High school students often receive University recruitment pamphlets picturing students laughing, studying and even strumming guitars on the lawn; always under sunny skies.
But that’s not the reality for Sachel Digel.
The 20-year-old Portland resident has been rejected twice for admission to the University.
Digel’s story isn’t unique — the Office of Admissions is rejecting more students this year. For fall 2003, more than 1,400 applicants were rejected for undergraduate admission, an increase of more than 20 percent from last year.
Digel, meanwhile, has decided to attend Mount Hood Community College in Portland for the time being.
“It’s not really a college experience,” Digel said. “Mount Hood doesn’t have a campus life.”
Admissions decisions are affected by limited capacity, limited funding and the University’s constant drive to improve its academic reputation.
“Our charge as an institution right now is to stabilize enrollment at between 20 and 21,000,” said Martha Pitts, director of admissions. “We reached 20,000 three years before we thought we would.”
Funding is also “absolutely” an issue in admissions decisions, according to Pitts.
While the University is a state institution that must provide for Oregon residents, it also needs the comparative financial windfall that out-of-state students bring in.
“Last year we had more than 1,000 students for whom we received no state funding at all,” Pitts said. “And that becomes a challenge for us.”
While the number of rejected students rose dramatically from fall 2002 to fall 2003, the percentage of rejected applicants who were Oregon residents held steady at 46 percent.
“The University is a state institution and has a strong commitment to teaching students from Oregon,” said Pitts. “But that is difficult when per-student funding has remained flat over the last six years.”
As the University strives to improve its academic reputation, fewer and fewer students with low grades are getting in. The group of students admitted for fall 2003 is, statistically, the smartest in recent memory. Pitts expects the average high school GPA for the group to fall at about 3.53. That would be an increase over last year’s average GPA of 3.47, and a significant jump from the fall 1999 class, which had a 3.39 average GPA.
“The students we admitted were much stronger academically,” Pitts said.
The increases in average GPA are at least partly the result of changes to the University’s standards for automatic admission. While the University used to require 14 credits of academic preparation and a 3.0 high school GPA, it now requires 16 credits and a 3.25 GPA.
Digel fell significantly below that with a 2.41 GPA.
“Because of the newer admissions standards, I wasn’t accepted,” she said.
Digel, and anybody else who falls short of the minimum requirements, enters what Pitts calls the “comprehensive review group.” The Office of Admissions evaluates these students for things like grade trends, course difficulty, a personal essay and extenuating circumstances.
“We admitted two-thirds of students who fell into the comprehensive review group,” Pitts said.
But Digel wasn’t one of the them. Eventually, she still plans to attend law school, but realizes it will be difficult.
“I know it’s harder for me to go to law school coming from a community college instead of a university,” she said.
Even though she was rejected from the University, Digel said she’s satisfied with the way things turned out.
“I’m almost glad (that I got rejected) because I met a guy that I’m planning on spending the rest of my life with,” she said.