Does anyone know why University of the Pacific has gone from over 21,000 freshman applicants (and 36% admitted) to fewer than 9,000 applicants (66% admitted) in just the last 5 years? Freshman enrollment has also dropped from 927 in 2011 to 726 in 2016.
Thanks for any light shed on the subject.
I would be interested in hearing answers to this as well.
My guess is that this has less to do with changes in the prospective applicants and more with marketing efforts. Colleges sometimes run very aggressive campaigns to increase their applicants (and therefore decrease their admits). In some cases, schools even offer to waive the application fee for a large number of students. I suspect that five years ago U of the Pacific worked to increase its applicant pool, and now things have stabilized - but perhaps others have more specific information or a longer history of the numbers.
The cost of an UOP degree is very expensive (>60K per year). There many public schools that provide an education, that is at least equal to UOP, for half the cost or less. Other private schools such as Stanford, USC, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Duke, Ivies, etc., can charge the high rates and still gets record applicants because these schools offer more.
Did they add a required supplemental essay? that will decrease applications. What was the yield rate then versus now? What are the mid 50% of stats? if yield has increased with out a drop in admitted stats then that is a good thing.
And one of those public schools, UC Merced, recently invaded UoP’s home turf – the northern San Joaquin Valley.
Average Net Price for 2014-2015 (from College Navigator):
UoP: $33,816
UCM: $13,350
The two schools serve the same general area and are roughly comparable in selectivity (at least for now). So if you are a high school senior considering UoP, you are probably also thinking about UCM. In that case, you know that UoP is a solid school with a respectable regional reputation. On the other hand, UCM costs a lot less, and carries the world-famous “University of California” brand name. It wouldn’t surprise me if many students in this situation decide that UCM is the more attractive option.
The only people that I know that went to UoP were mediocre high school students with super-rich parents who lived in Alamo, San Ramon, Walnut Creek, Clayton, etc.
UC Merced is little more difficult to get into than UOP. Average GPA for UOP is around 3.5 out of 4.0.
I am a UOP grad. Not sure why there are fewer applicants, but I would guess all the publicity about Stockton’s reputation has hurt them. I also believe that pharmacy school applications are down which would impact the number of pre-pharm majors (UOP had lots of pre-pharmacy majors). But not sure about that. @philbegas I don’t really understand your comment. A significant % of UOP undergrads are pre-dent, pre-pharm & conservatory. None of those students are “mediocre”.
With respect to enrollment, yield could be a factor: