Admissions applications increase five percent

Tech’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions extended the deadline for Regular Decision applicants a week later to Jan. 21, later than during previous years.
Employees at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions originally planned to extend the deadline until Monday Jan 17, but due to the winter storm and the consequent school cancellation and delay, admissions decided to further extend the due date.
In the application, potential students are required to write in their own grades, as opposed to submitting an official high school transcript. This portion is referred to as the self-reporting section of the application.
“When all of the snow hit the Southeast, we thought, since we don’t require a high school transcript, [the students] may have wanted to take one last look at their transcripts,” said Director of undergraduate admissions, Rick Clark.
Clark added that the application process for high school students is difficult in itself and extending the deadline would relieve stress for both the students and admissions office.
“Don’t underestimate the procrastination of America’s youth. The Undergraduate Office of Admissions expects many applications to arrive the day of the deadline…we did the right thing by extending it,” Clark said.
On Thursday Jan. 20, there were 560 applications. The next day, 1025 applications were submitted in comparison. These numbers attributed to over 14,100 applications submitted for the enrolling class of Fall 2011, about a five percent increase in applications from the enrolling class of Fall 2010.
The applications submitted for the enrolling class of Fall 2010 showed the largest jump in applications Tech has seen in the past. The applications for the enrolling class of Fall 2009 was 11,500 and jumped to about 18 percent higher in 2010.
Over the past two years, competition has increased greatly.
“This year we will be denying more students than admitting them,” Clark said. Clark added that 85 percent of the students applying could probably succeed at Tech, but the Institute can only admit a certain amount of students each year.
Tech plans to increase the number of graduate students, in accordance with the Strategic Plan. This past fall, 2446 high school graduates began their first semester at Tech. A cap of about 2650 incoming freshmen has been set for the past three-four years, despite the increase in applications over the past years.
“It’s a challenge for admissions to review this many more applications. [The Admissions Office] review these applications with the same number of staff that we had when we only received 4000 applications,” Clark said. “From a budgeting standpoint, application numbers translates to bringing more money into the institute, but that is not necessarily our goal.”