The largest number of applicants in university history applied for admission this year ? 10,080 students, up 17 percent from 8,656 last year.
The number of applicants who filed for early decision also increased to 17 percent of all applications, up from 12 percent last year.
Many colleges are receiving more applications, but UR?s numbers are slightly higher than average, said Director of Admissions W. Jamie Hobba, noting that the jump is a ?much more dramatic increase than would be predicted by demographics.?
Hobba credits this to a number of reasons, among them the good economy, better listing of the university in online search techniques and ?maintaining progress and momentum on the Renaissance Plan.?
For the Class of 2004, UR almost perfectly met its goal for incoming freshman, enrolling 936 students. This comes after 1,090 students enrolled in the Class of 2003 last year, far surpassing the goal of 950.
This resulted in 25 to 30 rooms being converted into triples, said Logan Hazen, director of Residential Life. This year started with only 12 to 13 triples, now down to seven.
This is mainly a residual effect from the size of the sophomore class, which is ?still well over a hundred larger than the ?average? class,? Hazen said. He continued that this is also ?necessitating the expansion of undergraduate spaces in deKiewiet and Valentine.?
The situation with housing is further complicated by the balance between men and women in the Classes of 2003 and 2004. In the Class of 2003, the male-to-female ratio is 59 percent to 41 percent and with the Class of 2004, it is 58 percent male to 42 percent female.
The biggest issue for Residential Life in the next few years is going to be the ?huge size of the Class of 2003,? Hazen said.
This year?s freshman class also sees an increase in underrepre-sented minorities. Almost 11 precent of the Class of 2004 are black, Latino, Native American or other, up 1 percent from the Class of 2003. This number rises to 24 percent when Asians, who are not considered underrepresented at UR, are included. With these increases in ethnic minorities, the number of international students admitted has dropped by half to 2 percent.
The academic qualifications of the incoming freshmen are similar to that of the class before, with only slight changes.
The average SAT score rose from 1308 last year to 1316. The middle 50 percent have SAT scores between 1240 and 1410, almost identical to the Class of 2003. These numbers have risen more than 100 points from five years ago.
Fifty-one percent of the Class of 2004 ranked in the top 10 percent of their graduating class and 86 percent ranked in the top 25 percent of their class. In the Class of 2003, approximately 56 percent were from the top decile and approximately 84 percent were from the top quartile.
