Class of 2011

higherlead
Mon, 07 May 2007 22:38:44 +0000

It is the largest increase only because last year saw the largest decrease. The class of 2007 which graduates in a few days had 1675 freshmen enroll. That is 300 more than this class of 2011. What we are seeing is a recovery not growth.

Not sure what effect it will have on USNWR rankings or if they will even use this years numbers. I know early on we lobbied to use pre-katrin numbers for this year one reason being that freshman to sophomore retention is one of the factors USNWR uses and it really isn’t too fair a number for schools hit by katrina. Also wasn’t one of our strong points to start with. On the other hand last year helped our per student endowment which is really pretty much what the USNWR rankings end up measuring.

If SAT test scores were the only criteria we would always have ranked higher. Those were down a little last year as well but not a lot. Katrina was a big blow and hopefully this is the beginning of the Green Wave comming back in.