A senior administrator wrote a letter to Faculty Senate members last week outlining an admissions strategy altered by recent turmoil in the financial and credit markets. The letter emphasized providing more financial aid to continuing students rather than allocating funds to attract new “elite” freshmen.
Robert Chernak, senior vice president of Student and Academic Support Services, wrote the letter in response to critical reports from the Faculty Senate last spring that indicated the University is attracting fewer elite students. He highlighted that in recent years the incoming class has become more ethnically and geographically diverse.
Chernak said in an interview last week that the University is concerned about “enrollment stability” – keeping current students at GW and attracting enough quality students to fill a freshman class – during the financial downturn.
“We are trying to minimize the economy’s adverse impact on the University,” Chernak said. “If that means giving up a few points on the SAT, so be it.”
Chernak rejected the suggestion from the Faculty Senate that the University increase scholarship money for academically prestigious students, after GW cut merit-based aid by $1 million last fiscal year.
“It may not be the right time to invest additional student aid resources of any magnitude to achieve better performance within limited and select qualitative measurements such as National Merit finalists when a much more comprehensive plan to meet broader and sustainable university enrollment objectives is mandated by current circumstances,” Chernak wrote in the letter.
The Hatchet reported on Monday that the University plans to add millions of dollars in financial aid to fund continuing students who otherwise may have difficulty paying tuition during the economic downturn. Chernak said providing resources for current students would reflect well on the University and help with the upcoming admissions cycle.
“Recruitment success for next year may have much to do not only with pricing and student aid strategies that we may wish to put in place to attract new students, but also will be very dependent on how we react as a University in mitigating financial stress current students may be experiencing,” he wrote in the letter.
A Faculty Senate committee, led by economics professor Don Parsons, focused their critical report, “The Decline in Elite Freshmen Admissions,” on the low number of National Merit finalists and incoming freshmen ranked in the top admissions rating categories.
Parsons said Chernak’s letter did not directly address the elite student problem, but it provides an overview of long-term progress of GW admissions to garner more top-quality students.
“From these data, it is reasonable to conclude that GW has managed to maintain its admissions standards over the last four years, but that progress toward excellence – most evident in the 1990s – has stalled, a result consistent with rankings provided by U.S. News & World Report and others,” Parsons wrote in a response to Chernak.
Chernak noted that the quality of the average student has improved dramatically over the last two decades, but he said GW might have to be content with admissions statistics – including SAT scores which have hovered near 1300 for the past three years – to remain stable until the financial crisis is over.
Chernak said, “Obviously we would like to keep up that momentum but that might not be possible in these economic times.”
