Despite a record-high number of applicants, MSU has managed to crack down on admission levels for the 2013-14 academic year.
Jim Cotter, the director of” MSU’s Office of Admissions”:http://admissions.msu.edu/, said about 31,500 high school students submitted applications last fall, making it the third year in a row for a record-high number of applications.
“Students apply to more than one institution, and a significant amount of people apply to five or more,” Cotter said. “MSU is making a massive decision to focus on the quality of the applications and what number of students we should admit, knowing not everyone we offer will take us up on our offer.”
Despite the number of applicants, Cotter said the Office of Admissions has become more strategic, admitting about 68 percent of applicants, as opposed to 70 percent last year.
“We admitted aggressively last year, and a great percentage of those admitted accepted,” he said. “We’ve kept admissions purposely low (this year) and waited until May 1 … determining how much space we have to work with.”
Cotter said factors outside of incoming freshmen applications must be considered to maintain a constant number of about 7,800 students admitted each academic year based on budget availability.
“We’ve been very intentionally strategic,” he said. “That target has been established based on many factors, not just the size of the freshman class but also what size the transfer class should be.”
With the number of international students admitted to MSU growing exponentially since 2006, Peter Briggs, the director of the Office for International Students and Scholars, said the growth most likely plays a factor in application rates, as well.
“If you look at numbers, the growth of Chinese undergraduates is the area of growth, and that really sends a message,” Briggs said.
Briggs said the increase in international student presence will encourage global diversity on campus.
“We owe it all to students here to not just have everybody be the same,” he said. “The world is changing, and we want to prepare people for a globalized world, and interaction with people from other countries can be transformational.”
Although actions such as transitional housing have come as a result of high admission rates, theatre senior Lydia Hiller said she has not encountered any issues with the growing student population.
“It’s worked out fine for me so far,” Hiller said. “It hasn’t seemed to be a problem.”
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