Proportionally fewer applicants accepted

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by Jeff Gavornik

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The Admission Office will send out proportionally fewer offers of admission to regular-decision applicants than last year.

"Our goal is to admit 50 less students this year than last," said Barry McFarland, senior associate director of admission.

McFarland cites three major reasons for this decrease.

First is the increase in the number of preliminary decision applicants and accordingly, the number of admission offers made to these students.

"Early decision drives us to the numbers accepted for regular decision," McFarland said. "Our goal is 2,600 graduates."

Second is the fact that more students accepted offers of admission last year than expected. Fewer offers are being made now to balance out this unintentional increase in enrollment.

According to McFarland, several factors contributed to the increase of preliminary applications. A recent trend around the country has been for high school counselors to push students for early decision.

Third, for the first time this year, the SAT and SAT II were both offered in October, allowing students to take the tests during their senior year and still be within the deadline for Rice early admission. In previous years, the tests had to be taken during June of the junior year in order to be applicable.

Similarly, Rice now accepts the ACT as well as the SAT.

The number of students that will accept offers of admission at Rice cannot be determined.

Since it is impossible to know just how many students will accept offers of admission, the process relies in large on guesswork. McFarland said, "It is more of an art than a science."

This item appeared in the News section of the February 23, 1996 issue.

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