The admissions department at Binghamton University has received 50 percent more applications this semester than it had this time last year.
“We’ve noticed an increasing slope [in applications], going up over the last five years,” BU Undergraduate Admissions Director Cheryl Brown said.
According to Brown, the number of freshman and transfer applications that the University receives had steadily increased in recent years, but not to this extent. Brown said applications received by BU during the 2007-08 school year, for both freshmen and transfer admission, had increased 5.5 percent from the year before.
Last year the University received a total of 26,590 freshmen applications and 3,700 transfer applications. Around 10,000 freshmen were accepted — an acceptance rate of 39 percent. Brown said that figure puts BU into a category of “a very elite group of schools that are highly selective.”
However, while the University is receiving more applications, BU may not be able to take in an increased number of students due to budget constraints.
“Given the current budget constraints, we intend on keeping our enrollment level,” University spokeswoman Gail Glover said.
Glover said the financial crisis has taken a toll on the state budget, which in turn affects the University’s budget.
Both Glover and Brown said it could become harder to be admitted to BU as a result.
“It will probably become more competitive,” Brown said. “There will be more of a demand for a finite product.”
Jason Locke, director of undergraduate admissions at Cornell University, BU’s Ivy league neighbor where a of number students who apply to Binghamton also apply, said that Cornell was not yet in a position to release the number of applications the university has received so far for the year.
“Our early decision postmark deadline was Saturday, Nov. 1, 2008,” Locke said. “Our preliminary numbers won’t be available until we have processed the large volume of mail that we have been receiving for the past few days.”
BU accepts students on a rolling basis until an April 1 deadline.
Brown attributed BU’s increased intake of applications to the University’s growing academic reputation, the current economic crisis and a greater number of “anxious” high school students submitting applications sooner.
“We’ve noticed a trend where students are applying to college earlier,” Brown said. “Given the economic situation, families are indeed looking at top public schools, maybe in more numbers than they have before.”
Brown also emphasized recent acclaim the University has received, such as being ranked first in the nation as the best value college for out-of-state students in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine. According to Brown, choosing a SUNY school such as BU allows students to go to their graduate school of choice without the same amount of debt that private school students accrue.
Dennis DiSanto, a school counselor at Mahopac High School in Putnam County, said he has noticed more of his students applying to SUNY schools.
“I think kids are still applying to the private colleges also, but once the reality of the cost comes in and you actually compare the cost involved in going to a SUNY to going to a private, it makes you more likely to go to a SUNY,” he said.
According to DiSanto, this was the second year his school organized a tour of SUNY campuses for students. DiSanto said they took around 50 students up to visit BU and SUNY Oneonta.
Brown said her department was gearing up to begin reading applications.
“Even if there’s only a 10 or 15 percent increase in applications [this year], that’s still a big increase,” she said.