SDSU’s admissions for local students fall by more than 50%
TUESDAY, MARCH 2, 2010 AT 12:02 A.M.
A new admissions policy at San Diego State, which is slashing enrollment, has reduced by more than half the number of high school graduates from the university’s local service area who will join the next freshman class.
Of the 3,534 first-year students expected to start in the fall, 1,484 will come from high schools south of state Route 56 in San Diego County and those in Imperial County, SDSU officials said yesterday.
An additional 1,740 applicants from the service area would have been accepted under the old admissions system, which allowed such applicants to qualify with lower test scores and grade point averages.
The policy change, announced in September, is part of a larger effort to reduce fall enrollment by 2,750 students in the wake of major state budget cuts. SDSU administrators have said they want to emphasize academic quality and maximize admissions flexibility while still maintaining a healthy geographic mix.
Overall, the university’s student population will fall to 28,986 this year, its lowest level since 1995 and down from 31,579 in fall 2009.
For many students who didn’t get accepted, it marks the end of their dreams to earn a four-year university degree, said Isidro Ortiz, an SDSU professor and critic of the policy change.
“The number of students who were denied is very substantial,” Ortiz said. “That’s not acceptable.”
School administrators said the smaller pool of service-area freshmen will be offset by a larger group of juniors and seniors who are transferring from community colleges in the greater San Diego region. About 90 percent of the 2,624 transfer students are coming from those two-year institutions; it was 70 percent last year.
“That’s as high as it has ever been,” said Sandra Cook, who oversees SDSU enrollment services as the assistant vice president for academic affairs.
Trying to put a positive spin on yesterday’s announcement, administrators hailed the incoming class as the most qualified group of first-year enrollees ever admitted by the university.
The new class has an average high school GPA of 3.78 and an average SAT score of 1148. That compares with a 3.62 GPA and a 1110 SAT score for last fall’s freshman class.
“The better the scores, the more likely students are going to graduate (from SDSU),” said university President Stephen Weber. “But when we have to turn away students, it’s not good for the students