As the number of applications for enrollment at UW-Madison is increasing, administration officials said it is becoming more difficult to gain admission to the university.
According to Keith White, UW-Madison assistant director of admissions, UW-Madison is hoping to enroll nearly 5,700 freshmen for the 2003-'04 school year, which has been the target number for the past five years.
At the same time, the admissions office is expected to receive more than 24,000 applications for next year. The amount of applications has increased by 40 percent over the last six years.
White said the admissions process is becoming a matter of supply and demand.
\There is a fine item of supply. In other words, the spaces available for the freshman class are limited, and increasingly, over the past 10 years or so ... [there is] a bigger demand for those places,"" he said.
Because there is an increase in the number of applicants and the university continues to enroll the same number of students, White said the admissions process is becoming more competitive.
""As more and more people want to gain admission, we are in a position where we have to evaluate each candidate according to greater and greater expectations,"" White said.
UW-Madison freshman Maggie McWilliams said the university already expects a ""really good resume when you apply.""
McWilliams said she considered herself a good student in high school and was involved in many extra curricular activities. Yet she said she still worried she would not be accepted to UW-Madison.
""I was unsure because I knew they had tough standards and a lot of people want to go to UW-Madison. I knew they only had so many spaces to sell,"" she said.
Luoluo Hong, UW-Madison Dean of Students, said the challenge is in striking a balance between choosing the best applicants and providing higher education, especially as a public institution.
""As the [UW System] flagship, there's sort of this idea where you move to setting some standards and moving to greater selectivity but then at the same time as a public institution, you have the mission of accessibility, providing a higher education opportunity to the state,"" she said. ""Obviously one is going to be at the cost of the other in some ways.""
In finding this balance, Hong said the admissions process needs to look at the total student, including grade point average, test scores, essays and extra-curricular activities.
""I hope that as a campus what we say is that we want a student body to be diverse in terms of bringing students with a wide array of skills and experiences to contribute to the campus life,"" she said.
Because the admissions process considers a variety of qualifications, White said the competitiveness should not preclude any particular students.
""Just because it is becoming more difficult to get in doesn't mean it's going to reduce the diversity of the campus environment,"" he said.
