will be drawn up with local motels to provide residential space to students, if needed. "We'll do that for the short-term until there's a natural attrition in the residence halls," he adds
Black says the university also will have to add busses to the intra-campus transportation system, extend food service hours, and add another session to the summer orientation program, as well as make some adjustments to the parking situation.
"Our goal is to provide the same kind of services we want students to have under regular circumstances," he says. "We have a commitment to make it work for everybody."
In the College of Arts and Sciences, staff are working hard to make sure that the experience for students is good on the academic side as well.
"We are providing enough freshman courses so that every student will have the classes they need to get off to a good start," says Peter Gold, associate dean for general education. This is being done in a variety of ways, Gold says, including increasing class size where possible, adding course sections, hiring some adjunct faculty and teaching assistants who have exhausted their support, creating additional classrooms and expanding the day for many students—the teaching day extends from 7:30 a.m. for chemistry labs to courses that end at 9:30 p.m.
CAS has added for the fall semester 27 lectures, 22 lab sections and 54 recitations, seating an additional 2,200 enrollments and generating about 8,300 more credit hours, he says.
"It's been a difficult task because it was unexpected and very late in our planning," Gold says. "Departments, though, have been very cooperative and creative in rising to the challenges."