Eighty percent admission rate not bad at BYU

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    By Megan Vandre

    Despite claims in BYU speeches about how selective the BYU experience is, the university is posting an average 80 percent admission rate for all applicants.

    With the deadline for new freshmen applications for the 1999-2000 school year last Tuesday and the deadline for transfer student applications on March 15, the admission rate raises questions about who will be admitted for the coming year and how the admission process will work.

    The Office of Admissions and Records said that in the 1997-98 school year, about 73 percent of total applicants were admitted to the university. Broken down, the numbers equal about 70 percent of new freshmen admitted, 57 percent of transfer students and 97 percent of former students admitted.

    In the same year, 27 percent of those admitted were from Utah, 38 percent were returned missionaries, 51 percent were female and 49 percent were male.

    The average grade point average of incoming freshmen has hovered at about 3.7, or A- range, for the last five years, and the same group’s average ACT score has stayed near 27. In contrast, transfer students have been at about B+ range.

    The numbers come from the associate dean of admissions and records, Jeffery Tanner, who also addressed some of the rumors about applying to BYU.

    For instance, one rumor says students from Utah have a better chance of getting in, while a counter-rumor says the opposite. The truth? Tanner said only if all other things were equal — and seldom are all things equal — “yes, in fairness, yes, we would give the edge to someone away from Utah … who hasn’t had the benefit of a large LDS population that (kids from Utah) have grown up in.”

    And what about admitting all returned missionaries? “The perception in the past is that missionary service undoes everything else … and that’s simply not the case,” Tanner said. “We do deny returned missionaries. We’re not happy about that, but size and necessity force that upon us.”

    Tanner said, overall, the office is doing its best to keep from sending out too many denial letters.

    He compares the number of applicants — almost 25,000 in 1997-98 — to the number of 18-year-old LDS Church members in the United States and Canada — about 95,000. Since the office’s main target is the LDS population, Tanner says that is 95,000 applications that could potentially be sent.

    “We think because we have tried to be forthright and honest in terms of getting the information out to them that we really have helped to hone the application pool to those who really, for the most part, have a pretty good shot at admission,” Tanner said.

    “I’ve always been a firm believer that nobody is benefitted from receiving a deny letter. There’s no growth experience that occurs,” he said. “There’s no development. It’s just bad.”

    Consequently, recruiters are trained to present applicants with the honest facts about what it takes to be admitted, Tanner said.

    Holly Elison, a new freshman applicant for the coming school year from Kaysville, Davis County, said that in her recruitment session at Davis High School, the recruiter gave students a chart to determine their eligibility for application.

    The chart mapped a student’s GPA against his or her ACT score to get an index number. Elison said the recruiter made it clear that to be competitive a student needed an index number around 100. Hers was 112, and she was admitted. But, she said, the recruiter was optimistic for everybody to be accepted.

    Elison also said she assumed grades, ACT scores and the letter of recommendation would be the determinants of acceptance once her application, filed mainly via the Internet, made it to the admissions office.

    Tanner confirmed the idea that grades are a primary factor in deciding who gets admitted. However, when applications come into the office, he said, the first thing admissions committee members look at is the ecclesiastical endorsement. If that is not in order, the application is denied, although Tanner said that happens to “very few.”

    Then comes GPA and test score evaluation, in which all applicants are judged on a weighted scale to balance the types of classes they have previously had. “About a third of our applicant pool would end up being admitted at that time,” Tanner said, while only a handful — “less than 100” — would be denied.

    The remainder go through a subjective read process that involves an analysis of the other parts of the application: letter of recommendation, counselor’s comments, list of service opportunities and student essay. Again, some are admitted, some denied, and some applicants — usually about 1,500 — go into a hold group.

    The hold means the student is admissible, but placement depends on the university’s capacity. Tanner said previous experience tells them that about half of the hold group will be admitted.

    Transfer students are judged slightly differently, although grades are still a major factor. Tanner said these students are also evaluated by how many credit hours they are transferring with.

    The committee does this because it wants to admit the students most likely to graduate, Tanner said.

    “It’s lock step. As you go up in increments, the higher the GPA, the higher the percent of that group that graduated. (It’s the) same thing with total hours,” he said. Students that come with 20 hours of transfer work graduate at a much lower rate than students that come with 80 hours, Tanner continued.

    But is it easier to get into BYU as a transfer student? Dave Green, a Ricks College transfer applicant from Fairfax, Va., said that’s how he viewed things.

    “I always understood that it is a lot easier as a transfer student because you’ve already proven yourself in college classes,” he said.

    Tanner, also, said the transfer process was easier because “you have more predictive information on a transfer student than you do a new freshman in terms of who is going to graduate.”

    But if there is one idea that helps shape the committee’s choice, it is the idea of admitting students who respect BYU’s spiritual commitment to learning.

    “We think moral and ethical issues are important. We think it’s needed in the world,” Tanner said. “We hope the students we’re admitting understand (the importance of combining education and spiritual things) and are able to take advantage of that and then go out and share that perspective wherever they may end up in the world.”

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