More than 25,500 prospective students applied to California State University (CSU) for fall 2010 on Thursday. That is more than double the number who applied in the first 24 hours for the current fall quarter.
One reason for the increase in applications is the chancellor’s July 9 announcement of a spring enrollment freeze.
The chancellor’s office is hoping to reduce enrollment by 40,000 students system-wide over the next two years.
The reduction in enrollment is a plan to save CSU money, because for every dollar in tuition the university collects, it pays two.
CSU is currently the largest public university system in the country with over 450,000 students.
While no advantage is given based on the order in which applications are received, CSU administrators encouraged high school seniors and community college transfer students to apply early and to multiple CSU campuses.
About half of the 23 CSU campuses, including Cal Poly, will be cutting back enrollment because of system-wide budget cuts.
Some campuses will not accept any applicants after Nov. 30. They may also require that out-of-area applicants have higher admissions criteria, such as grade point average and test scores to give priority to local prospective students.
The other CSU campuses will accept applications until their quotas are filled.
High school seniors who meet the CSU enrollment criteria will have priority admission to their local school on most CSU campuses.
Cal Poly does not give priority to applicants in the Central Coast region, and only 9 percent of the current student body is from the Central Coast region. More than half of the current student body comes from the San Francisco or Los Angeles areas.
Enrollment in California community colleges was at its highest ever last year, and the chancellor of the California community college system expects even more this year.
Tim Miller contributed to this report.
We received double confirmations for both of the CSU’s applied to on that day. We were not double charged and did not apply twice to each school..just wondering if a computer glitch has inflated the actual number of applicants.