Applicant rate escalates over 25 percent

Since 2005 more high school seniors are applying to Georgia College while admission rates remain capped

Application, acceptance and enrollment rates have been increasing throughout the country, and Georgia College is no exception.

In Fall 2010, 4,122 first-year freshmen applied to Georgia College and 2,526 were accepted. Out of the students accepted, 1,199 enrolled in the university, meaning 47.4 percent of accepted applicants enrolled this Fall.

These numbers are up from 3,259 applications in Fall 2005. That same semester 1,952 were accepted and 1,032 were enrolled.

Though the numbers have been climbing steadily over the years, the number of students who enroll is capped now at roughly 1,200.

“We are not planning right now to increase the number of students we bring in because of a few things: with our mission of being Georgia’s Public Liberal Arts University, we are trying to keep our classes as small as possible, and we just don’t have room to grow physically on this campus,” said Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management Suzanne Pittman.

At Georgia College, there is a requirement for all students to live on campus during their first year. As of now, there are 2,250 beds available to students. Therefore, if enrollment rates for freshmen were to increase, University Housing could handle the higher demand.

“All freshmen have to live in the dorms, and about one-third of students in each class after that live in University Housing,” Executive Director of University Housing Larry Christenson said. “Some of the rooms now are used for office space, so those could be converted back to dorm rooms if needed.”

Not only is the number of applicants increasing, but Georgia College’s retention rate is growing as well. Out of the students who entered Georgia College in Fall 2009, 85.22 percent returned for their sophomore year.

“Our retention is growing which means that the students who come here are persistently staying,” Pittman said. “So, we can’t really bring in that many more students because of the number of students we already have. So, for the last few years we have brought in about 1,200 students in the Fall.”

The graduate program at Georgia College is increasing too. In Fall 2010, 854 students applied, 416 were accepted and 332 enrolled as graduate students.

“A lot of people go back to school when the economy is down,” Pittman said. “I think (the graduate program) has grown, but it has not grown a huge amount because even though people go back to school when the economy is down, people are concerned about how to pay for it.”

The most popular graduate program in 2010 at Georgia College was business administration with secondary education coming in at at a close second.

Other universities in Georgia are experiencing high application rates. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the University of Georgia had 18,000 applicants vying for 5,000 spot openings in Fall of 2010. The Georgia Institute of Technology accepted only 47.5 percent from a pool of 14,210 applicants in Fall 2010.

Graduation rates are studied in six year time periods because it is taking students longer to graduate from college than in the past. For the students who entered Georgia College in 2004, 59.8 percent graduated by Summer of 2010.

The Labor Department reports that more people nationally are enrolling in college than ever before, with 70.1 percent of the high school class of 2009 being enrolled in October 2009. Across the nation more women are enrolling in college than men. Sixty-six percent of men are enrolling, while 73.8 percent of women are entering college.

This trend is seen at Georgia College with a 51 percent female enrollment rate and a 49 percent male enrollment at the university in 2009, according to the Office of Institutional Research.

Posted by Bobbi Otis on Apr 2 2011. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.