Applications for 2013 class surpass 10,000, breaks record

By Melissa Tsang     1/15/09 6:00pm

Exceeding last year's count of over 9,700 applicants, Rice University broke records again, attracting more than 10,000 applications this year for the first time in its history. For the class of 2013, Rice received 720 applications for Early Decision, compared to 661 applications in 2007 and 517 applications in 2006. Of the 720 applications, Rice accepted about 200 students.

Not only did Rice experience a 5.5 percent increase in the number of ED applications, which increased for the second year in a row, but also a nearly 12 percent increase in applications in the overall applicant pool with 10,818 applications.

Last year Rice filled about 26 percent of its 2008- '09 entering freshman class through Early Decision.

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With the opening of Duncan and McMurtry colleges this fall, the university aims to increase the entering freshman class from 789 to 850 students as per President David Leebron's Vision for the Second Century, which plans for a 30 percent increase in the number of undergraduate students by 2012.

Pursuing the aims of the Vision for the Second Century, the Admission Office reported considerable increases across the board this year. Foreign national applicants increased by more than 28 percent, African-American applicants increased by more than 11 percent, and non-Texan applicants increased by 12.7 percent. Applications from Texas residents grew by 10.5 percent.

The increase in the number of foreign national applicants this year constitutes a particularly significant increase, compounded on last year's 62.3 percent increase in the same category.

Vice President for Enrollment Chris Munoz attributed the significant spike in foreign national applicants from the People's Republic of China to extensive exposure of the university and Leebron and his wife Ping Sun in the PRC.

Last summer, Rice played host to a number of PRC university presidents who visited to learn more about U.S. educational systems.

"That was an agreement that was made between the Chinese Ministry of Education and Rice which really was engineered by President David Leebron," Munoz said.

Leebron was also one of 11 university presidents from around the world invited by the Chinese Ministry of Education to the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

"The president and his wife Ping have been traveling all throughout Asia, but focusing upon the PRC," Munoz said. "That kind of relationship-building and connections are important ways to gain more name recognition, and certainly the president has done a good job."

Despite the economic downturn, Rice remains one of the best values in education and thus one of the top choices of highly qualified applicants.

In the 2009 rankings released earlier this month, Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine and Princeton Review's "Best Value Colleges for 2009" both ranked Rice as the fourth best value of private schools. Last year, Princeton Review ranked Rice as #1 in best value among private schools in its 2008 edition of "America's Best-Value Colleges."

Kiplinger's used metrics of academic quality and affordability in ranking colleges, with academic quality accounting for two-thirds of the total score. The Princeton Review based its rankings on more than 30 factors in the three areas of academics, cost of attendance and financial aid.

"The early signs suggest that low-income students in the end have not been discouraged, that they are applying," Munoz said. "Rice has historically been known to attract lower and middle income students, and while I think that's changed somewhat as our tuition has gone up, one metric you can look at is the number of students receiving Pell Grants, and for that we are among the top. We're way up in African-American [applicants] and we're way up in underrepresented minority [applicants] in general. We're going to have a very diverse socioeconomic profile of students, as we have in the past."

In order to encourage low-income students to apply to Rice in current hard economic times, the university expanded its financial aid policy while retaining its policy of need-blind admission last December. Rice extended its no-loan policy to students who qualify for need-based aid from families with annual incomes of $80,000 or less.

"We have a very defined approach to administering and awarding financial aid," Munoz said.

ED applicants must sign a binding agreement to attend the university if admitted, an agreement acknowledged by not only the student but also his or her parents and the guidance counselor.

Munoz said ED applications are due Nov. 1. Applying early may give accepted applicants peace of mind by mid-December, which is when accepted students are notified.

"The reason why students might apply under the Early Decision is that they have clearly decided that Rice University is the university for them," Munoz said. "So the benefit for students applying under ED is that they are notified by Dec.15 and they now know that where they're going to go to a university, so that now they can focus on other concerns and interests as they complete their senior year of high school."

Regular Decision applicants submit their applications by Jan. 2 and receive their admission results by the end of March.

Despite waiting longer for their decisions to come back, RD applicants have the benefit of having all of the important information needed to make the best decision in terms of financial aid by May 1, the deadline to submit a deposit to Rice and to indicate matriculation.

Munoz cited the challenge in making admissions decisions when most applicants are similarly academically qualified.

"The truth is that the difference between the students we admit and the students we ask to be on our waitlist - if we use academic qualifying standards, in general you could not tell any difference," Munoz said. "So those are the hard conditions. If you don't fit that, then you have no chance of being admitted. If you didn't have enough of the tools to meet the high quality education, it'd be awfully difficult for you."

However, Munoz said academic qualifications were not the only criteria Rice looks for in a student.

"What other qualities would they bring?" Munoz said. "Do the students have experience? Have they participated in co-curricular activities that would speak to leadership? Have they been involved in some way that enhances the experience of where they've been? Have they contributed to make their school, club or community better? It's not just academics. Although academics is absolute, it's more than academics."

In an attempt to predict the number of applications this year, the Admission Office used a number of tools and data, including assessment of demonstrated interest expressed by students, to anticipate a sizable increase in the number of applications this year.

"The size of the pool of applicants was going to be up significantly," Munoz said. "But what became very concerning was that at one point we were down 24 percent in applications. The deadline of Jan. 2 came and just the day before there was a rush of applications. We ended up not just being even but being up significantly, which correlated with our projections and predictions early on. We simply were not seeing the behavior of a large applicant pool."

However, Munoz pointed especially to the hard economic times in trying to predict the number of students applying to Rice.

"I also was concerned by the fact that we were down significantly in the number of financial aid forms," Munoz said. "We were very concerned because it looked to us as though the economy was influencing students not to apply - the student's capacity to meet the cost in light of the environment if they're worried if Mom or Dad going to keep their job, all those kind of things, I am so pleased that we are up."

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