At the Directions in Student Recruiting workshop, Vern Granger, UT assistant dean of enrollment services and director of undergraduate admissions, wished to dispel a myth. He said one does not need a 26 ACT score in order to gain admission to the university.
Of the applicants for fall 2009, the university offered admission to 57 percent with less than a 25 score on the ACT or less than a 3.4 core GPA.
“One of the big things that I always heard from students and from counselors and from folks when they’re talking about the University of Tennessee is that you have to have a 26 on the ACT in order to get into the University of Tennessee,” Granger said.
Granger started as UT undergraduate admissions director on Sept. 21 after serving in admissions at North Carolina State University since 1998.
At the workshop on Monday afternoon, he said the university is not so exclusive that it lacks attainability.
“Yes, we are attracting some of the top students, not only in the state of Tennessee but throughout the country and throughout the world, and we should be proud of that,” Granger said. “But we’re also a university of access, and selectivity and access do not have to be mutually exclusive terms.”
Former UT President Joe Johnson wondered aloud whether the myth might also have positive effects by setting a standard and not creating an “overexpectation” among parents about their child’s chances. He used a hypothetical example where, if the university emphasized that an applicant did not need a 26 ACT score in order to gain admission at the university, a mother might think her child with a 21 ACT score and a 2.7 GPA has high chances.
“I think we are very well served by being a bit concerned about all our publicity about 26 (ACT score) and 3.7 (GPA),” Johnson said. “Because out in the hinterlands, there are folks that have concluded that if my child or grandchild doesn’t have a 26 and a 3.7, I should not even apply to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville,” Johnson said. “Now I think there’s some pluses about that and things we ought to celebrate.”
The university deals out offers of admission through “auto-admits” and holistic review. Granger said the university “auto-admits” students who have such high grades and test scores that they do not require further review. The source of some of that 57 percent with less than a 26 ACT score and a 3.4 core GPA is the university’s holistic review process, in which those who aren’t automatically admitted have their personal statements and letters of recommendation reviewed.
The process also takes into account the student’s high school academic circumstances.
“We’re looking at those students from the rural areas who may not have gotten the 24 or 25 or whatever on the ACT, but they’ve taken as challenging a course load as they can at their high school,” Granger said. “They’ve done well, but they may have overcome some obstacles.”
The university will need these students and more in order to meet its 2010 admission goals. After a fall 2009 freshman class that had 3,717 enrolled, a reduction of 497, the university now targets 4,200 enrolled for fall 2010.
Granger warned that increasing admissions will have negative effects on other figures like average core GPA, which raised by 13 percent with the fall 2009 freshman class. The raise also comes despite dwindling university resources.
Upper administration gave the 4,200 number to admissions, Granger said. He hypothesized one of the reasons for the figure might be budgetary shortfalls.
He said the four main challenges undergraduate admissions faces are a shaky economy, a projected decline in high school graduation rates over the next six years, bringing diverse students that reflect geographic, economic and cultural differences to campus, and competing with in- and out-of-state colleges and universities.
Granger stressed that the admissions process was not merely taking the top students based on pure academic performance or test scores through the holistic review process.
“It’s not just listing all the students and admitting,” he said. “It’s also taking those things into consideration, trying to build not only as strong an academic class but as diverse as possible.”