2001 Progress Report

Recruitment & Retention of Students

Enrollment Management

With 2,170 new freshman students enrolled for fall 2001, the target (by admission status) of 2,150 was exceeded for fall 2001. The target of 1,850 for transfer students was well surpassed with 2,040 students enrolling. New graduate and professional student numbers of 1,884 exceeded their target of 1800. An additional 2,500 new students enrolled during spring and summer 2001. A record student headcount of 25,745 was recorded in fall 2001, with over 2,100 more students than in fall 2000. Table 1 provides enrollment trends.

Diversity of the new students continues to be a distinctive feature of the university. Not only do we continue to recruit a highly ethnically diverse student body while significantly increasing our admission requirements, we also are in the top ten universities nationally for numbers of black students who graduate [Black Issues in Higher Education, June 2001, lists Georgia State as 9th nationally and 2nd (behind Chicago State that is 90% black) in non-HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges & Universities)]. Table 2 provides data on student diversity.

An example of recruitment of minority students is the Bridge Project, funded by NSF, that seeks to increase the number of minority students majoring in chemistry or biology who bridge from Atlanta Metropolitan College and Perimeter College to Georgia State University. It offers students the opportunity to work in a Georgia State University research lab during the summer. The program also provides tutoring/mentoring for students and assists them with preparing professional presentations of their research accomplishments.

Quality of the new freshman class was our highest on record with an average SAT score of 1060. Similarly, the average GPA for transfer students was the highest on record with 2.78. Table 3 indicates increase in quality of admitted students.

Credit hour targets were also significantly exceeded, especially in fall 2001 where over 273,000 credit hours surpassed our previous highest total that occurred in fall 1997, the last fall term under the quarter calendar. The average number of credit hours per student increased to 10.6 for fall 2001 from 10.4 in fall 2000.

One-year retention rates increased to 78.8% for the fall 2000 class, an increase of six percentage points over our previous three-year average rate. Two-year retention rates for the class of 1999 were 60.5%, approximately the same as the previous year. Table 4 shows increases in freshman to sophomore retention rates.

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