"Ohio U. Admissions Turning Away More Applicants."

WealthOfInformation
Mon, 08 May 2006 22:04:08 +0000

Admissions turning away more applicants

Ohio University has denied 600 more high school applicants than it did at this time last year, one reason the admissions office believes this fall’s freshman class will have higher test scores than last fall’s.

Part of the decrease resulted from the office’s goal of a 4,100-student freshman class, he said. Last year’s goal was 4,165 freshmen, according to a Feb. 28 Post article.

Hitting the 4,100-student goal for freshman enrollment might prove more difficult than attracting a high-achieving class, Garcia said.

“There’s no guaranteed formula,” he said. “You have to admit a certain number of students and look at your historical yield rates. There’s no guarantee the yield rate will remain the same.”

This year the admissions office is focused on increasing the yield rate — the percentage of admitted students who enroll — and this is a challenge because students in this year’s more highly-qualified class have more options available, he said.

“It’s becoming more competitive,” Garcia said. “What we’ve done has involved the academic departments. We’re asking them to make more phone calls.”

The average ACT score of students who have committed to the university by submitting housing deposits is 23.7, compared with the 23.3 ACT score of last year’s freshman class. Although the 23.3 figure describes the entire pool of students who eventually enrolled at OU, the comparison is significant because average test scores do not change much once a large enough sample of housing deposits is obtained, Garcia said.

The number of minority students has not changed significantly from last year, Garcia said, but the university has admitted 1,833 out-of-state students, compared with 1,796 at this time last year.

That increase likely will carry over to Fall Quarter and is the result of an effort to recruit outside of Ohio, he said.

The effort includes the Gateway Trustee Award, which pays for $4,500 of the out-of-state surcharge for students with an ACT of at least 25 or a combined math and critical reading SAT of at least 1130. To increase awareness of this deal, the university has increased marketing spending in Chicago, Pittsburgh and East Coast states, Garcia said. The admissions office brought in eight guidance counselors from Chicago-area high schools on the university airplane, he said.

The profile of this fall’s freshman class will become clearer by the end of this week because the admissions office receives so many commitments via housing contracts, Garcia said.

Read full thread