UA Freshman Academic Profile

Atlanta68
Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:44:19 +0000

The University has not released the complete profile of this Fall’s class, but all of the preliminary evidence indicates that it is better than the profile listed above, from Fall of last year (2008).

One thing that stood out to me, was the fact that UA enrolled around 170 more freshman this Fall with 4.0s, despite having only about 90 additional students in this Fall’s class. Plus, the number of National Merit Scholars in this Fall’s freshman class has never been greater.

The reality seems to be that UA continues to enroll ever greater numbers of the state’s and nation’s top students, yet continues to admit a sizeable, though slowly declining percentage of lower achieving students as well.

If you compare UA with Auburn, you will find a seeming contradiction. UA’s application acceptance rate has declined to under 60 per cent as of this Fall, while Auburn’s acceptance rate has stayed at around 70 per cent. Yet, Auburn’s avg. ACT rate has increased dramatically to 26.2 as of this Fall, while UA’s ACT avg. has hovered around 24.5 the last two years (this year’s class avg. has not been released). This disparity can be explained by the fact that UA has a much higher yield rate, or a higher percentage of applicants actually choosing to enroll. So UA can afford to have a higher rejection rate. Plus, UA still seems to have a higher percentage of students with the highest scores, as evidenced by the NMS numbers. Nevertheless, they also seem to have a higher percentage of the lower performing students.

Dr. Witt has stated that it will become increasingly difficult to be admitted to UA, and has said that the size of the freshman class will remain the current size for the foreseeable future, stopping years of unprecendented growth. This will allow UA to reap the benefits of growth, especially in light of the economic downturn, and the huge drop in state funding, and also increase its selectivity. Fall of 2010 will be the first time that UA will require applicants to submit SAT and ACT writing scores, so I imagine that will weed out some of the lower performing students.

While I too would like to see UA’s academic profile become more prestigious, I am glad that the huge increases in enrollment are protecting the financial health of the University. It is clear that if UA limited its freshman class enrollment to match the size of say Auburn’s much smaller freshman class, then its academic profile would actually be superior, yet its finances would probably suffer. Indeed, UA is one of the few institutions in the country that is hiring new faculty, initiating new programs, and not cutting staff.