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| Vol. 18, No. 1 | Sept. 3, 1998 |
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| Vol. 18, No. 1 | Sept. 3, 1998 |
Gore Hall was the site of this year's New Student Convocation.
"The goal in recruiting this year's class was to increase quality while enrolling approximately 150 more students than last year because of a large graduating class. While we met the quality goals-high school grade point averages, predicted college grade point averages, combined SAT and class rank are all up from last year--we exceeded our target. An increase of almost 4 percent in the number of students accepting our offers of admission is unheard of in our field. It is testimony to the increasing popularity of the University of Delaware," Siegel said.
Because of the large number of freshmen, UD is enrolling fewer transfer students, 561 versus 627 last year, Siegel said. The total number of new students is 4,192, with ages ranging from 16 to 57.
Delawareans are increasingly choosing UD for college with 1,217 students from throughout the state entering UD this fall. In 1995, there were 1,071 and the number has risen steadily each year.
New Jersey follows with 679 new students, Pennsylvania with 656, New York with 507, Maryland with 279 and Connecticut with 109. Students come from as far away as Oregon (1) and the U.S. Virgin Islands (7), but the majority comes from the mid-Atlantic region.
From outside the United States, there are 26 new international students from Belgium, British Columbia, Colombia, France, Germany, Ghana, Jamaica, Sweden and Switzerland.
In terms of ethnic diversity, the incoming students include 241 African Americans, 109 Latino Americans, 96 Asian Americans and 11 Native Americans. Freshman minority enrollment increased by 8 percent over fall 1997.
As in past years, St. Mark's High School has the most graduates (144) in the freshman class. Salesianum is represented by 68 freshmen; Glasgow, Newark and Alexis I. du Pont high schools each have 60, followed by Christiana High School with 55, William Penn High School with 53, Thomas McKean High School with 52, Brandywine High School with 48 and John Dickinson High School with 47.
The freshman class has 54 valedictorians, 19 salutatorians and 202 students with 4.00 high school grade point averages. Freshman SAT scores also are higher-1,138 compared to 1,136 in 1997.
The University Honors Program has enrolled 544 students versus 445 last year with average SAT scores of 1313 and an average high school grade point of 3.77.
Applying over the World Wide Web is increasingly popular-1,694 freshmen out of 15,401 applicants applied to UD electronically as did 699 transfer students out of 1,812 applicants.
For the sixth year, Jennifer (81) and Michael (92) top the list of most common first names, even though the numbers have dropped from last year when there were 115 Jennifers and 102 Michaels. Christopher and Lauren are the runners-up. There are 596 different women's first names and 309 men's first names.
More freshmen (18 each) were born on Jan. 13, Aug. 15, Oct. 3, Nov. 3 and Dec. 5, with the least common birthdays being Jan. 19 and Oct. 22 (2 each). There are 17 sets of twins in the freshman class this year.
Almost 2,000 of the entering freshmen were involved in volunteer work. Other activities included academic clubs (937), school publications (867), student government (824), music (645), theatre (426) and tutoring (401). In sports, 531 played soccer, 458 played basketball and 450 were involved in track and cross country.
Statistics about the incoming students are subject to a slight change as the academic year gets under way. Official enrollment figures will be available in October.
-Sue Swyers Moncure
Photo by Robert Cohen
