The Committee on Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions, and Financial Aid met on January 31st.
The first order of business was to listen to an update from the Admissions Office. They are currently behind in the admissions process due to the implementation of a new system. The office is for the first time ever going completely paper-less, meaning that all parts of the application will be scanned into a computer. This will make reviewing the applications much easier in the future. However, since this is the first year they did this, they had to learn the new system, causing them to fall slightly behind. The admissions office will be working hard to finish everything by the March 14th deadline.
The delay in receiving decision letters has been the cause of many phone calls and e-mails from impatient students. Wisconsin has what is called "rolling admissions" meaning that students receive the decision as to whether they are admitted or not soon after their application is reviewed. Many schools have systems in which they have "cut-off dates" or "early-admissions", meaning that if the student applies by a certain date, they know which date they will hear their decision by. The fact that there have been so many phone calls/e-mails regarding decisions led to a short discussion on the differences between rolling admissions and early acceptance.
The next order of business was to hear an update from the Office of Financial Aid. At this point in time, they are on schedule for next year. Their focus is almost completely on the 2008-2009 school year now, as they are already going over the financial aid applications for next year. We also discussed a federal grant for teachers that is in the process of being negotiated. Although it is not a need-based grant, it will be included on the FAFSA form, and would give $4000 to any student who is majoring in education. However, the student must teach for at least 2 years in a low-income area. If the student changes their mind or wants to teach in an area that does not qualify, the individual would have to pay back the grant as a loan, with interest. We feel that this could be misleading to some students who see the word "grant", and discussed how to make this information known to students interested in eduation who are filling out the FAFSA.
At this point in the meeting, I had to leave. However, I know that the remainder of the meeting was to be spent drafting a letter to Chancellor Wiley thanking him for his support of the CURAFA throughout his years.
If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to post them.
3 comments:
Do you know if there are a record number of applications this year? What are the projections looking like?
Tim, 22,000 have applied, 4,000 have been accepted so far.
As for the remainder of the meeting, we spent more time talking about other forms of financial aid and the $175 million donation from the Morgridges.
Then we all turned in the letter to the chancellor with our corrections.
I think it would be beneficial if we brought up the issue of getting rid of rolling admissions on Tuesday.
-Josh
At the end of the day, we need to do whatever will up the quality of the student body in terms of class rank, GPA, test scores, etc. These indicators up the quality of the school. If that means switching to a hard deadline, then let's embrace it.
Thoughts?
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