Students interested in attending N.C. State in the future may find acceptance is not quite what it used to be.

Data from 1997 and 2004 have shown that the admissions process has become more exclusive.

The University hit a 10-year low for percentage of applicants accepted in 2004, when only 58.7 percent of applicants were accepted, down from a recent high of 75 percent in 1997, according to the First-Time Freshman Profile that University Planning and Analysis released.

While numbers have fluctuated, Tommy Griffin, director of the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, said the overall trend in recent years has been toward a smaller percentage of applicants accepted to the University.

Griffin said this change had more to do with an increase in the number of applicants rather than a change in the strictness of admissions.

“We have had more applications for the incoming freshman class over the past couple years,” Griffin said. “The size of the freshman class has grown, but the overall number of students applying has grown at a greater rate.”

Griffin said the new numbers did not mean the admissions office changed the criteria for acceptance.

“Our typical student has mostly A’s and B’s in high school, has taken very good courses and has taken AP courses if their high schools offer them,” he said. “The first thing we always look at are these high schools records, and whether or not the student has taken advantage of the opportunities that were offered to [them] in high school. This has not changed.”

Although Griffin said an overall increase in the population of North Carolina contributed to an increase in applicants, he said the main source of the increase was a rise in the University’s prestige.

“We have seen some increase in the number of applications due to an increase in the number of students graduating from high school in North Carolina, but I would also explain the changes to a growth of reputation of the University because of our fine students and the things that our faculty has done,” he said.

Griffin said marketing for colleges relies greatly on word of mouth. He said students’ pride in the University serves as advertisement.

While some may think the University provides education for students specifically from North Carolina, Griffin said having students from a diverse range of areas will help make the educational experience more valuable.

“The UNC system has stated that no more than 18 percent of new freshmen from any one university should be from out of state. We are only at 10 percent right now,” he said.

Griffin noted the importance of in-state students’ interactions with people from “various geographical areas.”

People from outside the University have noticed a change in reputation as well. Judy Kinney, a guidance counselor at Broughton High School in Raleigh, said she noticed a significant change in the way her students look at NCSU during her employment at Broughton.

“I have been here for 20 years now and it used to be that students looked at State as a backup school — that has definitely changed,” she said. “They now see State as a University that they apply to in its own right.”

Kinney noted a lot of the interest comes from students who are considering applying to the College of Management.

Jeffrey Alexander, a senior at A.C. Reynolds High School in Asheville, N.C., said he considers the renown of academic programs at individual schools during his college search.

“I’m thinking about State because I’m debating between engineering and pre-med,” Alexander said. “I know that State has a strong engineering program, but if I decide to go into pre-med I might be better off somewhere else.”

Griffin said the admissions office always tries to keep the University’s mission of providing an affordable education to the young people of North Carolina in mind when making decisions.

“We need to make sure that we have adequate resources for all courses and to provide a quality education to all the students we accept,” he said. “We don’t want to have so many freshmen that it overwhelms the facilities. There has to be a balance between the desire to provide a quality education and the ability to do so for all that we do accept. We want to be the people’s university of North Carolina.”