UB Expects Seeks Quality Over Quantity in Admissions

Call it the swan song for the "MTV effect."

Though hundreds more students enrolled in UB this year than in years past - some say because of the buzz surrounding UB from MTV's "Sorority Life 2" and "Fraternity Life" - UB officials said they expect the Fall 2004 freshman class to return to normal levels.

Officials also said the academic quality of the incoming freshmen will increase.

"Last year was an anomaly," said Dennis Black, vice president of Student Affairs. "We were aiming at 3,000 to 3,200 students, and we got hundreds more than that. This year we expect to go back to the original target."

According to Black, 2004 will look more like 2002 than 2003.

While applications - not to be confused with enrollees, who are the students who apply to the school - are up 7 percent this year, officials expect the major improvements will come in academic quality.

"It's a given every year that UB does better," said Black. "We get more and better applications, resulting in a smarter freshman class."

President John Simpson said the improvements reflect UB's growing stature among applicants.

"The quality of the applicant pool is getting better and better," he said. "It shows kids are interested in UB."

Simpson said UB will try its best to let in deserving students.

"With the high-quality students that want to come here, we do the best we can to help them," he said. "Although we have to draw the line somewhere, in my opinion we're committed as a responsible public university to ensure maximum education for students."

Felice Solomon, assistant district director of guidance at Plainview-Old Bethpage JFK High School in Nassau County, said she has taken note of UB's stricter admissions standards.

"I think they're getting more applications than they know what to do with, and now they're taking a very hard line on who they are accepting," said Solomon. Last year, 30 students from Plainview JFK went to UB out of 60 accepted.

According to Solomon, who serves on a UB advisory board created to assist UB in advertising and promoting itself to high school students, UB is taking a more "in-depth" look at applicants, as are universities across the country.

"Standards are stricter," she said.

Officials project the incoming class will have a mean SAT score of 1202 and a high school average of 92, Black said. The mean SAT score among current students is 1168, according to The Princeton Review.

But Sean Sullivan, vice provost for enrollment and planning, stressed that UB looks at far more than SAT scores when reviewing applicants.

"We try to review every application for a variety of factors," he said. "Leadership, community service, and involvement in extra curricular activities are shown through the supplemental application."

Sullivan agreed that UB would try its best not to enroll more than planned.

"We are very concerned not to over enroll this year," he said. "We are hoping for a class of 3,200, and we think we can handle that very well."

Sullivan said the reason for over-enrollment last year was due to a higher than usual percentage of students accepting offers.

"Twenty nine to 30 percent of the students say yes to the offers we make," he said. "Last year, 33 percent said yes."

Again this year applications are on the rise, but the Office of Admission is being careful.

"Our applications this year are up 7 percent," said Sullivan. "UB is in demand and we're being very careful not to over-enroll while continuing to draw in better students."

Solomon said UB owes a lot of its current popularity to word of mouth from students who come home with good things to say about the school.

To current students, a larger enrollment might mean less personal attention in classes, but results from a recent student opinion survey show that this is not a problem yet.

"As we went from fall to spring, there is no negative impact indicated, and no indication of losing students," said Sullivan. "If there is a problem, we haven't heard about it."

Gretchen Forbes, a mechanical engineering major who was part of this year's unusually large freshman class, didn't see a problem with the large numbers.

"I don't really know the difference since I haven't been in college before," she said. "I think the college handled it well since I heard there were housing problems and other space issues. Otherwise I would have never known if everyone wasn't talking about it."

In an attempt to keep enrollment numbers in a manageable range, UB has decided to start wait-listing students.

"We are employing wait-listing this year to control the number of offers and admissions," said Sullivan.

According to Black, there's also another good problem that comes from this issue.

"Fewer people leave UB, and more students who stay don't drop out," he said. "We retain more students, which is a good problem, but a complicated one."