Test 2

Something that every enrollment manager worries about is happening in the University of California system: applications are down:

For the first time in 15 years, the number of would-be freshmen applying to the University of California has dropped, the first sign that a national trend of declining college enrollment could be hitting the West Coast.

Applications for the coming school year dipped by 3% to 176,530, according to preliminary UC data released Tuesday. The drop could be a temporary blip, experts said. Among the system’s nine undergraduate campuses, only three — UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz — saw declines in freshman applications.

But while many attribute the downward trend in applications to shifting demographics in the United States, there could be another factor with the UC schools:

At L.A.’s Downtown Magnets High School, college counselor Lynda McGee speculated that students were increasingly discouraged from applying to UC because of the system’s low acceptance rates. Students think they’re not good enough, she said.

UCLA, for instance, is the most popular campus for applicants in the nation. For each of the last three years, it collected more than 110,000 applications for about 5,700 seats for freshmen. For the fall term, applications to the Westwood campus dipped slightly — by about 2% — but still numbered 111,266.

“The state schools are getting harder and harder to get into, and their financial aid is getting stingier and stingier,” McGee said. “I feel [that] for students who have done very well in school, private school and out-of-state public school is the answer.”

This is something that I've considered with regard to my own employer - particularly at the University Park campus.

As I've talked about recently, undergraduate applications at Penn State have exploded this year. The number of highly talented students that we decline admission to the University Park campus continues to grow, and at some point the word will get out that it's really competitive to be admitted at University Park. When that happens, will students just shrug their shoulders and say, 'Well, if it's that competitive I'm not even going to try'?