| Volume XXVIIII Issue 1 | August 22, 2003 |
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Academic standards, diversity increase with
freshman class Matt Belanger - Assistant News Editor
Dean of Admissions Susan Klopman only needed one word to describe this year’s freshmen: diverse. More than 10 percent of the students in this year’s incoming class are minorities. From places as distant as Nigeria and Botswana, the 1,220 students hail from 35 different states and 11 foreign countries. Additionally, the incoming class, on average, has a GPA of 3.5 and an SAT score of 1160. Fifty-seven percent graduated in the top quarter of their high school classes. The admissions office received 7,052 applications for admission, which is an 8 percent increase over last year. Klopman said this is a sign of Elon’s growing popularity. "Elon is becoming more selective," she said. "This is not something we are making up in the corner office." Klopman explained that as the university receives more applications but keeps the incoming class size the same, the university’s yield, or the percentage of students who accept the school’s offer of admission, moves up. This year, the goal was to keep the incoming class around 1,200 students. As a result, Elon’s yield rate increased to 38.8 percent, up from 37 percent last year. "It really is the students themselves who are driving up the selectivity of the school," Klopman said. However, this year’s increase in minority students marks an achievement for admissions. Because Elon does not have a preset quota for the ethnicity of incoming students, admissions has been working for years to increase the number of minority students enrolled at Elon. This year, the percentage of African-American students in the incoming class doubled to 8.2 percent. Klopman attributes this year’s increase to a more focused recruitment of minority students. "We’ve got to meet people, tell the Elon story and get more applications," she said. In order to accomplish this, the university hired additional admissions recruiters to travel to different areas of the country and encourage more minority students to apply. Klopman said she believes person-to-person contact is the most powerful way to share information about Elon. With the increase in percentages this year, she said she feels their efforts have been a success. Another change this summer also affected the admissions office. In July, U.S. News and World Report, which publishes the influential "America’s Best Colleges" edition each year, announced a revision in its rating system. U.S. News decided to drop yield as a measure of a school’s selectivity. Early decision programs, like the one Elon employs, raise yield because every student admitted promises to attend that school. However, critics say this type of program pressures students into making a decision before they have time to consider all of the options. Some educators also believe that schools have become too "yield driven," working only to drive up their yield percentage and raise their selectivity ranking. Klopman said yield is a crucial tool used by admissions at Elon to predict class size. "We try to cover for a range of yield, but we never know exactly where it’s going to land," she said. However, Klopman said she feels Elon’s early decision program is fair to students. "Elon students really have a choice to make the agreement binding or not—and it’s a fair choice," she said. The notification dates for both early decision students and regular admission students who apply by Oct. 1 is the same: Oct. 20. Some schools do not promise an answer about regular admission until the spring of the student’s senior year. Klopman explained that early decision is for those students who know Elon is their ultimate choice. Rolling admission is offered for those students who want to apply to multiple schools and make the decision after seeing where they are accepted. "We don’t wedge you into one month to make a decision," she said. "The date the students receive the decision is the same." Klopman also reaffirmed that Elon’s focus has not been swayed by the desire to raise yield. "Our number one goal is still to make sure we remain focused on the student experience," she said. "We really think the best thing we can offer is the one-on-one interaction our students have with the faculty, and we are working to preserve that." |
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