TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

USF Is No Longer A Safety School

ADVERTISEMENT

By ADAM EMERSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 18, 2008

TAMPA - At a time when demand for admission to the University of South Florida has never been higher, the acceptance rate for prospective freshmen has never been lower.

USF is on track to accept fewer than half the high school seniors seeking entry next fall, even though high school students are graduating in record numbers statewide.

This is a long way from the "safe" school USF used to be.

"When my sister went there, USF was always the backup school," said Thu Pham, whose sister is now 24. "Now, you really have to try to get in."

She should know: With a 4.3 grade-point average and an 880 on the SAT, Pham, an East Bay High School student, had to improve her scores even more to persuade USF to admit her.

Tight budgets are capping enrollments, forcing the state's public universities to raise admission standards. USF, for one, plans to enroll its smartest freshman class ever next fall — 60 percent have an A-minus average. A thousand students whose grades would have been good enough for admission last year were offered a spot on the wait list this year.

Their odds of admission are growing slim.

Officials are waiting to see how many admitted students choose to accept USF's offer by May 1, the nationally accepted deadline to commit to a college or university. Many already have chosen, however, and USF is close to filling its freshman class, said Robert Spatig, the university's director of undergraduate admissions.

"If early trends hold, we will not have to go to the wait list, or very deeply into the wait list," Spatig said.

Such decisions are jarring to a student whose 3.5 grade-point average, depending on test scores, may no longer cut it. Never before has USF's acceptance rate fallen below 50 percent. Just five years ago, the university accepted nearly 70 percent of its applicants.

Even students with higher GPAs aren't shoo-ins.

Pham, 16, took years of honors courses and gained membership in the National Honor Society. She considered only USF when applying for college.

USF, in turn, wanted to see her most recent grades and better test scores, along with an essay, before admitting her.

Dismayed, Pham expected to enroll in community college, a prospect she had never imagined. Her parents, however, pushed her to boost her grades and test scores, which she did. With a 4.5 GPA and a 970 SAT, USF let her in, Pham said.

A freeze on freshman enrollment heightens the selectivity, and admissions officials don't expect to open their doors wider anytime soon. In addition, record numbers of students will continue to flood the state's universities for the next two years.

At this rate, experts say it will take years for the state to meet its residents' demand for higher education. David Hawkins, the public policy director for the National Association of College Admission Counseling, said enrollment caps, with Florida's growth, would limit admission to only the top of the class and "set the system back."

"Students may be very discouraged about the prospect of obtaining a postsecondary education at all," Hawkins said.

Why The Bar Is Higher

USF's admissions standards have been rising for the past few years. Now budget cuts are forcing them higher.

Early this year, the state university system's Board of Governors ordered its schools to cap, and in some cases cut, enrollment to stave off the effect of millions of dollars in anticipated budget cuts. Tax revenue is dropping across the state, and the aid to public education falls with that.

Florida's student-to-faculty ratio is, at 31-to-1, the largest in the nation. With budget cuts, faculty layoffs and job cuts inevitable, university leaders feared that class sizes would explode unless they admitted fewer students.

While most schools such as USF are freezing their freshman enrollments at this year's numbers — the University of Florida has capped its freshman class for years — others are cutting their enrollment projections. Florida State University, for example, plans to reduce its freshman class by nearly 1,000 students.

That leaves seats available mostly to high-achieving high school seniors. Seniors such as Shauntelle Holbrook.

Holbrook, 18, is bound for USF with a 5.24 GPA, weighted with advanced coursework, and a 1420 on the SAT. She is a member of the National Honor Society, a National Merit Scholar semifinalist and a National Honor Thespian.

She considered only USF. She never thought the school was inferior. An accomplished student musician and actor, Holbrook admires the university's arts programs. Yet she says she knows friends shocked at their own rejection to the school who now are considering Hillsborough Community College grudgingly.

One ill effect of this, Holbrook says, is that her friends are now second-guessing the number of honors and Advanced Placement classes they took. They think that more would have put their applications in the "accepted" pile.

If this selectivity continues, the resulting admissions anxiety will trickle down to younger high school students, Holbrook said.

"This will push you to take a lot more AP classes and sacrifice taking classes you would otherwise enjoy taking," she said.

3.67 Isn't What It Used To Be

Although Holbrook's academic performance stands out, a profile like hers is becoming more common at USF.

By the end of March, USF had admitted about 5,625 prospective freshmen whose GPAs exceeded 3.7, an A-minus average. They make up 59 percent of those admitted. Two years ago, in that same time period, credentials like that made up only 49 percent of prospective freshmen.

Freedom High School senior Laura Zárrate nearly reached that A-minus mark, and she sought admission to USF. Raised in Colombia, she has hopped the globe, studying most recently in Holland before arriving in the Bay area with her mother, a USF doctoral student, and father, who recently received a master's degree in business administration from USF.

Her GPA was 3.67, and her math SAT score was 580, well above the national average of 515. Her limited command of English, however, left her reading score at 410, too low for USF.

"It was really frustrating," said Zárrate, 17, who has been accepted to the University of Tampa. "I understand, but I expect a lot of myself. My parents have such high grades; they get into any university they want."

Without commenting on Zárrate's application, USF admissions officials said a 3.67 GPA isn't what it used to be. Grade-point averages have shot up because advanced and honors courses have added weight to academic performance. A 3.67 is just under the average GPA of freshmen who enrolled last fall: 3.71.

But Spatig, USF's admissions director, concedes that entry standards shot up extraordinarily in just one year.

"Anybody offered the wait list this year would likely have been admitted last year," Spatig said.

'The Achievement Trap'

Admissions officials are encouraging more students on the academic fence, particularly those with a B average, to first consider community college.

Early returns show that is happening. Registration since mid-March for the summer and fall semesters at Hillsborough Community College is up 25 percent from the same time last year.

Community colleges, however, are suffering their own budget crunch and will stretch their resources to accommodate the influx of students, said Paul Dosal, executive director of ENLACE Florida, a group that promotes college access among minorities.

Limiting access not only will slow economic growth — business groups have long lamented the lack of bachelor's degree holders in the work force — but it will hurt the morale of students aspiring to get into their chosen universities.

"I think we're going to see a lot of students who are falling into what I call the achievement trap," Dosal said. "They've done well in the high school system. They've done what we've expected them to do. They've passed the AP tests. Now, the reality is, our universities can't afford to admit them."

USF isn't alone, and that's making it harder to predict who will enroll in the fall. In the past, admissions officials could reasonably predict how many of the students they admitted would pick USF.

But there are more high school seniors graduating this year, according to state projections, and those students are getting more rejection letters from all of the state's 11 public universities.

UF's acceptance rate has been below 50 percent for the past two years and likely will be lower this year. FSU plans to trim its freshman enrollment to about 5,300 in the fall, down from 6,300 last year.

There's also a souring economy, which is pushing more people to choose public education options.

In addition, USF won't empty its wait list in the spring semester, as it has done in years past. USF suspended freshman spring admissions this year.

Meanwhile, students such as Zárrate are weighing their options. Although she was accepted to the University of Tampa, tuition and fees there run about $20,000 a year. She has $15,000 in scholarships from the university and from other sources, but she has to come up with the other $5,000.

She considers HCC "a good opportunity" but not one she has worked for during the past several years.

Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (813) 259-8285 or aemerson@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT