CURAFA - March, 2009

John Bechtol, from the Office of Veteran's Affairs and Services here on campus, talked to the Committee on Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions, and Financial Aid about the steps he has been taking to help vets attending UW as well as his plans for future improvement.

Because of the new federal GI Bill (aka the Post 9/11 GI Bill), it is expected that universities will have an influx of vets in the next couple of years; John is doing his best to help UW prepare for this. He is working to improve UW's system of identifying veterans as well as guiding them through the process of receiving the higher education benefits.

During the final meetings of the semester, the committee will be compiling all of the information brought before the committee throughout the year in order to formulate recommendations to the Faculty Senate.

If anyone is looking for more information on what CURAFA has done this year or wants to give input on any issue this committee deals with, let me know.

Committee on Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions, and Financial Aid - January Meeting

Our committee has been accumulating information in order to make recommendations to the Office of Admissions by the end of this semester. Each meeting is meant to gather information about the various aspects of this committee (recruitment, admissions, financial aid) through talking with people knowledgeable in each area. Here is a summary of the January meeting:


Kathy Cramer Walsh, Political Science - How Wisconsinites View UW-Madison

• Wisconsinites are proud of our sports, marching band, and research


• They are not happy with admissions, cost, and partying.


• Many Wisconsinites view UW faculty as lazy, liberal, and elitist.


• Kathy found that not as many rural students apply to UW but those who apply do very well in both admissions to UW and perform equal to others in grades once here.

I'm hoping some of you reading this will have suggestions as to how we can better reach out to the rest of Wisconsin...

As of Monday, February 2, the Office of Admissions and the Office of Visitor & Information Programs have been combined into 1 office, headed by the Director of the Office of Visitor & Information Programs.

Committee on Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions, and Financial Aid

(I couldn't make it this meeting, but the info below is from the minutes.)

Committee on Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions, and Financial Aid
April 2, 2008

1. Reps from ASM’s Book Swap program came to talk about the program. CURAFA is going to write a letter of support.

2. Rob Seltzer (D/O Admissions), briefed the committee:
• The admissions process has worked very well. There were 605 more total applicants this year, but 109 fewer from in-state.
• There were a total of 3,088 paid deposits and the trend seems to point to a 2008 class size of expected numbers (a target of <5,700). style="font-weight: bold;">For the first time UW-Madison admit rate may be just below 50%.

3. Susan Fischer briefed the committee:
• 2008-09 Awards are being made
• CSA (Common Scholarship Application) is being worked on with plenty of effort from various offices. The goal was to make it student friendly.
• The home mortgage/financial crisis, which has affected several campuses, has not affected the UW. The UW Credit Union is solid financially.

4. Changes were suggested to letter to Chancellor Wiley. Gunasekaran will send an updated version to Wiley on behalf of the Committee.

5. Gunasekaran will also draft an annual report for the Faculty Senate. He will distribute it for comments.

UW Admissions receives record number of applications

According to this WSJ article, UW-Madison has received a record number of applications (24,747) for admission in the freshman class. In addition, the Office of Admissions is cutting back the number of admitted students by 2,000. Could this steady surge in UW's competitiveness be a factor in whether or not UW moves from rolling admissions to a hard deadline? Kayla Stone reported on this possibility a couple weeks ago (see here).