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November 9, 2006

Admissions profiles freshman class

With the fall term well under way, Pitt now knows more definitively what this year’s entering freshman class looks like. Earlier statistics can be misleading, Pitt officials have said, because a significant number of students make deposits but do not enroll, or leave school within the first couple weeks.

At this week’s Senate Council meeting, Betsy Porter, director of Admissions and Financial Aid, reported on some characteristics of the 3,420 Pittsburgh campus freshmen who entered Pitt this fall.

Porter compared admissions numbers for the class entering in 2006 with those who entered Pitt in 1995, the year Pitt’s Board of Trustees announced the goals of improving the credentials of the incoming classes while increasing enrollment.

Applications were up 133 percent for Pitt’s latest crop of students compared to those who applied for admission to the entering class of 1995, Porter said.

In addition, more than 43 percent of this year’s entering freshmen were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes, compared to 19 percent in 1995.

“The primary mission of an admissions office is to recruit students,” Porter told Senate Council Nov. 6. “The applicant pool is the beginning of any success or failure of an admissions office. You have to be able to generate at least sufficient number of applications in order to build a freshman class.”

Pitt barely was meeting an adequate number in 1995, she said. “We were generating a sufficient number of applications, but certainly not enough to move the University in any positive direction. To do that, first we had to change the perception of the applicant pool so that we were viewed as a much more appealing and competitive institution.”

Until recent years, Pitt was known as a local or regional institution, and for many students either was their only choice or was used as a “safety” school.

“In 1995 nearly 80 percent of our applicants were able to be offered admission to the Pittsburgh campus,” Porter said.

“But our interest was in improving credentials of the incoming freshman class and simultaneously growing the size of the class. So, we knew we had to go further to generate our applicant pool and, hopefully, improve the profile of our students,” she said.

Admissions’ efforts have paid off. The number of applicants has increased, resulting in only 55.8 percent of applicants being offered admission to the Pittsburgh campus.

One number that has declined in recent years is Pitt’s yield rate: the percentage of admitted students who decide to enroll. The higher-quality applicants Pitt now is attracting have many more choices of where to enroll, Porter noted, which accounts for the drop in Pitt’s yield rate from 39.1 percent in 1995 to 33.7 percent this year. Despite the drop, Porter is happy with Pitt’s current yield rate and hopes to maintain the rate over the next few years.

Admissions staff in the 21st century are facing a new set of challenges, Porter said, including expanding the reach of direct contact, establishing a strong Internet presence and accommodating changes in high schools’ reporting of student records.

“A new phenomenon we’re dealing with is the percentage of high schools that have opted out of providing colleges with a class rank for their students,” she said.

Local high schools in that category include Mt. Lebanon, Upper St. Clair, Fox Chapel, North Allegheny and Bethel Park.

“A whopping 41 percent of our applicants are coming from high schools where they’re no longer ranking their students,” Porter said. “That used to be a very important criterion for us in admissions, and that is still the case for those schools that do rank students.”

Pitt felt it needed to find some other variable to replace high school rank.

“Now we calculate a grade point average [from transcripts],” Porter said. “We are able to say that we have a 3.95 grade point average for our enrolled students. That doesn’t mean that everybody came in with a straight-A average. What it does mean is that about 23 percent of our students came in with an average above 4.0 because that includes weighted credit for AP and honors courses.”

While Pitt sets no SAT minimum score for admission, the test is required of applicants. This year, Porter said, “Fifty percent of our enrolling students scored between 1160 and 1340, meaning 25 percent of the students scored above 1340 and 25 percent scored below 1160.”

That contrasts with the 1995 entering class, where the mid-range was 1010-1150, she noted.

Helping Pitt admissions staff reach their goals are:

• Improvements to the Pittsburgh campus physical plant.

• The University Honors College.

• The Pitt Pathfinders, currently 148 student volunteers who conduct campus tours, run Pitt chat rooms and recruit students at their own and other high schools in their home areas.

• The FAST (faculty admissions support team) program, which allows prospective students to take in a class or talk with a professor.

• The PART (Pitt alumni recruiting team) program, which acts as a networking vehicle for students around the country.

“What has really put us on the [national] map is the PART program, which has nearly 1,800 members across the country … representing the University at college fairs and at high schools,” Porter said.

Porter said Pitt’s admissions staff is bracing for another surge in applications. “We’re already running nearly 20 percent ahead of last year at this time.”

—Peter Hart

Filed under: Feature,Volume 39 Issue 6

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