University plan for enrollment seek students to achieve institutional goals

With NC State drawing in an increasing number of applicants each year, Undergraduate Admissions and many other campus entities must find a way to accept the optimum, number of first-year and transfer students each year.

Louis Hunt, senior vice provost for enrollment management, gave insight on how the university balances housing availability, class size, available faculty and many other factors in the admissions process.

Hunt said that the university has created a strategic plan which drives the decision process and that, from there, an enrollment plan for the next ten years was developed. This specific strategic plan has been in place since Randy Woodson became chancellor in April 2010.

Jon Westover, associate vice provost and director of admissions, said that the beginning of admissions processes begin as early as August in any given year that set goals of what they envision for the upcoming class of students.

“The Provost’s Office issues the initial call for enrollment projections to the colleges, deans, associate deans, heads and program directors, in August,” Westover said. “The Enrollment Planning Committee evaluates the fit of the college plans with established enrollment trends and goals and provides feedback to the colleges … The Enrollment Planning Committee recommendation is submitted for consideration to the Provost, Vice Chancellor for Finance and Business, and the Chancellor.”

Once the overall and College goals are set for the year, Westover said that past trends are considered to determine how many students to admit to each college.

“Throughout this whole process, we’ve been emphasizing student success, so making sure that the students that come in are well prepared, that they proceed and graduate in a timely manner,” Hunt said. “That has been at the forefront of our efforts, versus ‘Let’s grow as big as we can’, we really have a plan for slow, predictable growth, especially at the undergraduate level.”

Hunt said that space, be it in residence halls or physics labs, as well as available faculty, play major roles in the number of students accepted each year.

“A lot of volatility in the size of our incoming class makes it very hard to plan and really provide the type of experience you want for the students,” Hunt said. “If we fluctuate plus or minus 500 students in a year, well, that really makes it difficult to put all the freshmen composition courses you need, or to ensure that you have the right number of physics labs, or anything else.”

Hunt said that the time it takes to construct new spaces for students on campus takes years of planning which makes a predictable enrollment pattern imperative.

“You must be cognizant of the trends in the applicant pool,” Westover said. “If there is an increase, where do those students fall in the applicant pool?  What major are they interested in? Then you have to build projection models based on past performance.”

Hunt said that the number enrolled each year is never increased in order to collect more student fees to fund university projects, however the fees per student is calculated after admitting students.

“We’ve got a target for the College of Engineering, we have one for the College of Sciences,” Hunt said. “We’ve got a lot of different kinds of targets, but just around college capacities … The number itself, it fluctuates a little bit, just dependent on any number of external factors, that could be our funding level, maybe we’re short on some sort of physical infrastructure in a particular year.”

Hunt said that some aspects of first-year admission have been changed within the past seven to eight years due to the desire to draw in more transfer students.

“The demand for seats at NC State is going up dramatically,” Hunt said. “We [have] got a lot of very highly qualified students trying to get in and it’s a difficult process because we don’t have room for all of them.”