College Notes Decline in International, Overall Applications

Author: Ashley Elpern

As applicants for Middlebury College's Class of 2006 hear this week whether they will have the choice of matriculating at Middlebury this fall, the admissions office is in the midst of studying the demographic shifts that occurred in this applicant pool. Overall, 120 less students applied to Middlebury in 2002, with 5,294 applications received compared to 5,414 in 2001 — a banner year which had marked the College's largest applicant pool in history.

Dean of Enrollment Planning Michael Schoenfeld said that when the admissions office studied the breakdown of this year's applications, the loss of applicants appears largely due to a 13 percent decrease in international student applications from 929 in 2001 to 812 in 2002.

Schoenfeld cited the events of Sept. 11 as the most logical reason for the decline. "We did have to cancel a trip [to attract international students to Middlebury] to Europe a week after Sept. 11," he said, "and overall there was slightly less travel [to recruit applicants] for the rest of the year."

He said fewer recruiting trips combined with a tense international climate could have contributed to the loss of international applicants. "If you put yourself in the position of a parent abroad, you could see why they might be apprehensive about having their children travel," he explained.

Director of Admissions John Hanson said that while the drop in international students is evident, "they are still a large group, and Middlebury has always had a large representation of them on campus." He noted that due to the great amount of international interest and the College's aim to have international students comprise 10 percent of every class, a great deal of qualified students will not gain admission despite the decrease in applications this year.

Because the admissions office anticipates the final size of the Class of 2006 to rest at 570, Schoenfeld said, "It is easy to get 57 qualified international students [from the large pool of applications], as there are more qualified international and national students than can be accepted."

Demographic shifts within the United States indicated an 8 percent increase in applications from the Midwest, marking the largest numerical gain from last year's 446 to this year's 482 applications. New England sent 29 more applicants, a 2 percent increase from 1,445 to 1,474. The Mid-Atlantic region of the United States has the largest decrease of 6 percent, 1,315 to 1,240, with other areas showing slight decreases — the West with 21 fewer applicants, the Southwest with 7 fewer applicants and the South with 18 fewer applicants.

Hanson noted that these changes come from "nothing we can trust" since admissions officers employ many techniques to recruit students. "The easy part is coming up with the figures," he continued. "When we travel to secondary schools, we try to do many things. We aim to maintain the visibility we have in schools that already send us applicants, and we also try to expand the frontiers of the existing pools."

Hanson added that the fluctuations often have less to do with recruitment by the admissions office and more to do with what is going on in each state and region. He cited the end of affirmative action in the admissions process of the University of California as one instance in which more qualified students of color applied to colleges outside the California school system after 1978.

Schoenfeld said that overall he does not expect the student body to change, despite the slight decrease in applications.

"We still can only accept one out of every four students that apply," he said. "It is nice that this year's class can be slightly larger, as the outgoing class is large. It allows us to have a greater diversity of students overall, as we can accept a few more students than in most years."