The Class of 2012, 3,891 freshmen, is comprised of 2,601 nonresidents and 1290 Delawareans, Among the Delawareans are 329 students in the Associate in Arts Program who will begin their fall semesters at the UD Academic Centers on Delaware Technical and Community College campuses in Wilmington, Dover and Georgetown, Del. Students who complete the two-year associate's degree have the option of transitioning to the Newark campus to complete a four-year degree.
Lou Hirsh, director of admissions, recently reflected on the possible effects of the current economic situation and why UD remains a popular choice for First State and out-of-state residents.
Q: Do you think the state of the economy will affect the number of students who actually show up on campus this fall?
Hirsh: It could, but what is likelier to have an impact is that even this late into the summer, colleges are still taking students off their waitlist. If we are an individual's “second choice” and that person is taken off the waitlist by their first choice college, we may lose a student that we expected to enroll. This is a phenomenon that almost every college seems to be confronting this summer.
Q: Do you think this would have any effect on the number of both in-state and out-of-state students applying to UD?
Hirsh: It certainly didn't have an effect this year. We had the largest applicant pool in our history. We will have a better idea of where things stand for fall 2009 when we start compiling attendance figures for our summer and fall on-campus programs. Tabulating the number of visitors to the campus is often a good bellwether for admissions.
Q: What are some of the notable characteristics of the Class of 2012 and what makes this group different from those of recent years?
Hirsh: The most surprising thing was the quality of the class. The average verbal plus math SATs jumped 20 points over last year. I have been doing college admissions since 1975, and this is the largest one-year increase I have seen in my professional career.
Q: What things continue to make UD a good choice for prospective students?
Hirsh: Several things come to mind.
Although we have some large classes, we also have a significant number of surprising small classes for a flagship state university. Only 4 percent of our students enroll in classes of 100 or more students, and over 60 percent enroll in classes with less than 25 students.
What is probably most compelling and often overlooked when colleges are discussed is that students who attend the University of Delaware seem to love it. If you need to test the truth of this statement, just stroll down The Green or visit the student centers on campus and ask a random sampling of UD students what they think about their college experience.
It is a joy to represent a university that engenders so much passionate enthusiasm among the students who attend and among the faculty and staff who work here. That high level of morale is a priceless asset, and I sense that there are relatively few other colleges in the country where students feel as strongly about their campus as they do at UD.
Q: Could you describe the new plan for the Commitment to Delawareans and explain the current plan and how the new one will work?
Hirsh: The original UD Commitment to Delawareans gave students and parents in Delaware an academic “roadmap” that showed them what courses to take in high school and what sorts of grades to earn in them if they wanted to be confident of gaining admission to the Newark campus of the University of Delaware and to other distinguished colleges and universities.
What's new is the financial aid commitment. Beginning with the entering class of 2009-10, UD will meet the demonstrated financial need of Delawareans up to the cost of tuition, fees, and books and (if they are living on campus) the cost of room and board, as well. UD is also placing affordable limits on the requirement for student borrowing.
Beginning in 2009-10, financial aid will be packaged so that the student loan component for incoming resident undergraduate students will not exceed an affordable level over four years for all in-state undergraduates, and efforts will be made to keep student loan amounts modest for out-of-state residents. UD will limit the amount of student loans by increasing the amounts of grants and work-study positions that are based on need.
Article by Jerry Rhodes
Photo by Kathy F. Aktinson
