She asked Prelock to provide information on why certain students were being accepted, and others weren’t, the rubric for making these decisions, and the percentage of students across colleges who had accepted UA’s offer of admission.
Prelock said UA’s acceptance rate is at 82%, and that the UA now has a “holistic approach” that goes beyond GPAs when looking at student applications. However, she said the university doesn’t share these rubrics because it’s a “confidential blind process” to make sure it’s fair.
Gary Rhoades, a professor in UA’s Center for the Study of Higher Education, later told the Star, “The deans are also frustrated because they can’t get answers to, for example, what is the rubric, how is it that you’re rejecting people who we know in the past would’ve been accepted.”
Kristina Wong Davis, vice president for enrollment management and dean of admissions, told faculty senators the UA was admitting students who met the Arizona Board of Regents’ admission requirements for the university — students with a 3.0 GPA or those in the top 25% of their class — and those who can be successful. She said the UA denied admission to very few students relative to the size of the application pool.
Secretary of the Faculty Katie Zeiders asked Prelock if the administration was expecting a first-year undergraduate class size of 5,000-6,000 or aiming higher at 7,500 or even 9,500, as UA had previously. Prelock said they were looking for a class size in the 7,000-8,000 range, but that UA won’t be going back to the 9,500 range ever.
UA’s enrollment last fall of 7,500 first-year students was a 19% decline from the previous year. Among those students, 62.5% were Arizona residents and 37.5% were out-of-state students. Prelock said at the time that the UA intentionally changed its enrollment strategy to have smaller, “right-sized” classes, give more access to Arizona students and those who need financial aid, and cut back on merit-based scholarships for out-of-state students.
