Freshman enrollment steadily rises

     With a record freshman enrollment this year of 1,120, nearly 100 more than last year, GCSU is threatening of heading away from its small college appeal. This year the GCSU family allowed a higher number of freshmen into the fall semester than ever before, showing a 55 percent yield rate as opposed to last year’s 50 percent yield.
     Despite these growing numbers the school has no plans to fund additional housing which could mean even more freshman living in The Village at West Campus in the future. Just over 900 freshmen currently live on campus in the dorms, leaving over 200 new students to fill up spots in the West Campus apartments.
     The majority of freshmen that were asked about life in The Village responded with similar responses, namely that although the freedom of apartment life might be more appealing than dorms, the remoteness of West Campus life is hard to appreciate.
     Freshman and resident of The Village, Anna Williams, was forced to live on West Campus.
     “I did not have a choice when I applied, but if I had the choice I would have picked the dorms,” Williams said. “I hate having to catch the shuttle just to go to class.”
     It is not safe to say, however, that all freshmen shared the same view of the housing situation, and many students said that they were glad to be able to live in an apartment in their first year, even with the difficulty of taking the shuttle everywhere.
     Director of Admissions, Mike Augustine, said that the problem is not that the school is admitting more each year.
“It’s not that we are letting in more freshman than usual, it is more that the percentage of freshmen accepting our offers has increased,” Augustine said.
     This leads to questions about the future of the school in terms of intimacy. As many of the students at GCSU are well aware, the college has always prided itself on small class sizes and an intimate setting between students and professors.
     “I don’t think the amount of freshmen we are accepting this year has had an impact on the intimacy of the school,” Augustine said. “It has affected class sizes and number of seats available, but the atmosphere of the school will not be tainted.”
     Associate Director of Housing Bill Frowine backed up this statement.
     “The problem is in Academic space, not housing.  As the class size grows, so does the faculty size,” Frowine said.  
     The school has always aimed for admittance of 1,050 to 1,070 freshmen and even with the new record of students this year, it has not strayed far from the school’s goal. Augustine defended the increase in students.
     “This is the most well-credentialed class in the school’s history, and we have been able to say that for the past few years, and we hope to continue to be able to say it each year,” Augustine said.
     As long as the standards of the students continue to increase, the school should continue to accept more and more freshmen in the future, but from Mr. Augustine’s view on admittance, the school will always retain its intimacy, even if more and more of the incoming students will be forced to ride the shuttle all the way from West Campus.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Aug 31 2007. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry